Abstract
‘Build a rich country with a strong army’, as the famous slogan of the Meiji Japanese government defined the basic goals of its economic policy, or that of any modern government for that matter, or ‘build a rich country without a strong army’, if circumstances demand it, as one of the contributors to this volume, Professor Takafusa Nakamura, has pointed out. This has been the basic strategy of economic policy in postwar Japan and, perhaps, a common goal of many other nations in the era when the erection and maintenance of a strong national army has often been replaced by integration into an international alliance and protection by a superpower, both in Europe and in Asia.1 Under the rapidly changing and constantly challenging circumstances of international political economy in recent decades, to be a rich country, with or without a strong national army, requires an enormous amount of effort and sophistication in managing a national economy that is buffeted by international energy and financial crises and plagued by the greying of key domestic industries. For many national economies, both developed and developing, this pursuit has brought serious economic maladjustments and social crises rather than the promised prosperity and happiness. This book addresses itself to the Japanese and West German efforts to cope with such diverse and troublesome problems of managing contemporary political economies, their successes and failures, their similarities and differences.
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Notes
Takafusa Nakamura, The Postwar Japanese Economy: Its Development and Structure, trans. Jacqueline Kaminski (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981) p. 63.
See Martin Staniland, What Is Political Economy? A Study of Social Theory and Underdevelopment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985) pp. 10–12.
For a critical review of the classical and neoclassical economists’ views, see Gunnar Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954).
For a good summary of the argument, see Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982) pp. 69–73.
‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’ Review of Politics, January 1974, pp. 85–131. See also Gerhard Lehmbruch and Philippe C. Schmitter (eds), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979), and Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1982).
See Edward R. Tufte, The Political Control of the Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978);
and Samuel Brittan, ‘Inflation and Democracy’, in Fred Hirsch and John H. Goldthorpe (eds), The Political Economy of Inflation (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978), pp. 161–85.
For a good critical review of the different models of political business cycle, see James E. Alt and K. Alec Chrystal, Political Economics (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983) ch. 5.
John E. Elliott, ‘Institutionalism as an Approach to Political Economy’, quoted in Martin Staniland, What is Political Economy? A Study of Social Theory and Underdevelopment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985) p. 17.
Quoted by Wilhelm K. Scheuten, ‘Der Preis des Neuen’, Die politische Meinung, 29 (July–August 1984) p. 35. Another article in the same publication traces the growth of the number of economic ‘dropouts’ (Aussteiger) from a negligible small minority in the mid-1960s to one accounting for 10–15 per cent of the adult population in the 1970s and to a two-thirds majority of the ‘I’m all right, Jack’ type (Versorgungsmajorität) with the maturation of the welfare state. See Werner Kaltefleiter, ‘Ist Pflicht nur Stress?’ ibid., pp. 46–53. According to the author, who is a University of Kiel political scientist, this leaves only a 15–20 per cent of productively active West Germans, a truly achievement-oriented minority (Leistungsminorität), on whom the country depends for further economic progress.
See United Nations, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, March 1986, p. 18.
The World Bank, The World Development Report 1986 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) pp. 180–81, Annex Table 1.
See, for example, Robert A. Scalapino, ‘Environmental and Foreign Contributions’, in Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, (eds), Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964) pp. 68, 86–7; and Kenneth B. Pyle, ‘Advantages of Followership: German Economies and Japanese Bureaucrats, 1890–1925’, Journal of Japanese Studies, Autumn 1974, pp. 127–64.
See Arnulf Baring and Masamori Sase, Zwei zaghafte Riesen? Deutschland und Japan seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Belser, 1977). The two economic chapters contributed by Bernard Grossmann on the German side and Takuji Shimano, who is one of the contributors to the sequel to the present volume, on the Japanese side dealt with the ‘economic miracles’ of the 1950s and 1960s and problems of the 1970s in the respective countries. In contrast to their general ignorance of and indifference to social, economic, and political developments in Japan, educated Germans have traditionally paid considerable attention to Japanese art and culture.
See T. J. Pempel, ‘Japanese Foreign Economic Policy: The Domestic Bases for International Behavior’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.) Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978) pp. 139–90; and Michael Kreile, ‘West Germany: The Dynamics of Expansion’, ibid., pp. 191–224.
See, for example, John Whitney Hall, ‘The Nature of Traditional Society: Japan’, in Ward and Rustow , Political Modernization, pp. 14–41. For more detailed accounts, see Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, Japan: Tradition and Transformation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977),
and for the evolution of the agricultural economy, Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959).
See Rudolf Braun, ‘Taxation, Socio-political Structure, and State-building: Great Britain and Brandenburg-Prussia’, in Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 243–327; and Wolfram Fischer and Peter Lundgreen, ‘The Recruitment and Training of Administrative and Technical Personnel’, ibid, pp. 456–561.
See William W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, expanded edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) pp. 3–12. There was considerable growth of cities and manufacturing industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some of it under the control of craft guilds as in Europe. There was, however, no real bourgeois revolution that could have given the artisans and traders the freedom and opportunity to pursue their economic interests, even though mercantile pressures were building up for more than a century, pitting merchants (chonin) against the declining samurai and the peasantry.
See especially W. O. Henderson, The Industrialization of Europe 1780–1914 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1969) pp. 69–71.
