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

<<   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   >>

More intriguing information