Governance Reconsidered in Japan: Searching for New Paradigms in the Global Economic Downturn

An early draft of this paper was given at the Public Administration and Governance in a Time of Global Economic Turbulence conference, organized by the Korea Institute of Public Administration(KIPA), in Seoul, Korea, October 9, 2009.This paper aims to answer following questions in the context of the global economic crisis: (1) What are the features and the causes of the socioeconomic difficulties that Japan is facing now? (2) What efforts in public administration and governance are being made in Japan in order to overcome the crisis? (3) In the process of overcoming the crisis, will there be a paradigm shift in governance and will the new system be institutionalized? To answer these questions, this paper will stress the importance of East Asian integration by examining the domestic politics of the Japanese free trade agreement (FTA) policy. Asian regional integration is a way for the Japanese economy to undertake structural reform. Japan should advance two policy options in parallel: managing a domestic safety net and promoting an FTA with East Asia. In that sense, Japanese government accountability, in other words governance, is essential