of Ozawa's party and the other "new parties" in the July 1993 elections, and the establishment of a flimsy non-LDP coalition held together by a vague consensus concerning the need for electoral reform. Had Ozawa and his followers chosen to remain in the fold, the LDP would have prolonged its mastery of the parliamentary realm. And had the LDP's leadership correctly perceived Ozawa's desperate desire to protect and enhance his political power, steps could have been taken to keep him and his followers from defecting. In the end, the LDP could not agree on a political reform bill because the career politicians, who had labored arduously to construct personal support networks, opposed institutional reforms that threatened their incumbency.
The enabling conditions for political reform in Italy and Japan were
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thus broadly similar. The deaths of their respective hegemonic regimes were caused by political trichinosis, contracted from decades of doling out ever- increasing quantities of pork. This rapacious appetite for pork and the
pervasive clientelist structures in both polities were the accumulated product of rational strategies adopted by politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate officials to manipulate the institutional rules of the game for maximum benefit. The end of the cold war, economic hard times, and corruption
scandals involving major political figures—these played a part, but structural imperatives eventually made conditions ripe for reform. And in both polities, exposés involving systematized clientelism—especially in government
procurement and public works—generated widespread condemnation and demands for reform. No matter how self-serving their respective motives, the vocal endorsement of institutional reform on the part of established powerbrokers like Bettino Craxi and Ozawa Ichiro reinforced the mounting pressures for change. The fall of the Christian Democrats and the LDP
resulted from the inability of the respective political systems to harness the spiraling ante and ever more costly by-products of systematized political clientelism.
1994). For example, nearly one-third of the sixty-eight firms competing to construct a park in Kobe City submitted bids under the minimum acceptable price. The losers in the bidding for a riparian project in Miyagi Prefecture accused the winner of "dumping" (ibid., 9 and 14 Feb. 1994). About ¥456 million separated the high and low bids submitted by twenty-two joint ventures vying for a tunnel project in Ibaraki Prefecture. In the case of a highway tunnel
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project in Kagawa Prefecture, the lowest bid among the twenty-eight competing firms came from a Tokyo-based firm that had not been designated to bid in the original round (ibid., 1 Dec. 1993 and 14 Feb.
1994). An editorial in the Asahi Shinbun commented, "Contractors with no previous record are jumping into the fray and winning contracts, competition to submit the low bid is intensifying, and a succession of contractors are submitting bids below the minimum acceptable price. This state of affairs would have been inconceivable in the era of designated bidding" (14 Feb.
1994). Indeed, the changed environment prompted the chair of the Japan Federation of Construction Contractors to call for "self-restraint" in curbing excessive competition among firms vying to submit the low bid. MOC has even contemplated a policy to restrain price-dumping in an industry long characterized by, inflated bids (ibid., 22 Feb. and 4 Mar. 1994).
Other changes have included the appearance of new actors at the credit- claiming podium. For example, Socialist Party MP Koshiishi Azuma actually preceded an LDP rival in claiming credit for the construction of a segment of the Trans-Chubu Highway through Yamanashi Prefecture (ibid., 6 Feb.
1994). Naturally, such events rarely occurred during the era of LDP
hegemony. Moreover, MOC's new policy of self-restraint in the securing of postretirement posts for its upper officials has produced some results. At a press conference in March 1994, Construction Minister Igarashi Kozo
announced that in 1993 fewer than 20 MOC officials descended into positions with construction firms, compared with 145 individuals the previous year.
And, breaking with tradition, no upper officials assumed positions with large- scale general contractors. According to Deputy Vice-Minister Ban Noboru, the self-restraint policy obliged MOC's 1993 contingent of descending angels to commence second careers outside the construction industry or, in some cases, to opt for outright retirement (ibid., 22 Mar. 1994).
