Japan's Dual Civil Society

MEMBERS WITHOUT ADVOCATES

Stanford University Press

Contents

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The largest antismoking organization in Japan, TOPIC, employs oneperson. Bungaku Watanabe, the lone employee, tells a story that illustratesthe surprising influence government regulations can have on the developmentof civil society organizations. The organization regularly mails itsnewsletter to the membership. Mr. Watanabe confessed to me that he has,on occasion, found it cheaper to pack a suitcase full of mailings, fly to Korea,and mail them from Korea to Japan. This is because the internationalpostage rate from Korea to Japan is less than the Japanese domestic rate,even with the additional expense of a plane ticket. I could not help but contrastthe image of Mr. Watanabe laboring alone in his office with that of theplush office space of the American Cancer Society in midtown Manhattan,one of its 3,400 local units. The American Cancer Society, like other tax-exemptAmerican groups, can send a piece of mail to your door for abouta penny—barely over the cost of e-mail spam (U.S. Postal Service Publication417). The influence of the state—including unexpected influencessuch as the postage-rate example—on the development of civil societyorganizations is the theme of this book.

Observers of Japan are so used to seeing only small civil society groupsin the country that they have lost sight of the fact that the absence of largegroups presents an analytical puzzle; familiarity with the empirical factshas lulled us into accepting this situation as natural. In fact, Japan's civilsociety is characterized by many small local groups, but few large professionalizedgroups—a pattern I term Japan's "dual civil society." However,from an international perspective, it is surprising that Japan's civilsociety organizations are so small. The two most reliable predictors of anation's civil society, income and education, also predict which individualsvolunteer. Japan is near the top of the world's league tables in both categories.Anecdotally, Japan is seen as rich in social capital. And Japan hasa history of citizen activism, for example, the massive environmentalmovement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the intense protestsagainst the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty renewal in 1960. Therefore, it isnot enough to take the lack of large civil society groups in Japan forgranted; rather, the situation of Japan's civil society needs to be explained.

No explanation of Japan's civil society that ignores the role of the statecan be considered complete. I define civil society as the organized nonstate,nonmarket sector, as elaborated in the next section. Political institutions,including the regulatory framework constructed by the state, directlyand indirectly structure the development of civil society. Using thepolitical institutional argument, I also explain why Japan's civil societycan encompass both a history of widespread activism and few largeorganizations.

At a conceptual level, no one would doubt that a concerted effort bythe state to smash a civil society group—think of Solidarity in Poland inthe 1980s or Falun Gong in China two decades later—could have seriousrepercussions on how the group develops, whether or not the state's effortsare ultimately successful. Sensational as they are, overt attempts atsuppression are not the only way in which states can influence the developmentof civil society organizations. However, the importance of otherelements of a regulatory framework is less obvious.

What is the role of the state in the development of civil society? As BobEdwards and Michael Foley provocatively remark in the introduction toa collection of the most influential recent essays on civil society and socialcapital, "The civil society argument focuses on the ways in which societyorganizes itself independently of the state or over against the state. Butstates arguably shape their societies as profoundly as the reverse. Theyprovide the constitutional, legal, political, and even moral frameworkwithin which social organizations arise and operate" (Edwards and Foley2001, p. 13, their emphasis).

In fact, through its direct and indirect structuring of incentives, thestate promotes a particular pattern of civil society organization and structuresthe "rules of the game," which in part determine who plays and whoflourishes. At the center of this book is a causal argument: state structuringof incentives accounts for the pattern of civil society development. Asthe sole non-Western industrialized democracy, Japan is clearly an importantcase for students of civil society, and I draw much of the evidencefor my argument from the Japanese case. In the context of Japan, the argumentis that the pattern of dual civil society organization that we see inJapan today—a plethora of small, local groups (such as nearly 300,000neighborhood associations) and a dearth of large, professionalized, independentorganizations (such as Greenpeace)—is explained by Japan's politicalinstitutions.

A strict legal framework, limited funding pattern, indirect regulations(such as postal regulations), and the profile of opportunities that a state'spolitical structure creates for influencing policy—all these factors profoundlyaffect the development of civil society in Japan. The regulatoryframework—rules concerning what kind of groups are allowed to formand state funding for groups—has clear implications, but less obvious arethe implications of such incentives as bulk-mailing discounts for nonprofitorganizations, which promote mass memberships, or differentialaccess to the policy-making process by interest groups.

