The 21st Century COE Program : Invention of Policy Systems in Advanced Countries: Building a Synergy Core for Comparative Policy System Studies

We interviewed this program’s leader, Prof. TAKAHASHI, Susumu.　　　　　　　Jun. 8. 05

Policy System Research and this Center

Prof. Yano:

I am here to visit a base of the 21st Century Center of Excellence Program. I would like to interview the base leader, Professor Takahashi. This base is located in a building near the Hongo campus. To begin with, could you explain what you aim to achieve at this center?

Prof. Takahashi:

We consider the policy process as being a shift from “Decay” to “Invention.” “Decay” refers to an existing policy system that is unable to handle new issues, whereas “Invention” is an “open and enlightened” policy system. One of our main aims is to understand the creation of new policy systems not as improvements in response to policies that are malfunctioning, but rather as a dynamic process from “Decay” to “Invention.”

Prof. Yano:

Could you give a simple example?

Prof. Takahashi:

Well, as you know, France rejected the EU Constitution. People thought it would pass by a narrow margin, but it was overwhelming rejected by a margin of 10%. This is a good example of “Decay.” What would have passed some time ago was now voted down. Obviously it was rejected because something was wrong. What was wrong was not so by accident; there must have been problems at a structural level. The existence of such structural problems can be called system fatigue, but we prefer to call it “Decay.”

But if this were the only factor at work, things would of course go into decline. However, in the world of politics, there is also an opposing momentum that attempts to somehow change this situation into something new, and we call this generative force “Invention.” These aspects of decay and decline and the movement towards creating something new are parallel processes happening at the same time.

Three Research Groups

Prof. Yano:

I see. Your base is divided into a number of research groups, right?

Prof. Takahashi:

Yes, we have 3 groups. The first is the “Actors” group, which concentrates on the behavior of people and organizations and how their interactions change. But since we want to look at new policy fields, it is of course necessary to study the actual policy areas. Our second group, the “Fields” group, looks into policy areas. This group has a policy studies focus, and researches various policy fields, for example science and technology, which is one field of enormous importance in advanced countries today.

But, for this research, we need to obtain data. Our research deals with advanced countries, and data from various public opinion polls exist in each country, but it's difficult for individual researchers to try and collect separate data. Therefore we are creating a data store for amassing data from Japan and various countries. This is the responsibility of the third group, the “Data-store” group.

Prof. Yano:

What issues does the “Actors” group investigate?

Prof. Takahashi:

First, to give a specific example, political parties have a much smaller membership than they used to, and their ability to gather in support during elections has declined. As can be seen from the rejection of the EU constitution by France and the Netherlands, the mobilizing strength of political parties has certainly decreased.

So, what does this mean? It shows that pressure groups and so on are losing their influence. Thus, in that sense we can see that the original actors, in other words the units themselves, comprised of the various individuals, groups etc. who participate in the political process, have changed, and the interaction between units is constantly changing.

Prof. Yano:

What about the “Fields” group?

Prof. Takahashi:

For example, since the Second World War, the U.K. has implemented welfare policies, and the Blair government is also now carrying out such policies. Opinions are divided as to whether this government's policies represent a new field or a mere mix of former fields, but it is certainly the case that they do not fit within the old model. So, if you just concentrate on analyzing welfare policies from the former perspective, you only look at one particular angle, notwithstanding that the government is involved in something much bigger overall. In other words, you become unable to see the full picture.

That's why we believe that when actors change and new policies come into being, it needs to be recognized as a whole new policy system, and we are now putting a lot of our effort into identifying, by means of a horizontal approach, these new fields that do not fit into the former model.

Prof. Yano:

Which other advanced countries are you researching?

Prof. Takahashi:

The next country we definitely must research is Germany. Germany has a unique capitalism model referred to as a social market economy, but this has not been able to cope with globalization, and the Schro¨der government has been forcibly trying to change it.

But the public is against the changes. Are the changes bad or is the population just stubborn? These sorts of issues have already become a focus for debate.

The State of Researches

Prof. Yano:

What forms do the activities of each group take?

Prof. Takahashi:

The activities of the “Actors” group are still somewhat disjointed, so for our next activity, we’re going to bring everyone together and take another look at regime change in Europe. Changes of government seem easy to conceptualize but in fact are not. There are many patterns, so we will examine one particular regime change thoroughly and investigate why it occurred.

Usually, in political science, this would be done by analyzing the elections, but we believe this kind of analysis is not sufficient to cover all factors. There are a variety of issues, such as what was wrong with the policies, and to what extent were the policies of the winning party judged favorably. We are attempting to reconsider regime change, incorporating these aspects. In the case of Japan, we plan to research up to the Seiyu-Minsei regime change in the Taisho Period.

There are two trends that should be mentioned. The first relates to the fact that since the war, the study of political science in U.S. has had a huge impact internationally, but if we talk in terms of this alone, we cannot properly discover the unique characteristics found in each country. Therefore, since the 1990s, there has been a clear movement toward each country developing their own methods, meaning that international exchange activities are necessary for each country, be it Britain, France, Germany or Japan. But the more this happens, the more the country develops particular idiosyncrasies, and a researcher has to go through each individually, trying to ignore idiosyncratic features.

Another trend concerns what I was talking before about the U.K. and Germany, that however you look at it, there seem to be growing needs within populations for new policies, and countries are, at present, experimenting with various responses. Some have succeeded and some have failed, but the question is, what is behind this trend and what does it mean?