Nonetheless, although the reforms of 1993 and early 1994 marked the most concentrated and significant instance of institutional transformation since the early stages of the U.S. Occupation, they have not eradicated all vestiges of the old order. The 1993 general elections toppled the LDP from the
commanding heights of the legislative realm, but former LDP legislators claimed the most powerful posts in
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the ephemeral cabinets of Hosokawa Morihiro and Hata Tsutomu, and Ozawa replaced Kanemaru as the shadow ruler in these "non-LDP" cabinets.
Reminiscent of the "opening to the left" policy of Italy's Christian Democrats in the 1960s, the LDP became the dominant coalition partner in the
administration of Socialist Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi in June 1994.[17]
While the rules of the electoral game were significantly altered, the
Hosokawa cabinet had to offer concessions in order to secure a compromise with the LDP. The LDP had its way with regard to donations from
organizations and corporations, and, more importantly, the LDP dictated the number of single-seat districts. As a local contractor cynically observed,
"Even if the LDP loses power, nothing will change" (ibid. 19 Aug. 1993).
Italians, too, began to question the possibility of real change, given that Silvio Berlusconi reportedly once controlled many of the politicians arrested in the Mani Pulite operation. In the wake of the investigations, bribe-filled envelopes (bustarelle ) have continued to change hands.[18] For
meaningful change to take place, elected politicians will need good reasons to refuse bribe-filled envelopes or, for that matter melon boxes filled with cash. In the case of Japan, under an electoral order in which three-fifths of the legislative seats are to be chosen by a single-vote formula that
encourages clientelism, the best way to curtail such corruption is to reduce the cost of pursuing a political career by enforcing strict limits on campaign contributions and by increasing public financing for political parties.
Despite the introduction of a conditional open bidding system in the
allocation of large-scale public works contracts, the procurement system for small and medium-scale public works projects has not been modified.
Instances of bid-rigging have occurred even in projects using supposedly open bidding procedures.[19] In the words of a major construction company official, "The reform [of the bidding system] is nothing but a cheap trick to deceive the general public, and it's ridiculously silly. This will not cause dango to disappear" (ibid., 21 Oct. 1993). As a local contractor mused,
"Dango will continue just as it did under the designated bidder system"
(ibid., 25 Sept. 1993). Many recall that the anti-dango media campaign in the early 1980s forced the disbanding of the corrupt Construction Fellowship Society, which subsequently reemerged as the equally corrupt Management Har-
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mony Society (ibid., 22 Aug. 1990). And bid-rigging continued to take place even in the midst of the JFTC investigation into the activities of the Saitama Saturday Society (ibid., 10 May 1992). To minimize the by-products of bid- rigging, Japan have to initiate open, competitive bidding procedures for all
public works and be vigilant in enforcing painful penalties for antitrust violations.
Predictably, MOC's promise to exercise self-restraint has not put an end to the practice of Government bureaucrats descending into sinecures with construction firms and agencies that allocate public works contracts. The promise, a partial and temporary measure, was made just as arrests of MOC officials were anticipated in the zenekon scandal. Although some MOC
officials were questioned in the zenekon investigations, none was arrested or prosecuted. Once the sensational exposés and intense media scrutiny faded, public works bureaucrats again enjoyed postretirement sinecures as their deferred compensation for less-than-lucrative careers in the government bureaucracy. Piecemeal reforms cannot curb the social costs associated with a practice as deeply rooted as amakudari: what are needed are stricter regulations concerning the reemployment of ex-officials in firms that receive public contracts and an increase in the retirement age for government
officials.
Entrenched patterns of elite behavior die hard: "Although wholesale change in formal rules may take place, at the same time there will be many informal constraints that have great survival tenacity because they still resolve basic exchange problems among the participants, be they social, political, or
economic" (North 1990, 91). Meaningful reform requires more than cosmetic changes in the rules of the game; it demands overhauling the key
institutions that provide incentives for particular patterns of behavior among the political elite. It also demands that elites develop the will and the
stamina to enforce the letter as well as the spirit of the new rules. As long as the old patterns of behavior continue to perform essential functions for the political elite, those patterns will endure.
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