The Japanese prime minister and the executive institutional setting

Abstract

This article explores the institutional arrangements surrounding the Japanese prime minister and offers an analysis of the core executive style in accordance with the classifications introduced by Dunleavy and Rhodes. The constitutional arrangement was set out to establish a ‘prime ministerial government’ in Japan. However, Japanese bureaucrats, who feared strong individual authority, instead sought to create a ‘cabinet government’ which exercises strong authority as a collective body. In addition, two developments weakened the prime minister’s power over the cabinet, namely the ceremonial role of cabinet meetings and strong factionalism within the ruling party, which led to a ‘bureaucratic coordination model’. Since the 1990s, institutional reforms have shifted the Japanese core executive towards a ‘prime ministerial government’.

Introduction

As described in the introduction to this special issue, this and the next article by Takayasu Kensuke examine the institutional setting surrounding the Japanese and the UK prime ministers. They explain constitutional and other legal arrangements of the cabinet system, the supporting institutions for the prime minister and the cabinet’s relations with other government institutions including the legislative and judiciary branches, and, in the case of the UK, local governments. Political realities, however, often become obstacles to prime ministerial leadership. The two articles explore the institutional reform efforts in both countries.

As in many parliamentary democratic governments, the prime minister of Japan is the central political figure who runs the government. The basic institutional setting is, like that of the United Kingdom, a parliamentary cabinet system. The Japanese prime minister is elected by the members of an elected parliament, the Diet, and forms the cabinet which holds executive power. Collectively, the cabinet is responsible to the parliament. The House of Representatives, or Lower House, has the power to remove the prime minister by a vote of no-confidence. Similarly, the prime minister can dissolve the House of Representatives if they wish. The Japanese prime minister’s institutional power is stronger than that seen in continental European countries, such as Germany, France and Italy where the prime minister shares authority with a president.

The Japanese political system, however, has developed differently from that of the United Kingdom in forming a unique prime ministerial leadership structure based on institutional arrangements. In analysing leadership styles, this study employs the functional definition of ‘core executive’ proposed by Dunleavy and Rhodes (1990). According to them, the core executive is defined primarily as serving to ‘pull together and integrate central government policies, or act as final arbiters within the executive of conflicts between different elements of the government machine’ (Dunleavy and Rhodes, 1990: 4). The core executive is composed of individuals and groups who serve as key players in the policy making.

Dunleavy and Rhodes introduce five different models of core executives which vary in terms of power balance between the prime minister and the cabinet, or the core executive’s control over government. The first model is that of ‘prime ministerial government’ in which the premier as an individual exercises strong authority in the decision-making process. Of course, no single individual can impose leadership on the complex core executive of a large government. Accordingly, the model allows ‘prime ministerial cliques’ to include collective attributes of the premier’s inner group of advisers and assistants in the core executive. The second model is that of ‘cabinet government’. Instead of the prime minister alone, this model emphasises the authority of the cabinet as a collective body in decision-making processes. ‘Ministerial government’, the third model introduced by Dunleavy and Rhodes, highlights the roles of individual ministers in making policies for their relevant ministries. The fourth is the ‘segmented decision model’ which suggests that the question of who holds decision-making authority depends on the policy issues at hand. In this model, the prime minister and the cabinet operate in different policy areas at the interdepartmental level, while ministers operate below. Finally, the fifth model is that of ‘bureaucratic coordination’, according to which the core executive has very limited control over the ministries and where it is bureaucrats who play instrumental roles in the policy-making process. In other words, it is not core executive actors, but rather bureaucrats who are dominant.

This article analyses the transition of Japan’s core executive by locating it within these categories. It first looks at constitutional and legal arrangements surrounding the prime minister, and then examines the gap between constitutional founders’ intentions and the political reality of the prime minister’s position. Next, it will explore the results of administrative reform efforts to strengthen the power of the prime minister. Building on this, the final section before the conclusion will zoom in on two examples of new institutions in the core executive that bolstered the position of the Japanese prime minister.

Constitutional/legal setting

The institutional position of the prime minister in post-war Japan is much stronger than that of the pre-war predecessors. Under the pre-war Constitution, the emperor was the head of state who held national sovereign and executive power. There was no specific mention of the prime minister’s position. Instead, the prime minister and his cabinet were instituted to assist the emperor in administering the government.

Today’s Shōwa Constitution, promulgated in 1947, specifically defines the role of the prime minister. The constitutional provisions bestow considerable power on the prime minister in government and over the cabinet (George Mulgan 2000). The prime minister is the head of the cabinet, which is vested with all the executive powers. Executive power as defined by Article 73 includes administering the law, conducting affairs of state, managing foreign affairs, concluding treaties, administering the civil services, preparing budgets and submitting them to the Diet and enacting cabinet orders. The cabinet meeting is the highest decision-making organ of the Japanese government. Important policy decisions must be officially decided by the cabinet, especially cabinet bills, before they are introduced to the Diet.

