Japanese Competition Policy in the 1990s: Remaining Uniqueness in the Policy Network
- PDF / 168,304 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 442 x 663 pts Page_size
- 104 Downloads / 193 Views
Japanese Competition Policy in the 1990s: Remaining Uniqueness in the Policy Network Kenji Suzuki European Institute of Japanese Studies, Stockholm School of Economics, PO Box 6501, Stockholm S-113-83, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]
Having been relatively closed to foreign businesses for a long time, Japan is being required to make efforts toward a more open market. Pressure from the United States at the beginning of the 1990s initiated a number of reforms, but how much Japanese competition policy has developed since then is controversial. The present study aims to discuss it with particular focus on relational structures in the policy process, or ‘policy network’. The scope of collective action has been reduced as a result of economic internationalization, but the remaining business–government connection seems to have been strong enough to compensate for the lack of a comprehensive approach. On top of that, the Fair Trade Commission remains vulnerable to the pressure from politicians and other ministries, despite recent organizational reforms. Those relational structures are clearly reflected in the current enforcement manner of Japanese competition policy. The policy process toward the removal of holding company prohibition also exhibits the weakness of competition policy authority in the policy network. Asian Business & Management (2002) 1, 313–328. doi:10.1057/palgrave.abm.9200022 Keywords: Japan; competition policy; holding company; policy network
Introduction Having been relatively closed to foreign businesses for a long time, Japan is being required to make efforts toward a more open market. Competition policy is expected to play a significant role for that purpose, while it had been stagnant particularly during the 1980s. The atmosphere was changed after a large-scale bilateral negotiation framework between Japan and the United States in 1989–90, which was the so-called ‘Structural Impediments Initiative’ (SII) (for the process of the SII, see Mastanduno, 1992). Generally speaking, the SII was conceived to be ‘a turning point’ (Kosai, 1996: 211) in Japanese competition policy. In fact, various regulatory reforms were achieved subsequently, such as the rise in the administrative surcharge for cartels and the penalty charge for other anti-competitive practices, the
Kenji Suzuki Japanese Competition Policy in the 1990s
314
clarification of the regulatory criteria for policy implementation, and the abolition of wide-ranging exemptions for cartels and resale price maintenances (see Wilks, 1994; Matsushita, 1995). Some authors saw those changes as significant. For example, Sanekata and Wilks observed that ‘The salience and effectiveness of competition policy in Japan has changed quite radically over the past ten years’ (Sanekata and Wilks, 1996: 134). From a comparison of British and Japanese industrial policies, ElAgraa concluded that ‘the Japanese themselves have been going [more competition-oriented] British, emphasizing privatization and deregulation’ (El-Agraa, 1997: 1516). Conversely, others remain
Data Loading...
