Where tradition meets change: Japan's agricultural politics in transition

Japanese agricultural politics is transiting from an old to a new model, one that reflects broader changes in Japan's political economy. Those changes include a rebalancing of electoral power away from rural interests, the emergence of forces working for political and economic reform, the buttressing of executive power at the expense of the customary policymaking apparatus, and the ascendancy of a prime minister whose policy agenda is antithetical to the very foundations on which traditional power structures have rested. So far, however, the impact on farm policy has been modest. Vestiges of the old system continue to complicate the outlook for agricultural reform.