Japanese politics after the end of economic miracle

本研究拟采用调查研究与个案研究相结合的方法，对经济高增长时代后的日本政治进行分析。调查研究组在2001年~ 2003年期间，分别对官僚、国会议员、利益集团负责人进行了3次问卷调查，并与前2次问卷调查进行了比较。通过三波调查研究，我们可以观察到政策参与者自我认知的变化以及他们之间感知到的相互作用。对官僚和议员的调查已于2002年完成，而对利益集团领导人的调查则于2004年2月刚刚完成。我们发现了几个有趣的变化：官僚自我感知的影响力下降了；1993年政治调整后，政治家对官僚的政策信息依赖程度降低，利益集团与政府（即政治家与官僚）之间的信息渠道变窄。我们现在正在继续我们的分析，以分析1993年政府更迭的影响以及30年来的长期趋势。案例研究小组调查了55个政策制定案例。我们试图广泛地收集90年代的案例。我们感兴趣的是描述20世纪90年代典型的政策制定过程。在适当的时候，我们对每个案例进行了详细的分析，但我们也尝试将案例研究方法与调查分析相结合，因为我们相信这样做可以回答“谁统治”的问题。两个小组设立了两个独立的讲习班系列，但进行了协调，以便结合根据调查研究得出的政治总趋势的结果和对1990年代决策的具体实际观察结果。

This research intends to analyze Japanese politics after the high economic growth era, by conducting the survey research and the case study. The survey research team conducted three separate surveys for bureaucrats, parliamentarians, and interest group leaders respectively (between 2001 and 2003), which are compared with previous two waves of surveys. It is expected that we can observe changing self-perceptions of the policy actors and perceived interactions among them over three waves of survey research. The surveys of bureaucrats and parliamentarians have been completed by 2002, while the survey of interest group leaders has just completed in February 2004. We found several interesting changes : the self-perceived influence of bureaucrats declined ; politicians became less dependent on bureaucrats for policy information, information channel between interest groups and the government (i.e., politicians and bureaucrats) became narrower after the 1993 political realignment. We are now continuing our analysis in order to analyze the impact of the alteration of the government in 1993 as well as long term trends over 30 years.The case study team investigated 55 cases of policy making. We tried to pick up the cases in the 1990s broadly. We are interested in depicting the typical policy making process in the 1990s. In due course, we conducted a detailed analysis of each case, but we also try to combine the case study method with the survey analysis, because we believe we can answer the question of "who governs" by doing so. Two teams established two separate series of workshops, but are coordinated in order to combine the findings of the general trends in politics based on survey research and concrete nitty-gritty observations of the policy making in the 1990s.