The political economy of the Japanese financial big bang: Institutional change in finance and public policy making

This dissertation argues that Japanese politics has been significantly changing since 1995, by examining the Financial Big Bang---the deregulation process of private finance since 1996---and financial politics in the 1990s. There have been institutional changes, or shifts in the shared expectations about "how the world works", in two prevailing institutions of postwar financial politics. The Convoy System in finance---the segmentation of the financial sector protected by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) largely through informal means---has broken down; bureaupluralism in public policy making---the bargaining process of state and societal actors centered around the bureaucracy and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the ruling party for 1955--93---is in decay. This decay is likely to deepen in the whole political economy, as the causal factors of changes in financial politics, "performance failures and scandals" and "possibility of change of rule", will probably affect other policy areas as well.;In showing the above, our rational-actor approach achieves three tasks. First, we provide a realistic image of the post-1995 financial politics. The Big Bang can be best understood as an outcome of the strategic interaction of the LDP and MOF pursuing organizational survival through cooperation, competition, and confrontation. The public now matters in financial politics: the practice of "going around" the "insider" process of bureaupluralism has been increasingly salient since 1995. Second, we provide a causal mechanism of change by developing a framework of institutional change and a typology of financial reforms. "Failures" (the financial crisis and scandals) and "change in the institutional environment" (the change of government in f993) have brought about the institutional changes by affecting the players, the formal rules, the informal interaction patterns, and the shared expectations among actors. Within our four-by-two typology of coalition patterns and interaction patterns of state and societal actors, the Big Bang fits "defection" and "public interest politics". Third, we offer theoretical insights beyond Japanese financial politics. Entrenched actors may not be as entrenched as they seem; bureaucrats may not be always maximizing tangible tokens of organizational power; and better organized groups may not always prevail over the unorganized public.