Suchergebnisse

Ito (2001) has made an interesting argument on policy making in Japanese local governments. However, his analysis is based on the estimates from the models that do not properly take into account the temporal dependence of regional law adoption. The purpose of this comment is to point out a troubling aspect of Ito's event history modeling, and to put the existence of potential problems caused by temporally dependent observations into perspective.

Koizumi Junichiro's sweeping victory in the presidential primary of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) represents a palpable change in the national mood that may substantially affect the parliamentary conditions, although its impact on legislation is yet to be seen. In this essay, I briefly review the Diet in the past one year. In particular, the review deals with the legislative records in the 150–152 Diet sessions.

The institutional design of the Japanese Diet is commonly believed to necessitate interparty accommodation & to make the legislative process more "viscous" than it appears. This common belief about the Diet is challenged by examining the Constitution, the Diet Law, the House Rules, & parliamentary practices with special attention to agenda-setting procedures, & argues that the "unanimity norm" is less binding than commonly recognized. By applying the criteria proposed by Doring, this paper compares the Diet with Western European parliaments, & shows that it ranks relatively high in terms of the ruling majority's ability to control the legislative agenda. Although the postwar Diet is modeled on the legislative process in the US Congress, it is critically important to keep in mind that the constitutional principle of the Diet follows the fusion of power in the British parliament. The picture that emerges from the analysis is in strong contrast to the traditional image of the Japanese Diet & sheds new light on the majoritarian foundation of the Diet. 2 Tables, 1 Figure. Adapted from the source document.