State as Process: The Effect of Party and Class on Citizen Participation in Japanese Local Government

Attempts to redistribute the power of the state, such as through greater citizen participation in policy decision-making, usually end in failure. Scholars attribute that failure to a variety of causes: the clumsiness or self-interestedness of bureaucracy, an elitist official culture, demand overload, or pressure from a dominant class. These explanations see the state in static terms, as possessed of certain fixed attributes. This paper examines two cases of grassroots citizen participation in Japanese local government occurring under different political conditions. Close investigation of the process of policy formation revealed that the main constraints on participation come from the local conservative political party and its supporting classes. These constraints manifested as process, not as constant structure.