著者

Noble Gregory W.

出版者

東京大学社会科学研究所

雑誌

社會科學研究 (ISSN:03873307)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.62, no.1, pp.51-76, 2011

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Japan lacks political leadership and wallows in pork, critics charge, yet from the late 1990s Japanese leaders exercised surprising restraint over aggregate spending, and reoriented budgetary expenditures from distributive outlays such as public works toward social welfare and other forms of programmatic spending. The departure from particularism reflected not only commonly-cited electoral and bureaucratic reforms strengthening the hand of the prime minister, but also the efforts of senior LDP policy experts such as fiscal hawk Yosano Kaoru and rising tide advocate Nakagawa Hidenao to combine with sections of the bureaucracy, particularly officials seconded to the cabinet from the Ministry of Finance and METI. to overcome factional and backbench resistance and restrain expenditures. LDP leaders eventually reached a consensus on the need to increase taxes, but failure to convince the public contributed to the LDP's downfall