Making foreign aid policy in Japan

Abstract

This thesis examines the hypothesis that Japan's aid policy was subject to serious organisational constraints, which prevented a positive response in the 1970s to criticism of her programs. It is a study of the Japanese bureaucratic process, for policy-making was dominated by procedures and, at the same time, it assesses ideas about policy-making in Japan. In analysing foreign aid, it adopts a "policy area" approach to test how a policy is defined within government. Chapters 1 to 3 examine ideologies and organisational change, and include a study of the creation of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, an aid implementing organisation. They reveal a link between perceptions of aid in Japan and the development of the aid machinery. Chapters 4 and 5 deal, respectively, with the fact that the relationship between aid policy and structures of government was irregular, and with the complex formal and informal procedures for aid policy formulation and management. Chapter 6 details to what extent aid policy is determined by budgeting, while Chapters 7 and 8 fill out the analysis of non-bureaucratic influences on policy introduced earlier in the thesis. Politics is shown to have affected policy, by promoting certain "special" bilateral relationships. The concept of the "aid cycle" (the steady accumulation of aid flows to selected recipients, as implementation narrowed future policy options), demonstrates that bureaucracy was dependent on private enterprise (especially consulting engineers) to induce policy innovation. The original hypothesis is found to be valid. Internal policy change was inhibited because power was balanced between ministries, political will was erratic, and the affiliation of officials was to the immediate task of the primary work group. Coordination was therefore unavoidably weak and the only adaptive element reinforced predominant policy "biases" in favour of bilateral capital project aid. These conclusions challenge some widely held beliefs about Japanese policy-making, and Japanese aid in particular. Finally, the usefulness of the "policy area" approach is confirmed by the fact that foreign aid, as it related to other government concerns, was being continually redefined by policy-makers, and policy represented attempts by participants to adjust contents to changing perceptions of policy limits. This suggests that "policy" should be conceived of as a fluid set of ideas and interpretations, and government as a "map" of interdependent and similarly shifting policy areas.