The authority of the cabinet is not limited to the executive branch. The cabinet introduces the majority of legislation to the legislative branch. It also can decide to dissolve the House of Representatives, thus ending the terms of all its members. The cabinet even has strong influence over the convocation of Diet sessions. For example, when the opposition parties requested an extraordinary Diet session in June 2017 in order to probe a scandal surrounding Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, the Abe cabinet put off this request for three months. Then, as soon as the session was convened, the prime minister dissolved the House of Representatives. As a result, the opposition parties lost the opportunity to pursue the scandal formally in the Diet.

Through the appointment of Supreme Court judges, the prime minister and their Cabinet’s influence extends to the judicial branch as well. The cabinet even has the power to affect the handling of individual law cases. Article 14 of the Public Prosecutor’s Office Law authorises the justice minister to direct the general attorney concerning individual cases. In one example, Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru in 1953, through his justice minister, used this authority to block the arrest of the secretary general of the government party. However, public resentment against this conduct was so strong that this tactic has, so far, never been used again.

As the head of the cabinet, the prime minister sets the policy agenda. Article 72 of the Constitution provides the prime minister with the authority to report to the Diet ‘on general national affairs and foreign relations’ on behalf of the cabinet. There are two types of policy speeches: shoshin hyōmei enzetsu (general policy speech) which is given at the beginning of a special or extraordinary session after the prime minister is elected by the Diet and which expresses the prime minister’s ideas on how to run the government, and shisei hōshin enzetsu (administrative policy speech) which is given at the start of an ordinary session to express the cabinet’s basic policy directions. These speeches are prepared by the Cabinet Secretariat in charge of providing administrative support to the prime minister and the cabinet. All the ministries competitively provide their policy ideas, hoping to get them included in policy speeches as even a slight mention would give them an advantage in budget negotiations (Mainichi Shinbun Seijibu, 1988: 133–134). The same article (Article 72) equips the prime minister with the power directly to influence decision-making processes by the legislative branch. On behalf of the cabinet, the prime minister has constitutional authority to submit legislation to the Diet. Between the 63rd and 147th Diet sessions (1970–2000), cabinet-sponsored bills accounted for 71 per cent of the total number of bills presented to the Diet (3316 out of 4657), and 86 per cent of those bills passed the Diet (Gonoi, 2017: 9). More recently, between the 148th and 202nd Diet session (2000–2020), the ratio of cabinet-sponsored bills dropped to 55 per cent (2054 out of 3717) as an increasing number of Diet members submitted legislation. Among the bills actually enacted, the ratio was as high as 81 per cent (1789 out of 2212) (Cabinet Legislation Bureau, 2020).

The prime minister’s most powerful political tool against the legislative branch is the authority to dissolve the House of Representatives. Article 69 of the Constitution allows the prime minister to dissolve the house when it passes a vote of no-confidence. But does the prime minister also have the authority to dissolve the house without the passage of a no-confidence measure? In 1952, the Diet issued a report stating that the prime minister does in fact have this authority based on Article 7 which recognises the cabinet’s authority to advise the emperor to perform matters of state, including the dissolution of the House of Representatives. Two years later, the Tokyo High Court supported this interpretation. As a result, the authority to dissolve the House of Representatives is often used to benefit the prime minister and their government party as it allows them to choose freely when to change the political landscape. The House has only once completed its four-year term in 1976 under the current Constitution.

The prime minister’s authority goes beyond domestic affairs. The head of the cabinet is authorised by Article 73 of the Constitution to ‘manage foreign affairs’ and ‘conclude treaties’. The prime minister represents the nation and attends various summit meetings as the chief diplomatic representative of Japan. Although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is headed by the foreign minister, its officials seek approval from the prime minister for important foreign policy decisions. As the premier is often involved in major foreign affairs, MOFA is said to be led by two ministers: the prime minister as the first minister and the foreign minister as the second. Compared with domestic policies that involve many political actors, the prime minister has a relatively free hand in foreign affairs as the ruling party and the government officials recognise the prime minister’s authority.

The premier is also in charge of national security affairs. Article 7 of the Self Defence Forces (SDF) Law states that the prime minister, representing the cabinet, has the authority to command and supervise the SDF. The prime minister is authorised to mobilise the SDF in case of an external attack (Article 76), or when the public peace is disturbed (Article 78). The 2015 revision of the SDF Law extended the prime minister’s authority to exercise the right of collective self-defence if a situation poses a clear threat to Japan’s survival.

