Political Transformation of Japan and Europe

这项研究考察了日本和欧洲政治中非常迅速和剧烈的变化，集中在三个方面：(1)在改变选民的政党支持和改变政党之间的联盟结构方面观察到的政党重组；(2)政治经济的重组，特别是在对经济活动的政治干预以及劳动力市场和福利机构的重组方面；(3)欧洲和东亚区域一体化的进展和停滞。这些问题在不同地区和国家是复杂和不同的，参与该项目的个人在他/她的论文中探索了这些变化。然而，从这项研究项目中得出了以下概括。20世纪90年代，由于信息技术革命、苏联集团解体以及美国军事和经济霸权的卷土重来，全球化导致了市场经济在日本和疲惫的西欧国家的进一步“重新引入”。这不可避免地涉及到各县的党性认识、政府与社会关系的重构和区域一体化的逐步推进。另一方面，这些大趋势被日本和欧洲之间以及各个民族国家之间的差异所抵消。这些差异主要是由于每个国家的政府和市场结构的特点等制度安排所固有的历史遗产。

This research project examined very rapid and drastic transformations in Japanese and European politics, focusing upon the three aspects : (1) party realignment observed in changing voters' party supports and shifting coalition buildings among the political parties, (2) the restructuring of political economy, particularly in the area of political intervention into the economic activities as well as the restructuring of the labor market and the welfare institutions, and (3) progresses and stagnations in regional integration in Europe and East Asia.The problems are complex and varied among various regions and countires, and the individual participants in this project have explored these varieties in his/her papers. The following generalizations, however, have drawn from this research project. Golobalization mostly due to the revolutions of information technologies, the collapse of the Soviet block, and the comeback of American military and economic hegemonies In the 1990s resulted in the further "re introduction" of market economy in Japan and tire western European nations. This has inevitably involved party realingnent in each county, the restructuring of the government-society relations and progressive regional integration. On the other hand, these general trends have been counterbalanced by the differences between Japan and Europe as well as those among the individual nation states. Those differences are mostly due to histrical legacies built in as the institutional arrangements such as the characteristics of the governmental and the market structure in each nations.