Poverty, Equality, and Growth: The Politics of Economic Need in Postwar Japan (Harvard East Asian Monographs (Paperback)) - Softcover

Milly, Deborah J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674009584 ISBN 13: 9780674009585

Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002

Synopsis

In striking contrast to the large indigent population in Japan in the 1950s, very few Japanese live in poverty today. This book explains the Japanese government's decision to respond to poverty by promoting equality as the basis for a social compromise. Milly argues that to account for why and how political actors crafted a program that won acceptance, we must look beyond them and identify how they relied on knowledge and normative arguments. This book straddles theoretical fault lines in comparative politics by exploring the interactions among choice, language, knowledge, and institutions in policy processes, and has implications for the ongoing debate between proponents of rational choice theory as a universal explanation for the decisions of political actors and those who focus on historically or culturally specific conditions.

About this title

About the Author:

Deborah J. Milly is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Review:

The author adroitly seeks and offers answers to the big question: how do we account for the substance of acommodational alternatives that are generated in the search for cooperative solutions? (Euro Japanese Journal)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0674009584
• ISBN 13: 9780674009585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416