How Policies Change: The Japanese Government and the Aging Society

John Creighton Campbell

Published by Princeton University Press 1992

How Policies Change

The Japanese Government and the Aging Society

John Creighton Campbell

Volume 138 in the series Princeton Legacy Library

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400862955

Overview
Contents

About this book

Japan is aging rapidly, and its government has been groping with the implications of this profound social change. In a pioneering study of postwar Japanese social policy, John Creighton Campbell traces the growth from small beginnings to an elaborate and expensive set of pension, health care, employment, and social service programs for older people. He argues that an understanding of policy change requires a careful disentangling of social problems and how they come to be perceived, the invention (or borrowing) of policy solutions, and conflicts and coalitions among bureaucrats, politicians, interest groups, and the general public. The key to policy change has often been the strategies adopted by policy entrepreneurs to generate or channel political energy. To make sense of all these complex processes, the author employs a new theory of four "modes" of decision-making--cognitive, political, artifactual, and inertial. Campbell refutes the claim that there is a unique "Japanese-style welfare state." Despite the big differences in cultural values, social arrangements, economic priorities, and political control, government responsibility for the "aging-society problem" is broadly similar to that in advanced Western nations. However, Campbell's account of how Japan has taken on that responsibility raises new issues for our understanding of both Japanese politics and theories of the welfare state.

Originally published in 1992.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Reviews

Winner of the 1993 Ohira Memorial Prize, Masayoshi Memorial Foundation

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Tables and Figures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
A Note on Conventions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xvii
CHAPTER ONE. Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
CHAPTER TWO. A Theory of Policy Change Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
CHAPTER THREE. The Aging Problem: Establishing Pensions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
CHAPTER FOUR. Policy in the 1960s: The Old-People Problem Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
CHAPTER FIVE. The Old-People Boom and Policy Change Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
CHAPTER SIX. Starting Small Programs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
CHAPTER SEVEN. New Agenda: The Aging-Society Problem Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
CHAPTER EIGHT. Expanding Employment Policy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	254
CHAPTER NINE. Health Care Reform Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	282
CHAPTER TEN. Reforming the Pension System Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313
CHAPTER ELEVEN. Conclusions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	352
APPENDIX. National Programs for the Aged Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	397
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	405

(Deutsch)