typical case in which the political power of bureaucrats’ discretion is decisive. Indeed,
bureaucrats in the ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries in Japan are relatively
powerful among other political actors, compared with the ones in the U.S.
Nevertheless, in this study, it is our starting point that such bureaucratic
discretionary decision-making may not be so uncompromising. It may also be doubtful
that bureaucrats’ discretion could overwhelmingly suppress political pressures. It is
dubious whether allocation among prefectures would be determined one-sidedly in a
top-down way. It is reasonable to suppose that political pressures generated from
farmers’ grievances against insufficient compensation have had an influence on
bureaucrats’ allocations to a considerable extent, under a normal democracy.
In addition to grievances against the program itself, feelings of injustice about the
allocation among prefectures aggravate the political situation. Since an initial draft of
allocations based on bureaucrats’ discretion is calculated, taking into consideration
priorities in their policy direction, unevenness of allocations among regions do not
necessarily accord with unevenness of the degree of acceptance among regions6 .
Farmers’ grievances derived from their subjective utility loss vary from farmer to
farmer7 . Such uneven farmers’ grievances aggregate to uneven regional political
pressure. Unevenness of farmers’ subjective grievances and consequently regional
political pressure are often magnified by uneven allocation. This magnified unevenness
ferments feelings of injustice towards other prefectures’ allocation8.
There are two routes by which farmers’ grievances are transmitted in a bottom-up
6 For example, a prefecture to which lighter burden of set-aside acreage is allocated may
show stronger political pressure, requiring much lighter burden, if farmers’ subjective
utility loss in the prefecture is extremely high.
7 An income loss of a farmer can be objectively estimated by calculation if he has a
scrupulously taken book-keeping. However, a subjective utility loss does not necessarily
equal to it. For instance, part-time farmers feel heavy burden to convert to other crops
growing from conventional rice growing, as explained later in detail.
8 The existence of these unfair feelings is becoming officially acknowledged, according
to the report of the advisory council, Seisan-chousei-kenkyukai (the Council of the rice
set-aside program) (2002).