THE CHANGING TREND IN LINKS BETWEEN BUREAUCRACY AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR IN JAPAN

Japan has been conceived of as being a “developmental state.” However, given that Japan has, since 1992, been contending with a post-bubble “crisis period,” it is important to examine whether or not the resultant deregulation has altered the government-industry nexus. This paper focuses on amakudari, a core administrative guidance medium, within four core industries to measure the extent and direction of regulatory change. The findings show that amakudari networks have weakened, with corporations only employing bureaucrats deemed as being useful, supporting the hypothesis that there has been a “paradigm shift” from a “developmental state” to a “resource dependence” view.