THE POLITICS OF ECONOMIC PLANNING IN POSTWAR JAPAN: A STUDY IN POLITICAL ECONOMY

This study is an interpretative analysis of the politics surrounding Japanese economic planning and the development and growth of the Japanese economy. The analytical focus of this work is on economic planning as a political contest and not on the content of specific economic plans. The study attempts to explain how politics have shaped the course of the economic planning effort, and also what ultimate weight must be attached to factors of private initiative and independence in the Japanese economic planning process as opposed to or in complementarity with the role of the economic bureaucracy in its capacity to allocate, constrict or encourage and plan.;In the postwar era economic planning has been changed from an instrument of "command and control" into a vehicle of "strategic planning" that uses interaction and exchange of information as a means to accommodate diverging economic and political interests in a system of mixed economy. This notwithstanding, state autonomy in Japanese economic planning has persisted. Since 1955 bureaucratic dominance of Japanese economic planning has been grounded in the Dienstwissen of the Economic Planning Agency and also the absence of any specific planning mandate from civil society.;The study includes a short history of Japanese economic planning suggesting a continuum of prewar and postwar planning. Followed by critical analysis of the structure and organization of Japanese economic planning attesting to bureaucratic dominance of the plan process and organization. And concluding with a political analysis of the Shotoku Baizo Keikaku evincing that the National Income Doubling Plan marked a new departure for Japan's relations between state and economic society by assigning a new role to private sector initiative and independence in Japan's political economy.;The basic argument is that Japanese politics of planning are essentially bureaucratic politics. During the past century the Japanese developmental state has utilized planning in various instances for different purposes to coordinate, control and steer the economy. However, Japanese economic planning since the Kogyo Iken in the 1880s and the war-related planning effort of the 1930s and 1940s has undergone great functional and organizational change.