The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960) pp. 38–9. For a critical review of Rostow’s theory, see Simon Kuznets, ‘Notes on the Take-off’, in W. W. Rostow (ed.), The Economics of Take-off into Sustained Growth (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1963) pp. 22–43.
See Friedrich Zunkel, ‘Die Enfesselung des neuen Wirtschaftsgeistes 1850–1875’, in Karl Erich Born (ed.), Moderne Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1966) pp. 42–51.
See also Hans Hausherr, ‘Der Zollverein und die Industrialisierung’, in ibid., pp. 55–66; and W. O. Henderson, The Rise of German Industrial Power 1834–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975) pp. 44–70, and 178–206.
See Yoshitake Oka, Kindai Nihon Seijishi [A political history of modern Japan], Vol. I (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1962) pp. 102–13.
Ryōshin Minami, Nihon no Keizai Hatten [Economic development in Japan] (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shimpōsha, 1981) pp. 4–5.
See also Kazushi Ohkawa and Henry Rosovsky, Japanese Economic Growth (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973) pp. 12–18.
See Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, pp. 12–15 and 38–42. These wars caused a succession of booms which significantly helped to carry the Japanese economy forward for many years after they ended until the great earthquake of 1923 and, eventually, the Great Depression of 1930–31. On the effects of the Great Depression on the German economy and politics, see Hans Rosenberg, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967).
Ryūzō Yamazaki, Gendai Nihon Keizaishi [An economic history of modern Japan] (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1985) pp. 28–32.
See Karl Hardach, The Political Economy of Germany in the Twentieth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980) pp.10–28.
Ibid., pp. 75–9, 85–7. But see also Gustav Stolper, The German Economy 1870–1940 (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1940) pp. 239–40.
As Edwin O. Reischauer explains, the Tokugawa prohibition of all contacts between Japanese and foreigners — aside from a few Dutch and Chinese traders in Nagasaki — was motivated mainly by a fear of ‘subversive’ Christian proselytizing and of alliances between local feudal lords and one or another European power against the Tokugawa hegemony. See Reischauer , The Japanese (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977) pp. 68–70. Prior to the closure of the country in the 1630s, however, there had been a considerable amount of trading with foreigners and proselytizing activities by Catholic missionaries in Japan.
See Peter Merkl, German Foreign Policies, West and East (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1974) pp. 48–59.
Ibid., pp. 81–9. See also Koppel Pinson, Modern Germany, 2nd edn (New York: Macmillan, 1966) Ch. 23.
See Hideo Otake, Adenauer to Yoshida Shigeru [Adenauer and Shigeru Yoshida] (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1986).
See Gerald L. Curtis, ‘The Tyumen Oil Development Project and Japanese Foreign Policy Decision-Making’, in Robert A. Scalapino (ed.), The Foreign Policy of Modern Japan (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1977) pp. 147–73.
But also see Haruhiro Fukui, ‘Studies in Policymaking: A Review of the Literature’, in T. J. Pempel (ed.), Policymaking in Contemporary Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977) pp. 22–59.
See Tokyo Daigaku Shakai Kagaku Kenkyujo Sengo Kaikaku Kenkyukai (ed.), Sengo Kaikaku [Postwar reforms], vol. 3 (Seiji Katei [Political process]) (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1974) pp. 335–48;
and Akira Igarashi, et al., Sengo Kyoiku no Rekishi [A postwar educational history] (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1970) pp. 162–212.
See also J. A. A. Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy, 2nd edn (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982) pp. 68–69.
Kurt Steiner, Local Government in Japan (Standford: Stanford University Press, 1965) pp. 64–113.
But see also Kurt Steiner, Ellis S. Krauss, and Scott C. Flanagan (eds), Political Opposition and Local Politics in Japan (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980) Ch. 12.
See Peter Merkl, The Origins of the West German Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963) pp. 7–19, 22–35. The American occupation greatly favoured the federal solution and the French also preferred substantial decentralization. By way of contrast, the Soviet occupation strongly preferred a highly centralized Germany, presumably with the central ministries under its control in East Berlin. The British occupation was lukewarm about federalism.
The bulk of administrative and judicial power is at the Länder level which, among other things, implies that Land administrators and judges are the ones to apply most federal laws. See Arnold J. Heidenheimer and Donald P. Kommers, The Governments of Germany, 4th edn (New York: Crowell, 1975) pp. 213–24.
See Hansgert Piesert and Gerhild Framheim, Das Hochschulsystem in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979) pp. 31–7.
Tarō Ōshima, Kanryo Kokka to Chihō Jichi [The bureaucratic state and local self-government] (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1981) pp. 232–56.
See Junnosuke Masumi, Gendai Seiji: 1952-nen Igo [Contemporary politics: after 1955, vol. I (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1985) pp. 107–16.
On the earliest West German government attitude towards planning, see Andrew Shonfield, Modern Capitalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1969) pp. 265–79, 290–94;
and H. J. Arndt, West Germany: The Politics of Non-Planning (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1966).
On the local territorial reform in Bavaria, see Peter Merkl (ed.), New Local Centers in Centralized States (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984) pp. 6–10.
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Fukui, H., Merkl, P.H. (1993). Introduction. In: Fukui, H., Merkl, P.H., Müller-Groeling, H., Watanabe, A. (eds) The Politics of Economic Change in Postwar Japan and West Germany. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22614-6_1
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