Politics East and West: A Comparison of Japanese and British Political Culture

A Comparison of Japanese and British Political Culture

Curtis H. Martin, Bruce Stronach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780873328951
• eBook ISBN: 9781351715492
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 1992: This book compares stability and change in the political culture of the relatively new Asian democracy Japan and the much older Western democracy Britain. While the democratic polity emerged incrementally and indigenously in Britain, it was essentially a modern and in many ways foreign implant in Japan. By analysing long-term trends and recent changes in political attitudes, support for government institutions, participation, voting behaviour, and policy-making in the two polities, the authors seek to bring us a unique perspective on these two dynamic island political cultures on opposite ends of the Eurasian land mass. This study will be useful as a supplemental text in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative political systems or political cultures, particularly those focusing on industrial democracies. It can also be used in courses on either British or Japanese politics.

Part I
Political Values and Attitudes

Part I is concerned with the political values and attitudes toward political objects that underlie the political culture. Values address those aspects of political relations and processes that citizens consider true, appropriate, and desirable, such as individual liberty, equality, or social harmony. Attitudes address citizens' disposition toward the political self and other actors (national identity, efficacy, and trust), and toward the system (national pride, compliance, participation). Part I will consider all these but attitudes toward participation, which we defer to Part II. Chapter 1 examines values that lie at the core of the British and Japanese political cultures. Chapter 2 defines and compares their respective senses of national identity and pride. Chapter 3 examines the relative prevalence of political efficacy and trust, and Chapter 4 embarks on a consideration of popular support and regime legitimacy. As we set out, we shall define some of the terms around which our discussion will revolve. Efficacy will refer to the self-confident feelings of citizens about their ability to express demands and act in an influential capacity. Trust will refer to the attitudes citizens have about the honesty of politicians, their willingness to listen, and their ability to produce desired outcomes. In other studies, efficacy is sometimes referred to as "internal efficacy," while trust is sometimes referred to as "external efficacy" (Abramson 1983: 134-45; Barnes, Kaase et al. 1979: 573-74). Acquiescence is the willingness of citizens, for a variety of reasons including trust, pragmatism or tradition, to let supervisors and officials make decisions for them. It is this behavior, not necessarily "deference," that remains prevalent in Britain and Japan. Deference has been one of the most vexing terms in the literature on political culture. After more than twenty-five years, the debate over whether or not deference is dead in Britain has yet to be laid completely to rest. Part of the problem lies in establishing motives for the passive political behaviors often associated with deference. In this study, deference will refer to a particular variant of acquiescence, one based on trust and respect. The distinction is important for a discussion of politics in both Britain and Japan, where generally passive attitudes and behaviors are still more prevalent by some measures than in other industrial states. Not all passive behavior is truly deferent, and there is much evidence that deferential attitudes have indeed declined, or have long been weaker than supposed. Support will refer to the willingness of citizens both to comply with authority and to acquiesce in the exercise of the decision-making power, and to fulfill their participant roles. It refers to Almond and Verba's "subject" and "citizen" competencies. In our study, we accordingly distinguish between compliant/subject support, in reference to the former, and participant/citizen support, in reference to the latter. In Part I, we will confine our discussion to the more passive compliant/subject support. Support may be offered out of tradition, through pragmatic acceptance, or through strong normative agreement. People may support the political system, without necessarily feeling that it is morally just, fair, ideal, or ideologically "correct." On the other hand, support as we define it may not be coerced. Legitimacy refers to a particular kind of support that is normatively based, and accepts that exercise of authority by the government is right and proper. Perhaps the major question addressed in Part I is the degree of popular support and legitimacy enjoyed by the British and Japanese democracies. We find that evidence of widespread full legitimacy of the political order is elusive for both countries, where the incidence of political cynicism is extensive. It is especially lacking in Japan, which, despite a remarkably homogeneous population, lacks a sense of national pride comparable to the British, who are among the most proud. However, when political support is widely defined, there is, by contrast, ample evidence of nonnormative bases of support. While "legitimacy" is often considered essential, the fact is that "support"—as we use the term—may be perfectly adequate for the effective functioning of the regime. Conversely, support is impossible if people believe the government is unjust, unfair, or ideologically blasphemous. What we are saying is that support, to be effective, may be either normative or value neutral. The fact that politics is of relatively little salience across the industrial democracies should alert us to the possibility that for many, political values and attitudes may be rather weakly developed, and that this may account for the apparent absence of strongly affirmative support.

