| Abstract: | This paper uses insights drawn from a paired comparison of Switzerland and Japan to give an account of the changes brought about by neoliberal policy adaptation in Japan over the last two decades. In Switzerland, notwithstanding further liberalization of the traditionally liberal regime prompted by the economic hardships of the 1990s, the referendum system helped the Social Democrats and unions to defend their rights and maintain the welfare schemes belatedly established in the 1980s. By contrast, the Japanese ruling party not only delayed liberalization of the protectionist state, but also aggravated fiscal problems by implementing a series of expansionary macroeconomic policies in the 1990s. Thus, without pursuing coherently such neoliberal policies as fiscal consolidation, privatization, or market deregulation, the Japanese state now faces a serious dilemma between the immediate need for structural reforms and the social unease that would result. Focusing on the reform packages of the Nakasone (1982‐87), Hashimoto (1996‐98), and Koizumi (2001‐) administrations, the paper reviews the sequences of reform policies as an interplay among economic challenges, actors’ aspirations, and institutional constraints, and further develops arguments about the segmented structure, peculiar to the Japanese state, that retards political changes. |
