Hey! Say Ishin: Ōmae Ken'ichi's and Hashimoto Tōru's policy entrepreneurship and the neoliberal reorientation of contemporary Ishin politics

This article reevaluates contemporary Ishin by comparing two policy entrepreneurs - managerialist guru & Omacr;mae Ken'Ichi, and former Osaka governor Hashimoto T & omacr;ru. It argues that & Omacr;mae's and Hashimoto's policy entrepreneurship put contemporary Ishin on a managerialist and neoliberal trajectory and fashioned it into a policymaking template for anti-establishment political reformers (kaikakuha). Despite using nationalist and anachronistic 'Ishin' terminology with his Heisei Ishin no Kai (Heisei Restoration) political movement of the early 1990s, & Omacr;mae adapted ideational innovation and coalition building strategies from his experience in McKinsey & Company to diffuse managerialist and neoliberal policy ideas through the broader political system. Some two decades later, Hashimoto's & Omacr;saka Ishin (Osaka Restoration) politics reified many of & Omacr;mae's ideas and practices through a form of 'technocratic populism', in which a seemingly incompatible pairing of anti-establishment populism and the reliance on technical 'experts' underpins the governing process. Using the 'policy entrepreneur' analytical framework', the first two sections of this article pinpoint the critical juncture where & Omacr;mae inverted Ishin's state-building logic into an anti-establishment, neoliberal platform. The final section outlines Hashimoto's personalisation of the executive offices of local government and offers a novel look at populist governance in Japan.