1
Political Values and the Political Process

An understanding of values is of such importance to political analysis that politics has been defined by some as the process by which values are allocated for a society and its political system (Deutsch 1974: 12). Values define the parameters of what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, in the practice and outcomes of politics. They may reflect preferences for policy outputs—such as liberty, security, welfare, or harmony—or process—such as participation, compromise, or consensus. Values are the raw material from which are derived other components of the political culture: attitudes and beliefs about politics, and political behavior. They shape perceptions of role and place vis-à-vis the political system. As Ridley (1984: 4) has observed, for example, "While constitutional traditions shape the formal arrangements made for the redress of grievances, it is society's values that will determine how individuals actually set about complaints against authority." Lastly, political values guide society in the creation, maintenance, modification and replacement of political institutions and practices. Values do not operate on attitudes and behavior in any deterministic way. It is no more possible reliably to infer behavior from values than it is to infer values from behavior. At the individual level, values may be in conflict, or poorly defined, or tentatively held, obscuring the link between thought and action. By the same token, people may act in contradiction of one or more of their values for any number of reasons. Still, where values are widely held in a society, they will affect the normally acceptable parameters of politics. They will most certainly affect political speech and debate, if not always action. Given the importance of language in shaping the meaning of events, this is not an inconsiderable effect (Edelman in Pekonen 1989: 133).

The purpose of this chapter is to identify and explain in broad terms some of the underlying values of the political cultures of Britain and Japan. Our purpose is not to identify all the major values of each system, and though there is much to be learned from comparative study of valued policy outcomes, these lie beyond the scope of this work (see Heidenheimer et al. 1990). We have chosen instead to emphasize three process value dimensions, which are especially significant for illuminating and comparing the political cultures of Japan and Britain. The first of these is the individualist/collectivist dimension. It is concerned with the relative value or rank which the polity assigns to individual rights vis-à-vis the rights of wider political community. It subsumes a separate but related authoritarian/libertarian dimension that focuses specifically on the authority relations between the individual and collective society, as embodied in the state. The second, conflictual/consensual dimension, concerns the relative expectation and tolerance of conflict in the normal political process. To what degree do the rules of politics incorporate or suppress competition and the clash of interests? The third, universalistic/particularistic dimension, concerns the extent to which either a rigid framework of interdependent values—that is, an ideology—or a flexible framework of loosely connected values, is applied to the definition and resolution of political problems. This dimension consists of several related scales including the ideological/pragmatic, contractual/legal, and absolutist/relativist.

Each of the above three process values has been shaped or sustained by dynamic, historical influences. One of these most suggestive of the contrast between Japan and Britain has been the extent to which the development of the polity was organic or nonorganic, that is, the extent to which the polity evolved in concert with indigenous social and cultural forces, or was imposed under external pressures and constraints. While this particular developmental variable can be related to all three of the above values dimensions, we might be most concerned with its effect on the conflictual/consensual dimension—not with respect to conflict within society, but with respect to potential conflict between society and polity. The British polity, which is organic, has in the past enjoyed a reputation for widespread political consensus. Even in the light of widely observed challenges to consensus, many observers continue to credit the process of constitutional development with providing stability and legitimacy. To what extent does the absence in Japan of an analogous organic relationship between society and polity suggest a more conflicted constitutional reality? In short, how does the organic/nonorganic origin of the two polities affect their legitimacy? We approach such a sweeping historical question humbly and cautiously, recognizing the obstacles to identifying causality. A fortiori, we do not attempt to answer the generic question of whether a native-grown political system enjoys greater legitimacy than one imposed from without. Such an exploration would have to be far more inclusive of different polities than the scope that the present study permits. Nevertheless, it is an important dimension of the Japan-Britain comparison.

