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



discretionary allocation in the rice set-aside program, focusing on the different stages of
allocation among prefectures, from a viewpoint of public choice and to analyze the
interdependence among political actors behind this allocation.

Although there have been a large number of studies concerning farm policies by
the approach of public choice in the U.S., it is quite rare in Japan. One of exception,
Fujimoto et al. (1983), examined the relationship between budgets for agriculture and
the number and the position of politicians elected from rural constituencies. However,
little study with regard to regulations has been carried out.

On the other hand, the rice set-aside program itself has been examined in a huge
number of studies by Japanese agricultural economists. Yet, most of these studies were
conducted under the preconception that a compulsory set-aside program is imposed on
each farmer by a top-down decision-making system and farmers are suffering from this
imposition. In these studies, the set-aside program has been regarded as if it were a
policy in a totalitarian regime. In support of this notion, a national target for set-aside
acreage has almost been accomplished. Most farmers faithfully abide by the regulations
and detailed prescriptions of the government.

However, this paper reevaluates the widely preconceived notion of top-down
decision making by seemingly all-powerful Japanese bureaucrats in set-aside allocations.
The unevenness of allocation among prefectures is focused on as an important factor in
this reevaluation.

Overview of the program and behaviors of political actors

Overview of the program

The allocation system of the rice set-aside program in Japan appears, in short, as a
top-down decision making system by bureaucrats. The set-aside acreage assigned by the
national government to each prefecture is similarly allocated to each village by officers
in prefectural governments. Such allocations are also uneven among villages. Just as



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