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



government failure. In a sense, the fact that farmers’ grievances are transmitted to
bureaucrats in a bottom-up manner is appreciated as a complement to the supply
information to bureaucrats and government in order to prevent government failure. It
may also be said in the political science context that bureaucrats should positively and
willingly take note of farmers’ grievances, aside from problems in the economic context,
as explained in the next sub-section.

Market, bureaucrats and political intervention

In regions where full-time farmers are densely concentrated, the burden of set-aside
acreage is heavy, while it is lighter in regions where part-time farmers are concentrated.
This may surprisingly suggest that policies favoring full-time professional farmers and
reducing support for part-time farmers are completely emasculated. The next question is
why such a paradoxical phenomenon happens.

Discretionary allocations carried out by bureaucrats instead of the market place
importance on optimal resource allocation. However, discretionary allocations may pay
little attention to fair income distribution. The degree of farmers’ grievances can be
regarded as representing the possible loss of farmers’ utility. Therefore, the imbalance of
political pressure among prefectures can be interpreted as a result of unfair
redistribution caused by the allocation by bureaucrats. As Peltzman (1976) pointed out,
because of the dominance of political pressure for redistribution on the regulatory
process, it is difficult and unrealistic for the allocation of set-aside acreage among
prefectures to be determined only by the discretionary judgments of bureaucrats who
mainly consider optimal resource allocation, not fair income distribution.

The discretionary allocation carried out by bureaucrats inherently has a possibility
of “government failure” because the information which bureaucrats can obtain and
utilize is insufficient for achieving optimal resource allocation compared to the market.
In this sense, it is difficult for bureaucrats to optimally implement the discretionary

21



More intriguing information

1. A Study of Prospective Ophthalmology Residents’ Career Perceptions
2. PRIORITIES IN THE CHANGING WORLD OF AGRICULTURE
3. TOMOGRAPHIC IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION OF FAN-BEAM PROJECTIONS WITH EQUIDISTANT DETECTORS USING PARTIALLY CONNECTED NEURAL NETWORKS
4. XML PUBLISHING SOLUTIONS FOR A COMPANY
5. The Role of Evidence in Establishing Trust in Repositories
6. Une Gestion des ressources humaines à l'interface des organisations : vers une GRH territoriale ?
7. The name is absent
8. Language discrimination by human newborns and by cotton-top tamarin monkeys
9. Weather Forecasting for Weather Derivatives
10. The name is absent
11. The name is absent
12. NVESTIGATING LEXICAL ACQUISITION PATTERNS: CONTEXT AND COGNITION
13. Testing Panel Data Regression Models with Spatial Error Correlation
14. Credit Market Competition and Capital Regulation
15. Deletion of a mycobacterial gene encoding a reductase leads to an altered cell wall containing β-oxo-mycolic acid analogues, and the accumulation of long-chain ketones related to mycolic acids
16. QUEST II. A Multi-Country Business Cycle and Growth Model
17. What should educational research do, and how should it do it? A response to “Will a clinical approach make educational research more relevant to practice” by Jacquelien Bulterman-Bos
18. Migration and employment status during the turbulent nineties in Sweden
19. Segmentación en la era de la globalización: ¿Cómo encontrar un segmento nuevo de mercado?
20. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCERS' WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR REAL-TIME MESOSCALE WEATHER INFORMATION