Japanese Public Administration and its Adaptation to New Public Management

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the current state of the Japanese Public A dministration(JPA ). In recent years, some Japanese scholars acknowledge the movement of the New Public Management (NPM) introduced to Japan by business consultants, but they have done little research on impacts of the NPM on the JPA . I claim that practitioners in the JPA still predominantly take an approach of public choice theory, showing no intention of rectifying the JPA for the purpose of advancing administrative reforms. First, this study, while adopting typologies B. G. Peters and V. Wright proposed in 1996, will identify the state of the JPA. The second part will bring the above typological abstract into concrete and descriptive issues by analyzing the current experiences of administrative reforms by the Japanese government. These reforms under investigation will include the introduction of the Administrative Independent corporations (Dokuritu Gyousei Houjin) and the Policy Evaluation System (Gyousei Hyouka Seido) for the Japanese central government. The JPA is in transition yet still showing the strong ability of the Japanese bureaucracy to preserve itself. However, is the JPA really converging with the standards of administrative management in North America and Western Europe for the foreseeable future? In my opinion, yes, it is. Nonetheless, the process is painfully slow. The gradual emergence of popular public pressures that thoroughly permeate the state administration will hold politicians responsive to the need of citizens, and in turn for their electoral success, politicians will hold bureaucrats accountable for citizens. The accountability of the JPA will provide Japanese civil society with a strong foundation.

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