Editing Politics of Japan (section)

==Policy making==
Despite an increasingly unpredictable domestic and international environment, policy making conforms to well established postwar patterns. The close collaboration of the ruling party, the [[Civil service of Japan|elite bureaucracy]] and important interest groups often make it difficult to tell who exactly is responsible for specific policy decisions.

===Policy development in Japan===
{{See also|Industrial policy of Japan|Monetary and fiscal policy of Japan|Mass media and politics in Japan}}

After a largely informal process within elite circles in which ideas were discussed and developed, steps might be taken to institute more formal policy development. This process often took place in deliberation councils (''shingikai''). There were about 200 ''shingikai'', each attached to a ministry; their members were both officials and prominent private individuals in business, education, and other fields. The ''shingikai'' played a large role in facilitating communication among those who ordinarily might not meet.

Given the tendency for real negotiations in Japan to be conducted privately (in the ''[[nemawashi]]'', or root binding, process of consensus building), the ''shingikai'' often represented a fairly advanced stage in policy formulation in which relatively minor differences could be thrashed out and the resulting decisions couched in language acceptable to all. These bodies were legally established but had no authority to oblige governments to adopt their recommendations. The most important deliberation council during the 1980s was the Provisional Commission for Administrative Reform, established in March 1981 by Prime Minister [[Suzuki Zenko]]. The commission had nine members, assisted in their deliberations by six advisers, twenty-one "expert members," and around fifty "councillors" representing a wide range of groups. Its head, [[Keidanren]] president [[Doko Toshio]], insisted that the government agree to take its recommendations seriously and commit itself to reforming the administrative structure and the tax system.

In 1982, the commission had arrived at several recommendations that by the end of the decade had been actualized. These implementations included tax reform, a policy to limit government growth, the establishment in 1984 of the Management and Coordination Agency to replace the Administrative Management Agency in the Office of the Prime Minister, and privatization of the [[Japanese public corporations|state-owned railroad and telephone systems]]. In April 1990, another deliberation council, the Election Systems Research Council, submitted proposals that included the establishment of single-seat constituencies in place of the multiple-seat system.

Another significant policy-making institution in the early 1990s was the [[Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)|Liberal Democratic Party]]'s Policy Research Council. It consisted of a number of committees, composed of LDP Diet members, with the committees corresponding to the different executive agencies. Committee members worked closely with their official counterparts, advancing the requests of their constituents, in one of the most effective means through which interest groups could state their case to the bureaucracy through the channel of the ruling party.