As executive power rests with the cabinet, the prime minister’s effectiveness as a leader depends on how much control they have over their own cabinet. The most important tool in this regard is the constitutional authority to appoint and dismiss cabinet members (Article 68). Cabinet positions are eagerly sought after by government party members. The Constitution allows the prime minister to choose up to one-half of cabinet members from outside the elected officials of the Diet. Koizumi Junichirō appointed an unprecedented number of non-legislators to his first cabinet in 2001, thus filling three of the then 17 available seats. However, since 2012 under the cabinets led by Abe, Suga and Kishida, no one from outside the Diet was tapped to fill cabinet seats.

The number of cabinet posts has changed over the years. The original Cabinet Law of 1947 limited the number of cabinet members besides the prime minister to 16. This number was increased incrementally to 17 in 1965, 18 in 1966, 19 in 1971 and 20 in 1972. The administrative reform efforts by Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryūtarō changed the law (effective in 2001) to reduce the number to 14, but allowed the appointment of up to three additional ministers for special purposes without a ministerial portfolio in the Cabinet Office. In 2011, the Reconstruction Agency Establishment Law, enacted after the Great East Japan earthquake, required the appointment of an additional cabinet member to run the newly created agency. New cabinet positions were also created by the Suga cabinet to handle preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic in 2015, and the 2025 Osaka, Kansai Expo in 2020, bringing the total number of cabinet members to 20.

Although Article 66 of the Constitution positions the prime minister as the head of the cabinet, their authority over the executive offices is quite limited. The prime minister has the authority to ‘exercise control and supervision over various administrative branches’ only on behalf of the cabinet (Article 72). In other words, they theoretically cannot control the executive offices independently of the cabinet.

This limitation on the premier’s authority is due to the strong position of Japanese bureaucrats in the Cabinet Legislation Bureau (CLB) in the immediate post-war period. The original draft of the Constitution, prepared by the government section of the American occupation authority, allowed the prime minister to control the executive branch independently. ¹ The bureaucrats who had serious concerns about overly strong authority residing with the prime minister and the possibility of another dictatorship insisted that the cabinet’s collective responsibility would not allow the prime minister to control the administrative offices without the consensus of the cabinet. They wrote the Cabinet Law of 1947 to limit the prime minister’s power over the bureaucracy (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1946: 230–231). Article 3 of the law states that executive power is divided among cabinet members. The prime minister’s authority over the bureaucracy, therefore, is indirect and runs through relevant ministers. The prime minister’s direct authority over the executive offices is limited to the extent the cabinet decision previously authorised. In addition, the CLB subscribes to a narrow interpretation of the cabinet’s collective responsibility and requires unanimous agreement for cabinet decisions. In order to make government policies, therefore, the prime minister needs to build a consensus among cabinet members. Drawing on the classification scheme by Dunleavy and Rhodes, we thus find that CLB bureaucrats successfully worked against the establishment of a ‘prime ministerial government’, and instead sought to establish a ‘cabinet government’.

Supporting institutions

The Cabinet Law also stipulates the institutions that support the prime minister such as personal secretaries and the Cabinet Secretariat. Traditionally, the prime minister had five personal secretaries in his private office. One of them was a political appointee who usually was a long-time associate of the premier. This secretary had numerous tasks, including serving as a liaison between the prime minister and his faction members, as well as between the prime minister and his constituents and other supporters. In addition, four administrative secretaries were seconded from the Ministries of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Economy, Trade and Industry, as well as the National Policy Agency. In 2011, the number of administrative secretaries increased to seven. The Suga Cabinet, for example, appointed two more officials from the Ministries of Defence, and Welfare and Labour. These administrative secretaries accompany the prime minister from early morning to evening in a shift-based system. Secretaries carry sufficient documents to provide the premier with any needed information. They also serve as liaisons between the prime minister and the ministries, facilitating communication between them. Describing how the premier conducts day-to-day business, Prime Minister Miki Takeo once stated, ‘the prime minister moves Japan by playing catch with the secretaries’ (Nakamura Keiichirō, interview by author, 17 December 1992). Secretaries deliver messages to and from the ministries and handle the relevant clerical work.

The Cabinet Secretariat is the primary institution that assists the prime minister and the cabinet, fulfilling a function that is roughly equivalent to the Prime Minister’s Office in the UK. Although the Cabinet Secretariat is positioned below the cabinet in the organisational chart of the government, its actual job is to assist the statutory head of government, the prime minister, and not necessarily the cabinet as a whole. The Cabinet Secretariat is located in the official residence of the prime minister (kantei) near the Diet. However, the size of the residence is very limited, housing only the prime minister’s ‘inner staff’. This includes the chief cabinet secretary (CCS, cabinet minister) and their five secretaries and three deputy CCS (sub-cabinet level, two parliamentary and one administrative) and their secretaries (four for each), special advisors (up to five political appointees), sub-cabinet level administrative officials including deputy CCS for crisis management, deputy CCS for information technology policy, three assistant CCS and the chief cabinet councillor and their deputy. Some of these administrative officials have separate offices where they spend most of their time. The rest of the Cabinet Secretariat is located in the Cabinet Office Building.

