Are Japanese bureaucrats politically stronger than farmers?: The political economy of Japan's rice set-aside program

manner: one through official route from a village office to a local government, and the
other is via cooperatives. For officers in a local government, a low set-aside allocation
in their region is preferable because it would be easier to implement. For directors in a
prefectural federation of agricultural cooperatives, smaller allocations are also desirable
because they would face less remonstrance from farmers. Regional and prefectural
officers thus attempt to put political pressures on bureaucrats in unison. These political
actors⁹ may behave as if they constitute a united interest group representing a prefecture.
As a result, bureaucrats face uneven political pressures among prefectures.

Hypotheses, models and methodology of analysis

Hypotheses

As mentioned previously, it seems that the allocation among prefectures is
determined simply by the bureaucrats’ discretion instead of the market. However, this
paper hypothesizes that such decision-making at bureaucrats’ discretion would not
completely disregard the remonstrance of farmers. It is also assumed that the draft of the
allocation would be revised, considering the degree of grievances.

Under this basic hypothesis, the following two concrete hypotheses are presented
and empirically tested.

Hypothesis 1: Bureaucrats revise the initial draft of their discretionary allocations
among prefectures in the direction approximately inversely proportionate to the degree
of political pressure caused by farmers’ grievances. Bureaucrats attempt to equalize the
risk of the failure to achieve the assigned acreage in each prefecture. Moreover, the
degree of political pressure is explained by two variables: the level of expected income

⁹ Politicians elected from the region may sometimes play a role to assist such political
movements from a sense of the so-called pork barrel action. But they do not lead such a
movement. Their role is merely supplementary.

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