A Big Bang for Japanese Mandarins? The Civil Service Reform of 2014

In 2014, the largest reform since the US postwar occupation was enacted in Japanese civil service. It was designed as the final step of the two-decade-long effort to restructure the “1955 System,” that is, the politico-administrative system developed under the Liberal Democratic Party’s hegemony. Its purpose was to remold Japan’s independent-minded bureaucrats into the elected officials’ obedient servants. Unfortunately, the reform is unlikely to deliver expected results. The failure’s major reason concerns the fact that Japanese bureaucracy’s unusually large role in policymaking paradoxically discourages elected officials to use their major reining tool against it, namely, appointive power.