Central to the Cabinet Secretariat is its head, the CCS. Former CCS Gotōda Masaharu described his old job as requiring him to ‘to mediate and settle disputes between various government agencies’ in the policy-making process (Gotōda, 1989: 3). Because the prime minister’s time and energy are limited, many issues are handled without their involvement. Many important decisions are often brought to the CCS for interagency mediations and final decisions. The CCS also acts as spokesperson for the cabinet at the two daily cabinet press conferences. In a sense, the CCS position combines the duties of the chief of staff, the director of policy and the official spokesperson at 10 Downing Street. The fact that two former CCSs, Abe Shinzō and Fukuda Yasuo, became prime minister without any other cabinet experience, and that CCS Suga Yoshihide succeeded Abe without LDP factional affiliation, illustrates the elevated status of the CCS.

The CCS is assisted by three deputies. Two parliamentary deputies function as liaison to both houses of the Diet, and deal with political affairs. The administrative deputy CCS is often called the top position of Japan’s entire bureaucracy and liaises between the prime minister and the ministries.

Until the 1990s, the Cabinet Secretariat was a weak core executive institution. It did not have the authority to draft legislation. Its involvement in policy making was limited to passive mediation, meaning it only got involved when ministries brought issues with conflicts of interest to the secretariat. According to Gotōda (1989: 90), ‘[a]lthough the [officials from] ministries are supposed to bring up important issues relating to other administrative ministries in the cabinet meeting, they may not do so owing to jurisdictional conflicts’.

The staff size of the Cabinet Secretariat was also limited until the 1990s. The number of officials working at the secretariat under the Obuchi Keizō Cabinet (1998–2000) was about 180. Among them, about 100 were employed by the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office. Many of them were seconded from other administrative offices. Eda Kenji, who was seconded from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, described the seconded officials as ‘staplers’ as they just collected the documents submitted by various government agencies and stapled them before submitting them to the prime minister (Eda, interview by author, 30 July 2001). Due to the limited size and power of its staff, the Cabinet Secretariat long played a very limited role as core executive in coordinating policies among the ministries until Prime Minister Hashimoto’s administrative efforts.

Political realities and their impact on leadership

Although Japan’s constitutional arrangements surrounding the prime minister are similar to that of the United Kingdom, there are two major aspects in which political realities created significant differences between the two countries: cabinet meetings and the cabinet’s appointive power (Shinoda, 1999).

In Japan, regular cabinet meetings are held twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. In addition, extraordinary meetings can be requested by cabinet members. Sometimes, signatures of cabinet members are collected in a procedure called ‘cabinet consideration by circular’ to expediate a speedy cabinet decision-making process. Unlike British cabinet meetings, however, no substantial decisions are made at the meetings themselves. All the cabinet decisions are decided in advance, and any comments made at the meetings are labelled as irregular statements and ignored. Therefore, these meetings and practices are purely ceremonial.

At the regular meetings, cabinet members simply spend their time adding old samurai-style signatures with a traditional brush to cabinet decisions (Fujimoto, 1989; Ishihara, 1997; Kan, 1998). Minister for Administrative Reform under the 2020 Suga Yoshihide Cabinet, Kōno Tarō, vowed to eliminate wasteful government practices, but even he quickly concluded not to eliminate this traditional ritual.

In 1993, Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro, who disliked the ceremonial nature of cabinet meetings, decided to hold new informal discussion meetings (kakuryō kondankai) after regular meetings so that cabinet members could freely exchange opinions. However, even these informal meetings became formalised after a few decades of practice, and cabinet members are now requested to submit their topics in advance. Any comments and proposals that are unrelated to the registered items are, much like during regular cabinet meetings, regarded as irregular statements (Kōno Tarō, personal communication with the author, 27 July 2019).

Although no substantial decisions are made at cabinet meetings, the prime minister must build a consensus among their cabinet members outside of those sessions. Since executive power rests with the cabinet and cabinet decisions must be made unanimously, the prime minister’s effectiveness as an executive leader depends on how much control they have over their own cabinet.

As discussed, the prime minister’s authority to appoint and dismiss cabinet members is the strongest source of influence they have over the cabinet. However, political realities often do not permit him to exercise this authority freely. Dismissing cabinet members, for example, creates political repercussions for the prime minister as most of them hold Diet seats and remain leading ruling party members. Accordingly, maintaining good working relations is essential. Usually, prime ministers prefer to accept a ‘voluntary’ resignation rather than dismissing a cabinet member. As of February 2022, there were only five cases in which a prime minister exercised his constitutional authority of dismissal. In two of the cases, the cabinet ministers refused to resign voluntarily in order to create a negative impact on the cabinet. ² In other words, the prime ministers were forced to dismiss them.

