Customer Reviews

Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)

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Although experts on Japan may have some specific academic criticisms, these should not detract from the overall quality of Pempel's book. The book synthesises an extremely wide body of literature (both English and Japanese language) on Japan's modern political economy, especially less well-known or unorthodox ideas overlooked by many Western texts. As such, it deserves to become a standard in bringing students (in the widest sense of the term) up to a graduate, if not higher, level understanding. It would definitely also make enlightening reading to those Western policy makers and commentators on Japan who have yet to grasp the subtleties of Japan's rise and the even more complicated factors behind its current decline.

Pempel convincingly argues in REGIME SHIFT that the major domestic and international changes taking place in Japan during the last decade or more have cumulatively resulted in a fundamental transformation in Japan's political economy. He then traces the consequences for Japan's present and future of this alteration. A major attempt to synthesize what others have seen as disparate, unconnected events and trends at both domestic and international levels into a coherent view of where Japan is and is going. Must reading for anyone interested in Japanese politics and economics, and its place in the world.

since the 1982, the developmental state, articulated by Chalmers Johson in his infulential book 'MITI', has been the standard approach in the field of North East Asian studies at least in the circle of political economy. but the model of developmental state does not fit into the phenomenon since the 1980s, in SOuth Korea, and the 1973, in Japan. the bureacrats is not that autonoumous like the past, i.e. the rapid growth period, the ruling party proned to be the masters of fork barrel politics, and constituents were not that concensual like the past. there must be some 'shift'. Pempel's work is the attempt to provide a comprehensive framework to explain the shift in systematic and succinct way. his framework is based on the concept of 'regime' which is common in the field of comparative politics. I think he succeeded in that point.
but the concept of regime has some limitation: for example, it can't expalin why keiretsu or main bank system developed and why it has been disolved since 1980s. sure I know it was not Pempel's intention to include them. but to understand Japan or Korea, we should include big businesses. without them, explanation can't be comprehensive. it's the point of political economy, I think.