Prof. Yano:

That's not to say that the U.S. methodology is incorrect, right?

Prof. Takahashi:

Right. To be honest, issues such as whether we should first analyze regime change and then look at policies are still a matter of debate. In other words, taking regime change as the basis, how should research then be built upon this? The “Fields” group has their own approach, engaging in research where they can, in areas such as science and technology, policy evaluation and decentralization of power. They are involved in various areas, so we are considering how to integrate them with research into regime change.

For example, we are now in a process, in Japan, of decentralization of power to the regions, and towns and villages are merging together. This process began in Europe about 20 years ago. But the nature of decentralization is different, and so we are researching these aspects.

When we talk about the “regions,” this means something a bit different in Europe and Japan. In Japan, the units we refer to are the prefectures and municipalities, but in the U.K., the “region” referred to is Scotland and so forth. So we have to find a way of conceptualizing these different cases.

Prof. Yano:

You mean that they can’t be compared in the same way?

Prof. Takahashi:

Well, I think that when talking about decentralization of power, the units of, for example, Scotland and Japanese prefectures are quite different-- it's about how much autonomy they have. For example, in the case of Scotland, linking with the EU means becoming closer to the Netherlands than to London. Before they realize it, what was always a London-Edinburgh-Glasgow relationship shifts its focus to Brussels or Amsterdam. When this happens, the configuration of power changes.

So, as was the case during one period in history regarding the area around the Sea of Japan, when power is decentralized, the national territorial axis shifts. We are researching changes in economic status, intellectual power, external relations and so on.

Prof. Yano:

What has the group been researching regarding science and technology policies?

Prof. Takahashi:

Basically, we look into Japan's science and technology policies and what is being done by other countries. But we're all social scientists, and of course we can't understand the contents of science and technology without explanation from the researchers of the faculty of engineering and that of science. Since we ourselves do not deal with the cutting-edge technology that they study in the faculty of engineering, we ask professors from that faculty to come to our COE and give lectures. But since it's so cutting-edge, it's pretty hard for us to understand. You may be justified in complaining, why do we have to learn about this totally incomprehensible field? But, it's a field that has not been subject to analysis by anyone up to now.

Prof. Yano:

Have the “Data- store” group released any of the information they’re compiling to the public yet?

Prof. Takahashi:

We've published public opinion polls online from the 2003 House of Representatives election and 2004 House of Councilors election. We’re also preparing to release documents related to the Committee for the Promotion of Decentralization.

Research Results, Education of Young Researchers, etc.

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Prof. Yano:

At the current stage, has your research produced any visible results?

Prof. Takahashi:

This research is still a work in progress, and so I can't give you any clear overall results at this stage. We plan to take a few more years to do everything we can and then put it all into a compilation. We are still deciding the form in which to publish this, but probably we will adopt the usual method in the social sciences, which is a series publication.

We also hold regular symposia. Much is expected from the Center of Excellence Program in terms of educating young researchers, and we get our young members to prepare various papers and put them together for presentation as working papers or occasional papers.

As part of this program we also organize the Anglo-Japanese Academy. This is a group of 10 young Japanese researchers and 10 young British researchers, and this semester we’re holding a seminar in the U.K. At the moment both we and the British are seeking submissions from around the country. We began this because we believe that giving young people the opportunity to write papers and talk at seminars is good training for participation in international conferences. This time, the theme of the seminar will be restricted to political science, and from Japan we've got some participants researching Japanese politics as well as some researching European politics.

Prof. Yano:

Various academic fields have undergone fragmentation and have become difficult to picture from the outside, but has this happened in political science too?

Prof. Takahashi:

Yes, in actual fact, political science at the moment is going through a process of further and further division. In other words, a variety of specialized fields have arisen within the overall discipline of political science, and you have to look at the linkages between them to create something different. So, when you study a particular policy, like the example of social welfare I mentioned before, if you simply look at policies separately, you will miss some aspects, so it's important to take a broad view. You can’t understand the Bush government without looking at conservatism in U.S. This means that as well as researching U.S. politics in the usual way, you also have to research the history of ideologies.

Prof. Yano:

Regarding science and technology, it's not as though you actually research science and technology itself, right? Prof. Takahashi:

That's right. The question in our field is: how do we go about trying to understand what is not yet understood, so this is always an abstract world. Some changes are visible and others are invisible, but our research is about how one should “view” invisible change, so of course we are still very much in the dark, searching for answers. We are trying to find grounds on which to base our views, so our research is, in that sense, a never-ending invisible process.

Prof. Yano:

The French said “Non” to the EU Constitution. You’re saying that the reasons for this cannot be seen?

Prof. Takahashi:

Policy studies has a long history. It arose from the desire to research the nature of various policy fields such as welfare and education, but we believe that this kind of study alone is inadequate. That is why we talk about policy systems. If people already knew what policy systems were and how they operated, we wouldn't need to be doing this research. It's because it is an unknown area that we have chosen it as our focus, so in fact, we haven't yet got a model for analysis of policy systems. We are trying to create such a model through our work.

At an even more basic level, when we research policy systems, the problem of time, in other words the pace of change, arises. With globalization, changes are accelerated to a huge extent. Up to now, it might have been fine to take 10 years to research something, but now maybe it has to be done in 2 years, or we won't keep up with the changes. This kind of mismatch problem occurs in various areas, so there's also the issue of how this should be considered. Unlike mathematics, the world of political science is infinitely complex. It involves human beings, so things are not clear- cut.

Prof. Yano:

Thank you very much.