To date, prime ministers have been hesitant to use their appointive authority freely. Becoming a cabinet member is considered a golden opportunity by ruling party Diet members and is probably the most important career goal for most junior members. In order for the prime minister to run the government effectively, they need support from different factions within their party. As a result, they must consider factional balance when they form a cabinet. In other words, cabinet appointments become bargaining chips for guarantees of cooperation in policy matters later on. When the LDP factions were very powerful from the 1970s to 1990s, the faction leaders handed their cabinet appointee recommendation lists to the prime minister. Prime ministers with a weak power base in the party had no choice but to pick cabinet members from these lists. Even relatively strong prime ministers could not totally ignore the recommendations from the powerful faction leaders. Ultimately, this created a situation in which cabinet ministers’ principal loyalty lay not with the prime minister, but with their faction leaders.

Japanese prime ministers have frequently reshuffled their cabinets – some as often as once per year – in order to provide opportunities for more LDP members to experience cabinet positions. This tradition was started by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru (1946–1947, 1948–1954) who appointed and replaced 80 politicians to cabinet positions during his seven-year tenure. Kishi Nobusuke (1957–1960) institutionalised frequent reshuffles by replacing almost all cabinet members. Kishi observed that Yoshida’s manner of removing individual cabinet ministers led to tensions within the party. By choosing to reshuffle the entire cabinet, Kishi avoided situations in which cabinet members might lose face (Kishi et al., 1981).

Reshuffles became an annual event after the Kishi Cabinet, which in the end weakened prime ministerial control over the ministries. Cabinet ministers who served in the position only for a year did not accumulate enough knowledge and experience to control the bureaucracy. From the perspective of bureaucrats, good ministers were those who followed their guidance in order to protect the interests of the ministry. Ministers with short tenure frequently turned to veteran bureaucrats in their ministry for advice, and thus tend to make protecting their ministry’s interests one of their priorities. As a result, frequent cabinet reshuffles accelerated sectionalism and made it more difficult for prime ministers to coordinate interests among different ministries.

Although cabinet meetings are officially the highest decision-making organ of the Japanese government, no policy decisions are actually made in these meetings. The prime minister must build a consensus among the cabinet members outside of cabinet meetings. However, up until the institutional reform of the 1990s, cabinet ministers were often more loyal to their ministry and faction leaders than to the prime minister, because of the premier’s limited agency in making cabinet appointments (Fukui, 1978; Thayer, 1969; Takenaka, 2015). This weakened his leadership position in the government. Japan was often portrayed as a ‘leaderless state’ with a weak prime minister (Tokuyama, 1991; Hayao, 1993). As a result, the Japanese government fell into the category of the ‘bureaucratic coordination’ model as described by Dunleavy and Rhodes.

Institutional reform

Weak leadership at the prime ministerial level became the centre of public debate after two disastrous experiences in 1995: the Great Hanshin earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks. Accordingly, reinforcing the power of the prime minister and the cabinet became one of the major themes of administrative reform under the Hashimoto Ryūtarō Cabinet (1996–1998).

Following Hashimoto’s reform efforts, the Cabinet Law was revised to strengthen the power of the core executive. First, the revision clarified that the initiation of policy was the role and responsibilities of the prime minister and the Cabinet Secretariat. Article 4 of the revised law specified the premier’s authority to propose important basic policies at cabinet meetings. Article 12 also provided the Cabinet Secretariat with the power to plan and draft ‘important policies of the cabinet’. The same article also authorised the policies of administrative offices. Furthermore, the May 2000 guidelines on policy coordination defined the secretariat’s role as ‘presenting policy direction for the government as a whole, and coordinating policy strategically and proactively’. It also defined the secretariat as ‘the highest and final organ for policy coordination under the cabinet’ (Cabinet decision, 2000). These institutional reforms enabled Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō to exercise top-down style political leadership (Esteves-Abe, 2006, Inoguchi, 2010; Makihara, 2013; Mishima, 2007; Shinoda, 2007).

With its strengthened authority, the Cabinet Secretariat now gained more high officials. In addition to the existing three, another post of deputy CCS in charge of crisis management was created in 1998. Administrative Deputy CCS Furukawa Teijirō strongly felt the need for this post after the experience of the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake (Furukawa, interview by author, 30 October 2003). Fifteen years later, in 2013, a deputy CCS post for handling information and communication policy was established. Until then, each ministry had their own information policy, and the overlapping facilities as well as a lack of interagency coordination had become problematic. The newly created deputy CCS’s role was to coordinate and disseminate information, and to communicate regarding policies to the entire government, and coordinate with different ministries and agencies.