Overtly and subtly, these measures have had an effect: this is the centralargument of this book. My core argument, which I term the "politicalinstitutional" argument, is that the Japanese state's influence hasshaped the dual civil society pattern of development. However, I also propoundthree other important, related arguments about the state and civilsociety in Japan. My second argument is that the postwar history of Japan'scivil society is likewise illuminated by a focus on the power of theregulatory framework. This is the "ice age" argument that explains theretreat of citizen activism from the heady days of the late 1960s and early1970s.2 My third, or "regulatory contestation," argument contends thatthe regulatory framework itself is the product of political contestationand can change. My fourth argument is that Japan's dual civil society supportsdemocracy through social capital generation and community building,but largely lacks sizable professional groups that influence the publicsphere or policymaking. Thus, Japan's civil society can be characterizedas "members without advocates," my fourth and final argument.

The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows: The next sectionsketches out my definition of "civil society." The same section situatesthis study in the context of other analyses of interest groups and civil societythat have also found a powerful role of the state in shaping the dimensionsof organizational life. Following this review, I move on to afuller preview of the four main arguments of this book just delineated. Afterthis preview, I first consider a pair of rival explanations before returningto the political institutional argument in somewhat more detail bybreaking it into the parts that compose it: regulatory framework, politicalopportunity structure, and other indirect influences. The final sectionof the chapter provides a road map for the remaining chapters in thebook, tying them to the development of the four main arguments.

Reconceptualizing Civil Society

Discussions of civil society are too often plagued by vagueness. To makeclear my causal claims about the patterning of civil society development inJapan, we must define "civil society." As above, this book defines civilsociety as the organized, nonstate, nonmarket sector. This definition encompassesvoluntary groups of all kinds, such as nonprofit foundations,charities, think tanks, and choral societies. It includes nonprofit organizations(NPOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other voluntaryor tertiary associations. It is larger in scope than civic groups alone,which more narrowly incorporate participatory organizations. It is alsolarger than the nonprofit sector, which excludes unincorporated voluntarygroups and which is also sometimes limited to groups performing publicpurposes (Hall 1987). On the other hand, civil society does not include laborunions, trade associations, professional associations, companies, orother market sector groups. It also excludes government bureaucracy,parastatal organizations, and political parties—as well as the family.

This definition has some virtues, not the least of which is that it is concise.In addition, because it specifies "organized," it points to countablegroups. It also contains the key common elements of most definitions andauthors. It excludes market organizations, which feature prominently insome contemporary analyses and in the writings of G. W. F. Hegel, KarlMarx, and Adam Smith. Neither does it attempt to delineate a publicsphere. Rather, the presumption is that such a sphere requires and is sustainedby these kinds of organized groups. This definition also brings intofocus the totality of Japan's civil society, including the understudied localgroups. Its chief demerit is that it is essentially a negative definition forwhat is a positive, vibrant sector.

Under this definition, it is precisely within this sector that patternsemerge. Civil society is not a dichotomous variable. Rather, attentionshould be paid to both the number of and participation in organizationsand to the type of organizations that exist. Civil society can vary in leveland composition from time to time and from place to place. Besides thecontent of the organization or its aims, civil society organizations in onestate might be predominantly affiliated with religious organizations, forexample, while in another they might be strictly secular. Some currentanalysts point to falling participation in civic organizations to argue thatAmerican civil society is declining, while others cite the increasing numberof foundations, NGOs, and NPOs to make the opposite argument(Putnam 2000; Salamon et al. 1999). Rather than viewing this as a paradox,we should analyze this trend (if it is a trend—the dispute still burnshot) as a change in the pattern of civil society. And, of course, under thisdefinition, the Japanese pattern of few large professionalized nonprofit organizationsand many smaller, grassroots organizations snaps into focus.

In fact, the political institutional explanation advanced in this bookhelps us understand the three perhaps most important characteristics ofJapan's civil society: its small professional and advocacy sector, its significantlocal and grassroots component, and its recent increase in size.

Theoretical Background

The state shapes civil society everywhere, not just in Japan. ExaminingFrance, Jonah Levy writes, "the organizational dimensions (of civil society)are politically mediated and changeable" (Levy 1999, p. 8), while CeciliaChessa, looking at Germany, argues, "the state utilizes active andinterventionist policies in order to manipulate the entire spectrum of interestrepresentation" (Chessa 2000, p. 12). Sometimes, as in the MiddleEast and socialist Eastern Europe, the state can suppress civil society to agreat degree or limit it to the option of social movements (Carapico 1998;Howard 1999). In countries where the state is too weak, as in several Africancases, the legal infrastructure and other guarantees for civil societyare also too fragile for civil society to blossom. However, even when thestate does not fall into one of these two extreme categories, we should paycareful attention to how the state shapes civil society, for it does not simplyforce or raise civil society to a certain level. Rather, the institutions ofthe state shape the pattern in which civil society itself develops. In nationswith a more developed civil society, however, the importance of the stateis no less.

