Understanding Japanese Democracy Assistance

Japan has increasingly emphasized democracy assistance since the mid-2000s, such that it now constitutes a major part of Japan’s foreign policy. This approach is an ostensible departure from the country’s traditional foreign policy stance, which tries to avoid bringing values to the forefront of foreign policies. This book intends to answer the questions of why Japan has started emphasizing democracy assistance and why it has relegated itself to a minor role in democracy assistance nevertheless. It argues that Japan’s emphasis on democracy assistance reveals its intention to increase its political influence with regards to China based on democratic values, and its usage of the term "democracy assistance" is a performative speech act to orchestrate a comprehensive approach for international democracy support. Shedding light on the novel aspect of Japanese policy, this book contributes to the understanding of Japanese foreign policy and democracy promotion. Providing the analysis that state’s speech act could cause to create foreign policies that counter what is predicted by structural realism, this analysis makes contributions to neoclassical realism which explains states’ foreign policy choices within the constraints of international structure.

Despite being Asia's most prosperous democracy and one of the world's largest aid providers, Japan has a strikingly low profile in the field of international democracy assistance. Japan directs most of its democracy-related assistance to technocratic top-down governance programming, placing a low emphasis on civil society assistance. The reasons behind this choice stem from Japan's history and its views of development.

Along with the rising importance of democracy assistance, Japan has expanded its foreign aid for it over the two decades. However, not only the share of democracy assistance in Japan's foreign aid overall remains extremely small, but most of Japan's democracy assistance is directed to the state institution sector, while assistance is barely provided to the civil society sector. This dissertation argues that the weak involvement of civil society actors in Japanese democracy assistance causes such characteristics through two intervening variables--information sources and aid human resources. First, weak civil society involvement as information source causes the Japanese government to collect information on aid needs almost exclusively from state actors of recipient countries, which leads Japan to successfully grasp assistance needs on the state level but not on the society level. Such skewness about information on aid needs causes Japan to provide democracy assistance to the state institution sector much more than to the civil society sector. Second, the weak involvement of civil society actors limits human resources mobilized for aid project implementation, which eventually limits the overall amount of Japanese democracy assistance. While democracy assistance in general tends to be provided as technical assistance, which requires a large number of human resources, the amount of human resources among Japanese state actors that can be mobilized for democracy assistance is extremely limited. It is thus potentially by the mobilization of civil society actors that Japan could increase the number of human resources in the field. However, civil society actors' involvement in Japanese democracy assistance is rare. The paucity of human resources as implementation partners of democracy assistance forces Japan to provide democracy assistance in a way need not to secure a large number of implementation partners. This tendency limits the size of each democracy assistance program/project, and makes it difficult for Japan to increase the number of programs/projects.

Instead of asking the usual questions about Japanese aid — Why is Japanese aid so different from that of other donors? Is Japanese aid effective? — this collection takes it as axiomatic that Japanese aid actors are now working in a contentious environment affected by changing global norms of aid. Japanese Aid and the Construction of Global Development analyses the changing political contexts, both at home and abroad, within which Japanese aid officials develop their programs. It tracks the tensions facing aid officials as they seek to negotiate between a long-term organizational bias in the Japanese government of promoting "growth-oriented" policies, and new demands for Japan to engage a broader array of "human security" concerns. In the third section, contributors provide case studies of new policies designed to cope with transnational human security issues, particularly involving environmental protection, gender equality, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Finally, the book turns its lens back to Japan with chapters on how changing aid relationships alter Japan’s ability to cope with transnational problems like refugee flows, sex trafficking, and terrorism. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the politics and culture of global development, Japanese politics and foreign policy, international relations and international law.

Japan’s arrival since World War Two as a major industrial nation has meant that she has had to bear a greater share of the developed world’s contribution to the developing nations and foreign aid has become an integral part of foreign policy. This book describes the roots of Japan’s aid policy and shows that this side of her international economic policy is based largely on domestic conditions, structures and forces. To understand the pattern of Japanese aid as it stands today, it is important to appreciate the complexities of the Japanese decision-making process. This book clearly explains the patterns of Japanese aid policy-making.

Japans System of Official Development Assistance

Recommends practical ways in which the United States and Japan can support democratic development in countries that are emerging from autocratic regimes and those that have achieved a measure of democracy, but are in danger of regressing.

During the occupation American policymakers identified elections and education as the wellsprings of a democratic consciousness in Japan. But as the extent of Japan’s economic recovery became clear, they placed prosperity at the core of a revised vision for their new ally’s future, as Jennifer Miller shows in this fresh appraisal of the Cold War.

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