Finally, we wish to consider the issue of value change, which potentially cuts across all three of the other values dimensions we have identified. The concept of political culture stresses continuity of values, but it need not exclude the process of change. As Eckstein (1988: 793) points out, while "continuity is ... an ideal-type expectation ... akin to that of inertia in the Gallilean conception of motion," it does not rule out "changes of direction or rest, acceleration, and deceleration." There is extensive evidence of change throughout the industrial democracies that needs to be explained. Where these societies are located along the individualist/collectivist, harmony/conflict, and universalistic/particularistic values dimensions can, like political institutions themselves, be expected to change. Many observers during the 1970s became intrigued with the possibility that values change, stimulated by social and economic change, might be leading to less material and less deferential values—that is, in the general paradigm, to a weakening of centralized or corporatist politics in favor of politics that is less hierarchical, more individualistic and participatory, though generally less harmonious. Postmodernists, on the other hand, rejected the concept of linear values change, and focused instead on the possibility that fragmentation, even incoherence of values, was characteristic of contemporary culture.

Individualist/Collectivist

A central normative dimension of politics in Britain and Japan defines the relative worth assigned to the individual and to the group as actors in society. Along the scale from group-oriented to individual-oriented norms, we shall use "collectivism" to indicate the belief in the preeminence of the interests of the group or community over the needs of the individual, and in the leading role of the group in the articulation of interests. In both Britain and Japan group norms are deeply rooted and pervasive in politics, and are readily visible in political organization and process. But both the basic character, and the relative importance of group norms is quite different in the two countries. In Britain, the balance, or tension, between collectivist and individualist strands represents an important dynamic element in the political culture. The individualist strand can be seen in the enduring British preference for personal liberty, expressed in public opinion and action, and in the neoconservative embrace of the philosophical liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By contrast, ideas of individual worth or rights had limited circulation or appeal in Japan until the twentieth century. Even in post–World War II democratic Japan, they remain less salient to politics than other norms, though there is some evidence that economic development and increased affluence have significantly increased some aspects of individualism in Japan. The sheer mass of the intellectual foundations of both individualism and collectivism in Britain distinguishes it from the Japanese case, where culture has been much more important than intellectual traditions as a vehicle for the transmission of social and political values.

Collectivism as a political concept appears in two related incarnations. The first emphasizes collectivism as a preference for group-centered political activity and articulation. In this view, individual needs are subordinated to or incorporated into those of the group. Individual needs are identified with and met through the satisfaction of group needs. The individual's needs are believed to find their most effective expression through voluntary associational groups, or in the specific socialist variant, through one's natural social class, and demands are organized and expressed primarily through these groups, rather than through the sum of individual pressure. However, the individual's identification with and dependency on the group is normally far less pervasive in Britain than in Japan. There, in sharp contrast, collectivism is more firmly rooted in the social and psychological dependency of the individual on the group, through such social relationships as amae (emotional dependency) and giri (mutual obligation). Furthermore, Japanese society is far more clearly defined by numerous concentric, socially cohesive groups, than is Britain. The tradition of individualism is too strong in Britain to permit the general acceptance of the idea that the individual personality must be immersed in the group, though the socialist concept of "fellowship" comes close to this position. In any case, collectivism views the group as an appropriate and rational instrument of political organization and action. It is this "group-centered" aspect of collectivism with which we shall primarily be concerned.

In the second incarnation, collectivism is the assertion of the power of the national community, embodied in the interventionist state, over the individual. It is concerned not with the relative value of the individual and the community, but with the degree of state power over the individual. It assigns a special and significant role to government as first among society's various collectivities. The "collectivist" or "welfare state" mobilizes vast resources and powers, presumably to advance the national, collective good. This "welfare state" manifestation of collectivism has preoccupied much of the literature on British politics, reviewed favorably in Beer's Modern British Politics (1926), and critically in Greenleaf's The British Political Tradition (1983a). While this view of collectivism could also be applied to Japan, the cultural, holistic aspect is far more often stressed (Richardson and Flanagan 1984: 125–31). Concepts of corporatism, however, themselves collectivist in nature, have frequently been applied to the politics of both countries, and there are certainly ways in which the Japanese state is even more interventionist than that of Britain, for example in its role in planning industrial strategy.

Britain

Collectivism in both of the above senses—as group-centered norms and as intervention of state power—has been influential in the evolution of British politics. What Studlar (1976: 107) calls an "appreciation . . for the emotional benefits of collective human endeavor" has been present from medieval Toryism, to Disrae...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• PART I: POLITICAL VALUES AND ATTITUDES
• PART II: POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
• PART III: POLICY MAKING
• References
• Index
• About the Author