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

Consequently, it is reasonable to suppose that the political process transmits
farmers’ grievances, and ends up placing political pressure on bureaucrats³.

How set-aside acreage is allocated among prefectures

As mentioned before, unevenness among prefectures is a remarkable feature of this
seemingly discretionary allocation. Why have such uneven allocations of set-aside
acreage among prefectures been intentionally generated and continued? What methods
have been adopted by bureaucrats to calculate and allocate uneven set-aside acreages
among prefectures? First of all, these questions are to be clarified prior to the analysis

Overall, the political process of determining allocations is not entirely transparent.

Although most of the factors used in calculating set-aside acreage in each prefecture are
made public, the formula for calculating these factors is not officially disclosed.
Concrete data sources are also rarely disclosed. It can only be inferred by a statistic
analysis as to which factors are prioritized and which are emasculated in the political
process.

Table 1 shows such publicly disclosed factors. It can be observed that these factors
adopted as variables in the calculation have gradually altered. It is also suggested that
the formula of calculation has been becoming more intricate whenever the program
entered a new phase.

Before we analyze the political meanings of these factors, two helpful aspects

³ It is crucial in analyzing behaviors of bureaucrats from a viewpoint of public choice
whether those bureaucrats, i.e. high-ranking officials in government are political
appointees or not. If they are politically appointed, behaviors of them tend to be
significantly affected by the policy direction of the ruling party and to become similar to
those of politicians belonging to that party. That is, the behaviors of bureaucrats can be
supposed to follow the re-election-maximizing principle. However, Japanese
bureaucrats are not political appointees. In usual cases, it is reasonable to suppose that
Japanese bureaucrats can be relatively resistant to political pressures and have an
unshakable stance for their own policies’ independency even under such pressures,
compared with those in the U.S.

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