IN IRISH political life the promise to reform the public service is a bit like the draining of the Shannon, a hardy perennial, and a challenge that is of Augean stables magnitude. And ever mañana, mañana. That has always also been the case of Japan. But now a new broom in Tokyo is sweeping all before him, and, to the amazement of observers is beginning to have success in tackling the legendary and untouchable power and inertia of the Japanese bureaucracy.
The election victory last summer of Yukio Hatoyama and his Democratic Party (DP) broke the near-54-year monopoly on political power of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). He now hopes to do likewise to the state apparatus, to “escape the bureaucracy”, by attacking the stranglehold of elite career functionaries at central ministries and by devolving power to elected politicians.
Hatoyama has already sent teams of legislators in to direct the day-to-day running of ministries and is embarking on a second round of exhaustive paring of budgets for waste. The last round saved some $7 billion and saw officials facing unprecedented parliamentary grilling. Senior appointments and promotions have now been centralised in the prime minister’s office, and those unwilling to co-operate have been retired. “The bureaucracy’s autonomy on personnel issues had been the source of their independence and ability to hold on to power,” argues Yoshito Sengoku, minister of civil service reform.
The prime minister’s next targets are the finance ministry’s death-like grip on the budget purse strings and the bureaucracy’s long-standing practice of writing laws and formulating policy decisions, which were then approved pro forma by the LDP-controlled parliament.
Resistance inside and outside the apparatus of state has been vocal. Damaging news leaks proliferate, and DP officials believe the multiplicity of embarrassing inquiries into party funding emanating from public prosecutors in the justice ministry are not unconnected to opposition to the reform.
Mr Hatoyama’s government’s ratings have taken a hammering, down to 30 per cent from 70 per cent on his election. But the poll ratings are associated more with the scandal over misreporting of $4.4 million in political funds which has come close to unseating the powerful DP secretary general, Ichiro Ozawa, and to public disquiet over a row with the US over moving an airbase off the island of Okinawa. On the other hand, clipping the wings of the bureaucracy is a very popular policy.