It looks like the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which used to be the Socialist Party, is poised for victory in next month's elections. And they're proposing some pretty radical stuff, according to the FT's Mure Dickie:
The party’s manifesto pledges to end “bureaucrat-led” government by posting about 100 party Diet members to government ministries and agencies, setting up a national strategy bureau under the prime minister and taking control of senior bureaucratic promotions.
Cabinet meeting agendas would no longer be set by unelected administrative vice-ministers, while the practice of amakudari, or descent from heaven, where elite bureaucrats are parachuted into jobs at government agencies or private companies, will be banned.
“When all this is done, we will have realised a new politics for all: no longer a politics of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats and for the bureaucrats, but of the people, by the people and for the people,” said Yukio Hatoyama, DPJ president.
This is pretty radical stuff by Japanese standards, changing practices that have been around for more than half a century. And even though this is coming from a left party, I wonder whether this would lead to an entrepreneurial boom in Japan.
Japan has always funneled its best and brightest into Todai law school, and then to the economic bureaucracies, and then amakudari. If that system ends, will Japan's brightest minds even go into government service? Will they stop going to Tokyo law school? Might they -- gasp -- go into business instead?
Maybe not -- entrepreneurs do not necessarily come from the ranks of the elite. But it's going to be a veeery interesting social science experiment if the DPJ does what it says.
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