In so many ways, institutions and how they structure incentives arewidely recognized as critical to group formation and operation. This logicapplies equally to civil society. In political science, it is not problematic toclaim that state actions and institutions, such as legal frameworks, powerfullyshape the kinds of interest groups, corporatist arrangements, or laborunions that form in a nation. Many attempts to form labor unions inthe United States failed until the federal government recognized their rightto organize and provided a framework for peaceful organization drives(Forbath [1989] 1991; Walker 1991). It is also a widely held concept thatthe regulatory environment provided by the state affects the economicdevelopment of a nation by providing incentives for the formation andoperation of companies and corporations.

Institutions structure which groups form and how successful theyare. As Suzanne Berger writes in the introduction to an important collectionof essays, "Among the specificities of national experience thathave shaped interest group formation, one stands out in the essays as particularlyimportant: the timing and characteristics of state intervention"(Berger 1981, p. 14). Many of the interest groups referred to were economicinterests, so her argument parallels the concerns of this book andalso shares a common logic. Claus Offe adds in the same volume that theconcrete shape and content of organized interest representation is alwaysa result of interest plus opportunity plus institutional status (Offe 1981).Groups organize in response to state policies, either defensively to protectthemselves or proactively to gain access to new advantages that requirelobbying the state. State intervention affects the interests around whichgroups organize, as well as the strategies that the groups subsequentlyadopt, and thus helps to bring about a distinctive pattern of interestgroups in each West European nation.

In the American context, observers have pointed out that institutionalstructures created incentives for ambitious civil servants to organize associationsfor senior citizens three decades before groups designed to enlistthe elderly themselves arrived; that the National Rifle Association waslaunched in close consultation with the Department of the Army inthe nineteenth century (to familiarize citizens, as potential soldiers, witharms); that the American Legion was begun during World War I withgovernment support; that the American Farm Bureau Federation started asa collection of advisory committees to county agents organized by the Departmentof Agriculture; and that modern feminist organizations in theirearly years received millions of dollars of support from the Kennedyadministration before creating a mass membership base (Walker 1991).

Indeed, nothing is more central to the development of civil society thanthe framework of order provided by the state. Our attention should be focusedon how the state, directly and indirectly, structures the organizationof civil society. Some object to the claim that the state structures the organizationof civil society. Perhaps based on the experiences of EasternEuropean countries in the 1980s and 1990s, many observers see the stateand civil society as necessarily in opposition or at least hold that the statecan play no useful role in promoting the spread of civil society (Miller1992; Rau 1991; Tismaneanu 1990). This view finds an echo in the positionof American conservatives. The state has a kind of reverse Midastouch; wherever it touches, civil society withers (Beito 2000; Salamonand Anheier 1996; Schambra 1997). Yet the relationship between civil societyand the state is not one of pure opposition. This seems clearly truewhen we consider how many elements of social order, from propertyrights to infrastructure, that the state provides and that civil society needsto flourish. Michael Walzer goes so far as to identify the catch-22 of ademocratic civil society requiring a strong civil society and a strong civilsociety requiring a strong and responsive state as "the paradox of the civilsociety argument" (Walzer 1992, p. 102). As it turns out, evidence fromthis study sheds some light on this paradox by carefully breaking downthe constituent elements of a "strong civil society."

Studies of the nonprofit sector and civil society portray three conceptionsof the relationship between the state and civil society. First is civilsociety versus the state, or civil society in place of the state, as mentionedabove. Second is civil society portrayed as the independent sector or"partner in public service" with the state, in which civil society is anotheractor with public aims often cooperating with the state in serviceprovision (Salamon 1995; Smith and Lipsky 1993). Third is civil societyviewed as a source of social capital and civic engagement (Putnam 1993).Chapter 4 of this book examines neighborhood associations—voluntarygroups whose membership is drawn from a small, geographically delimitedand exclusive area (a neighborhood) and whose activities are multipleand centered on that same area—as a source of social capital andcivic engagement, but also frequently "partnering" with the state in someactivities. However, the perspective of this book is distinct from thesethree conceptions and closer to that suggested in studies by Alagappa(2004a, 2004b, 2004c), Berger (1981), Carapico (1998), Forbath ([1989]1991), Levy (1999), Pharr (2003), and Walker (1991).
(Continues...)Excerpted from Japan's Dual Civil Society by Robert Pekkanen. Copyright © 2006 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
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