Fiscal rules specify quantitative targets for key budgetary aggregates. In this paper, we review the experience with such rules in Japan and in the EU. Comparing the performance of fiscal policy in the 1980s and 1990s until 2003, we find that the fiscal rule of the 1980s exerted some but not...

Though provided with the authority to strike down any official act, the Supreme Court of Japan has been widely regarded as reluctant to use that very substantial power. The author describes some institutional and doctrinal factors that might explain the Court's seemingly passivist stance,...

Scholars (e.g., Chalmers Johnson) routinely argue that university cliques dominate Japanese firms and bureaucracies. The graduates of the most selective schools, they explain, control and manipulate their employer. They cause it to hire from their alma mater. They skew internal career dynamics...

A successful post-conflict reconstruction is characterized by a self-sustaining liberal political, economic and social order that does not rely on external support. It is argued that the extent of reconstructed orders is constrained by their institutional prerequisites. These prerequisites - a...

In trying to develop a comparative evaluation of the role courts play in Japanese society, this article deals with three different aspects: first, the institutional similarities and differences that can be observed between the court systems in Japan and Germany; second, the access to justice in...