Abstract

In the 1980s, a wave of newstudies revolutionized the Japanese politics field. The empirical findings of this literature remain the conventional wisdom on Japanese policy-making patterns under the . In this paper, we offer a critical reinterpretation of the new paradigm literature. We do not offer new empirical analysis, but, rather, reconsider this conventional wisdom by putting a new spin on the evidence previous authors utilized to analyze the policy-making process in Japan under the 1955 System. Contrary to the conventional view of strong central bureaucratic power, we argue that in the 1960s policy making was quite fragmented. In contrast to literature suggesting substantial politician influence in the 1980s, we argue that there was a decline in the influence of politicians in general in policy making