Three assistant CCSs sit under the deputy CCSs. The assistant CCS seconded from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) serves as head of the Office of Assistant CCS for domestic policies, and the two seconded from the Ministries Defence and Foreign Affairs respectively assist the Director-General of the National Security Secretariat, as discussed later in this article.

In addition to CCSs, the Cabinet Secretariat houses special policy units that are staffed by seconded officials from the ministries. These policy units handle large government projects that require interagency cooperation (Takenaka, 2019). The number of policy units quadrupled from 10 in 2001 to 40 in 2020. As a result, the total number of staff working full time under the secretariat increased from 515 in 2001 to 1275 in 2020.

In addition, Prime Minister Hashimoto’s reform efforts not only strengthened the Cabinet Secretariat but also led to the establishment of the new Cabinet Office. This office is headed by the prime minister and is administered by the CCS and their deputies. The prime minister can appoint cabinet ministers for special missions at the Cabinet Office. For example, 10 of the 20 cabinet ministers under the Suga Cabinet were affiliated with the Cabinet Office. On the government organisational chart, it is located directly under the cabinet and therefore ranks higher than other government ministries. Its main task is to assist the cabinet in planning and drafting policy proposals and coordinating among ministries.

The Cabinet Office is composed of a Minister’s Secretariat, eight directors-general and four bureaus, all of which are supported by teams of staff. The Minister’s Secretariat and directors-general are assigned to assist policy councils in supporting cabinet affairs. Under the auspices of the Cabinet Office, five councils have been set up to handle major policy areas that require inter-agency coordination and the special attention of the prime minister: the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy; the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation; the Advisory Council for National Strategic Special Zone: the Central Disaster Prevention Council; and the Council for Gender Equality.

Four bureaus - the Decoration Bureau, the Gender Equality Bureau, the Okinawa Promotion Bureau and the Office of Inspector General for Public Records Management are engaged in administrative affairs and originated from former agencies which were merged by the Cabinet Office (the Prime Minister’s Office, the Economic Planning Agency and the Okinawa Development Agency). In addition, 19 special policy offices and councils exist in the Cabinet Office. As of July 2020, the number of staff working in the Cabinet Office itself was 2195, rising to more than 14,000 when all the affiliated offices were included. They serve under the more centralised policy-making system under the Cabinet Office.

Another institutional arrangement that shifted the power balance between the cabinet and the ministries was the fact that the cabinet was granted the power to screen bureaucrats for 200 high official positions (bureau chiefs and above) in all ministries. Prior to the reform, the authority to appoint bureaucrats belonged with the relevant minister, and ministers only needed to seek cabinet ‘understanding’. However, in the interests of political neutrality, for many years, all such appointments were effectively made by the bureaucrats themselves. Occasional appointments by ministers were widely criticised as ‘political intervention’. After the reform, appointments of high officials required cabinet approval, effectively giving a veto power to the cabinet.

A final factor that strengthened the cabinet’s appointive authority was the establishment of the Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs in 2014. Staffed with about 160 officials, it serves as the secretariat for the prime minister to decide the appointments of some 600 top bureaucrats of the central government. It enables the prime minister to handpick officials for the key positions in order to pursue their own policy goals.

New institutions in action

The reforms discussed above significantly strengthened the policy-making power of the prime minister and their cabinet. This was further amplified by the establishment of two new institutions, the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP) and the National Security Council (NSC), which will be discussed in the following two sub-sections. George Mulgan described these institutions as important elements of a ‘prime ministerial executive’ (George Mulgan 2018).

The Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP)

Traditionally, Japan’s budget-making had been a highly decentralised and cumulative process involving regional offices, related government institutions, LDP policy subcommittee members and the private sector. In 2001, however, this process underwent changes. With the new Cabinet Office tasked with identifying fiscal and budget policies as important national issues, the CEFP was established as an advisory organ independent from the bureaucracy which the prime minister could consult on macro-economic and fiscal policy issues.

The CEFP consists of 10 members – five cabinet members, the governor of the Bank of Japan and four experts from the private sector – as well as the premier who fulfils the role of a chairperson. The operational rules give strong authority to the chairperson. The council cannot reach any decision without the attendance of the chairperson. Furthermore, the chairperson is required to build a consensus among the members but can make a decision based on the discussion at the council (CEFP, 2001). The CEFP thus functions as a forum in which a strongly determined prime minister can engage in top-down policy making.

Under the Koizumi Junichirō administration (2001–2006), Economic Minister Takenaka Heizō conceived of and introduced the Basic Policy (honebuto no hōshin) for budget making. According to the Public Finance Act, the national budget-making authority belongs to the finance minister. In the traditional budget-making process, MOF announced the budget ceiling for each fiscal year, and budget examiners from its budget bureau decided the budget based on proposals from the individual ministries. As a result, the budget-making process was compartmentalised ministry by ministry, and budget reallocation among ministries was almost impossible. The new top-down fiscal policy-making style amended this situation.

