Political Economy Analysis Of The Impact On Agriculture Protection Of Japan’s FTA Strategy

With the accelerated process of regional economic integration, Japan which hasbeen supporting multilateral trade tends to build an East Asian integration leaded byhimself, especially other Asian countries have signed free trade agreements andestablished the free trade area. Since the1990s, Japan has concentrated to formulate FTAstrategy suitable to national conditions and finish signing FTA with several countries soas to construct free trade area. Nowadays, researches related to this issue generallyincrease while Japan’s FTA strategy is developing. It is obvious that Japaneseagricultural protection affects and holds the FTA back. Then why Japanese agriculturalprotection would have such a great power? Why didn’t industrial groups and consumergroups in Japan make effective resistance? Where on earth is the root of problem? Tofind out, firstly this thesis briefly discusses the process of Japan’s FTA strategy and thefeatures of Japanese agricultural protection. Based on above theory, the paper thenemphasizes on the key role to FTA through the analysis of game between JA andKeidanren in the process of the agricultural protection. Finally the paper draws aconclusion that the game between the two interest groups results in impact on its FTAstrategy from the perspective of political economics. The thesis expects to analyze themain reasons behind these effects in theory.This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. Its maincontents are as follows:The first part is introduction which mainly introduces a brief summary of researchbackground and elaborates the theoretical and practical significance. It especiallydiscusses the research methods and finds out its innovation and deficiency about thisissue. Furthermore, focused on analyzing existing research, it will develop the issuebased on the main theory and models in political economy so as to make full preparationfor the following parts.The main body is made up of three chapters. Chapter One mainly introduce thegeneration and development of Japan’s FTA with examples of agricultural situation inJapan, Singapore, the association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) countries andorganizations. So it may summarize the features of Japan’s FTA and evaluate it. ChapterTwo concentrates on elaborating the impact on FTA strategy coming from agriculturalprotection in Japan, divided into four sub-parts. It respectively introduces the present situation of agriculture and agricultural protection in Japan. The key point is to analyzehow agriculture protection hinders the FTA strategy for a long time. Chapter Three is theinnovation of thesis which focuses on the game among interest groups. It is made up offour parts. Firstly, it introduces the "iron triangle" of agricultural protection from the JA,family members and bureaucrats of agriculture and forestry when emphasizes thepositive effects in Japan’s FTA played by JA. Secondly it focuses on the strugglebetween Keidanren and the JA from some historical events, especially the struggleinvolved in FTA. Thirdly, based on the political demand model, support function model,the thesis builds a rather simple model so as to illustrate economic value and elementsaffected the game.The conclusion may be drawn that agricultural protection impact on Japan’s FTAstrategy will continue to exist in terms of above analysis of the political economics.Furthermore, it still has important influence on Japan’s participation in regional economicintegration in future. There are many reasons but economic interest is the fundamentalreason. And special electoral system is another reason why it is difficult to balanceeconomic interest. All of above is good for us to be aware of economic cooperation withJapan and provides certain reference significance.