At the June 2001 CEFP meeting, Economic Minister Takenaka introduced the outline of the Basic Policy, including the major items of Koizumi’s reform plans: the privatisation of postal services and special public corporations as well as the introduction of a 30-trillion-yen ceiling on debt-financing bonds (Takenaka, 2006). Subsequently, the cabinet ministers of the relevant ministries were asked to submit their policy priorities. The Basic Policy which reflected those requests were approved by the cabinet through the top-down process outlined above. Throughout the process, Takenaka ignored members of the LDP policy subcommittees as per instructions from Prime Minister Koizumi (Iijima, 2006: 62). According to Deputy CCS Furukawa, this process symbolised the political initiative of the new fiscal policymaking (Furukawa, interview by author, 30 October 2003).

Based on the Basic Policy, at the same CEFP meeting Koizumi decided to reallocate the budget drastically across the board by cutting five trillion yen in non-priority programmes and increasing three trillion yen in the priority policy areas. Following this decision, MOF officials presented the budget outlines with a two-trillion-yen increase in seven prioritised policy areas and a 10 per cent cut in all other areas. These outlines were approved by the Cabinet as the basic principles for the FY2002 budget. As a result, the budget for public works, which often became a pork barrel for LDP politicians, was cut by 10.1 per cent. Fiscal expenditure for special public corporations was cut by 21.1 per cent, creating strong pressure to pursue their privatisation, including the postal service. Accordingly, Prime Minister Koizumi effectively used the CEFP as a forum to tackle economic structural reform through budget outlines.

The CEFP has been less effectively utilised by Koizumi’s successors (Shinoda, 2013: 108–117). Prime Minister Abe (2006–2007, 2012–2020) tried to push his growth-first policy without a tax increase through the council, but his initiative was blocked by MOF officials who hoped to increase the consumption tax. Under Fukuda’s cabinet (2007–2008), the Basic Policies presented by the CEFP did not affect the budget as the prime minister resigned before the budget formulation process began. Prime Minister Asō Tarō (2008–2009) did not actively use the CEFP to implement his economic policies. Finally, the CEFP was abolished when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power (2009–2012).

However, when Abe returned to the premiership in December 2012, he reinstated the CEFP as a control tower for a broad range of economic policies known as ‘Abenomics’ which consisted of ‘three arrows’: monetary easing; an expansive fiscal policy; and economic growth strategies to encourage private investment.

At the first meeting of the re-established CEFP in January 2013, Abe committed to setting a 2 per cent inflation target as the first arrow of Abenomics and pressured the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to ease the monetary policy drastically in order to overcome chronic deflation and the strong yen, which troubled many export-oriented corporations. When the BOJ governor hesitated to comply with this drastic measure, the prime minister forced him to step down and replaced him with a former MOF official who had been a vocal critic of the BOJ policies. The market reacted positively to Abe’s economic initiatives, as seen in a recovery of stock prices and the weakening of the yen. As for the second arrow of Abenomics, the Abe cabinet formed a 13.1 trillion-yen supplementary budget plan. According to the plan, 10 trillion yen would be used for ‘emergency economic measures’ which included five trillion yen for public works projects. Accordingly, while Koizumi’s CEFP promoted structural reforms through a tight budget ceiling, that of Abe revitalised the traditional LDP ‘pork politics’.

The CEFP has continued to serve as a vital forum for setting important policy goals for the government through its annual Basic Policy announcements. Ministries lobby the council very hard to have their ideas included in the Basic Policy announcement because, similar to the prime minister’s speeches discussed above, even a brief mention of their policy area can give them an advantage in budget negotiations with MOF.

The National Security Council (NSC)

On the national security policy front, the second Abe cabinet established a National Security Council (NSC) similar to that in the American White House. Abe proposed this idea during his first tenure as prime minister but resigned before the scheme could be implemented. During his second tenure, he formed a government panel of experts to consider the creation of an NSC. Based on the panel’s discussions, the Abe cabinet successfully enacted the NSC legislation and established the council under the cabinet in December 2013.

The NSC engages in three forms of meetings. The first is four-minister meetings, consisting of the prime minister, the CCS, as well as the foreign and defence ministers, which are held regularly to exchange opinions and establish common views on foreign and defence issues. The four-minister meetings serve as a control tower of national security policy in the government while the nine-minister meetings replaced the former Security Council that used to make official decisions regarding national security prior to the cabinet meeting. ³ Emergency meetings allow for quick responses to serious emergencies, such as the March 2014 Ukraine crisis and the July 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. In addition, the Situation Response Expert Commission, headed by the CSS and composed of bureau chiefs from various ministries, was created to assist the NSC in emergency situations.

In January 2013, the National Security Secretariat (NSS), staffed with nearly 70 staff seconded from the central ministries, mostly from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence, was formed under the Cabinet Secretariat to assist the NSC. The secretariat originally had six policy units: the integration and coordination unit (supporting the four-minister meetings), the strategy planning unit (in charge of long-term plans including defence guidelines), the intelligence unit (serving as a customer for the intelligence community) and three policy units covering different geographic areas of the world. In addition, an economic unit was established to cover national economic security issues in April 2020 (Kanehara, 2022).

The first policy goal for the newly established NSC was to issue the National Security Strategy. Seeking to publish an official strategy document that covered a wide spectrum of inter-agency issues, Abe formed the Advisory Panel on National Security and Defence Capabilities. According to the chairperson of this panel, Kitaoka Shinichi, the objectives of publishing the strategy document were, ‘first, to let the Japanese people learn the importance of national security. Second, to let neighbouring countries know so that they would not misunderstand our goals’ (Kitaoka, personal communication, 2 February 2014). This strategy document discussed policy areas not traditionally covered by the MOD’s Defence White Paper, such as official development aids (MOFA’s domain), arms exports (the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s domain) and maritime security (the Ministry of Transport’s domain). Coordinating amongst different ministries, NSS staffers played a central role during the writing of the strategy document, which was published in December 2013.

The NSS played a crucial role in the process of reinterpreting the Constitution regarding collective self-defence as well. The secretariat assisted the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security, which recommended a reinterpretation of the Constitution to enable Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defence in May 2014 (Kantei, 2014). The most important political negotiation was with LDP’s coalition partner, Kōmeitō. Prime Minister Abe appointed LDP vice president and former foreign minister Kōmura Masahiko to negotiate with his Kōmeitō counterpart Kitagawa Kazuo. The inter-party negotiation process was supported by senior NSS staff until it reached an agreement. Based on this agreement, the Abe cabinet decided to make the reinterpretation official in July 2014 (Takamizawa, 2022).

After the cabinet decision was made, the NSS formed a team of 30 staffers to prepare drafts for a set of new national security laws. The team was headed by two deputy secretaries-general of the NSS, and consisted of two sub-teams – one to handle inter-agency coordination and the other to work on laws that required revision, of which they identified 10. Again, the most important political process was the negotiation with the coalition partner Kōmeitō, in which senior NSS officials served as intermediaries.

In national security policymaking, the NSS, along with the NSC, have proved to be a very useful institution to support the prime minister in providing information, responding to emergencies, drafting policies and assisting the political process in foreign and defence affairs.

Conclusion

The Japanese prime minister is vested with a wide variety of institutional sources of power. As the head of the cabinet, the prime minister represents the cabinet and exercises executive power on its behalf. During the American occupation, the authors of the post-war Constitution envisioned establishing a ‘prime ministerial government’ as defined by Dunleavy and Rhodes (1990). However, the bureaucrats in the Cabinet Legislation Bureau strongly opposed the American proposal. They emphasised the collective responsibility of the cabinet and insisted that the prime minister should not be able to control the government independently of the cabinet. These officials wanted to create a ‘cabinet government’ for the Japanese core executive, which exercises strong authority as a collective body.

Nevertheless, the Japanese prime minister could be a powerful political figure. As head of the cabinet, they have the constitutional authority to appoint and dismiss cabinet members freely. They can also easily build a consensus in meetings of the cabinet, which is the highest decision-making organ of the government.

Two developments in the post-war era, however, weakened the power of the prime minister. First, cabinet meetings became ceremonial and did not make any substantial decisions. Second, due to strong factionalism within the ruling party, the prime minister could not utilise his statutory freedom to appoint and dismiss cabinet members to formulate and execute his policies. The weak position of the cabinet facilitated the development of a strong sectionalism in the Japanese bureaucracy. This transformed the Japanese core executive at this time into an example of the ‘bureaucratic coordination model’ described by Dunleavy and Rhodes.

In the 1990s, large-scale natural disasters and an act of domestic terrorism exposed the institutional weakness of office of the prime minister, leading it to become the focus of government reforms. Prime Minister Hashimoto’s reform efforts significantly strengthened the power of the cabinet and its supporting institutions. Prime ministers, like Koizumi and Abe, effectively used the strengthened institutions to push through their policies. In the politics of budget-making, for example, the prime minister can utilise the CEFP to promote their domestic policies. In the area of national security, they can fully take advantage of the NSC and its supporting organ of the NSS. These institutions have helped the Japanese core executive to transform into a ‘prime ministerial government’ in the sense of Dunleavy and Rhodes’ classification.