Patricia L Maclachlan
Biographic Data
| ID | 1257673 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patricia L Maclachlan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patricia L |
| FAMILY NAME | Maclachlan |
| SIGNATURE | MACLACHLAN P L |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Japan in 2025
The year 2025 was a dramatic one for Japan. Domestically, it was punctuated by inflation and a rice crisis, the LDP–Komeito coalition’s loss of its majority in the July 20 Upper House election, and Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s replacement as LDP president by Takaichi Sanae, who went on to become Japan’s first female prime minister. In foreign affairs, Japan grappled with uncertainty in the US–Japan trade and defense relationship following Dona…
Mechanisms of Resistance: Informal Institutional Impediments to Japanese Postal Privatization
Why has Japan failed to fulfill the mission of its 2005 postal privatization legislation? The answer is informal institutions that empower the postmasters within the electoral system and facilitate the mobilization of elites on behalf of anti-reformist goals. To support this claim, I analyze three such institutions: the postmasters’ ownership of postal facilities; the re-employment of former bureaucrats by the postal system and of top postal empl…
Eiko Maruko Siniawer. Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan
In Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan, historian Eiko Maruko Siniawer explores different manifestations of waste—garbage, squandered natural resources, profligate spending, the absence of leisure time—both as negative side-effects of mass production and mass consumption and as a site for debate about middle-class affluence. As such, Waste is a highly ambitious work that defies easy summation. And herein lies both its main strengths and its weaknesses…
Japanese Farmers in Flux
The politics of Japanese agricultural reform is rapidly changing. Once dependent on foreign pressure, reform is now fueled by a deepening farm crisis and a breakdown in postwar political alignments. Focusing on the Abe government’s reform of Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, we explore Japan’s expanding capacity for executive leadership in the farm sector on behalf of market-oriented change
The politics and implications of postal reform
The Electoral Power of Japanese Interest Groups: An Organizational Perspective
What explains the electoral staying power of many Japanese interest groups in the wake of electoral reform? Electoral explanations provide part of the answer; candidates in elections to both houses of the Diet continue to face incentives—many of them unintended—to court the organized vote. But missing from such accounts is an explanation of why economically noncompetitive groups provide the bulk of such support. The primary reason for this, I arg…
The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 1871–2010
Koizumi and Japanese Politics: Reform Strategies and Leadership Style (review)
Reviewed by: Koizumi and Japanese Politics: Reform Strategies and Leadership Style Patricia L. Maclachlan (bio) Koizumi and Japanese Politics: Reform Strategies and Leadership Style. By Yū Uchiyama; translated by Carl Freire. London, Routledge, 2010. x, 210 pages. $130.00. Over the past five years, Japan has been plagued by a string of lackluster and short-lived prime ministers, each of whom did his bit to shatter the public’s hopes for strong, d…
One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective (review)
Reviewed by: One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective Patricia L. Maclachlan (bio) One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective. By Gregory J. Kasza. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2006. x, 189 pages. $32.50. It is customary in both scholarly and media circles to label modern Japan a welfare laggard. While focusing on economic growth, so the argument goes, Japan's developmental state has done far less than other advance…
The Evolution of Consumer Protection in Postwar Japan
Storming the Castle: The Battle for Postal Reform in Japan
This article explores the ideas and power struggles that have shaped the ongoing battle to privatize the Japanese postal services. For years, a coalition of commissioned postmasters, postal workers, bureaucrats and politicians resisted postal reform in part by appealing to the ‘traditional values’ symbolized by the state-run system and playing to the fears of ordinary citizens. Against this backdrop, Koizumi struggled to win the public over to hi…
Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States (review)
Reviewed by: Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States Patricia L. Maclachlan (bio) Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States. By Miranda A. Schreurs. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. xiii, 291 pages. $65.00, cloth; $24.00, paper. In this landmark new book, Miranda Schreurs seeks to explain why Japan, Germany, and the United States have pursued markedly different policy approaches [End Page …
Civilizing markets: Traditions of consumer politics in twentieth-century Britain, Japan and the United States
At the turn of the twenty-first century, consumers and politics stand in a paradoxical relationship. Never before have consumers in advanced economies had it so good. According to the proponents of more open and competitive global markets, consumers have been the principal beneficiaries of deregulation and trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, there has been a wave of consumer protests at international summits and in loca…
From subjects to citizens: Japan's evolving consumer identity
One of the most puzzling features of the postwar Japanese consumer movement has been its tendency to support pro‐producer goals in its political campaigns. This can be attributed to a distinctive postwar consumer identity that is rooted in the values and beliefs of the broader political economy and that stresses compromise among contending interests. Employing the theoretical language of ‘framing’, I explore the historical evolution of that ident…
Post Office Politics in Modern Japan: The Postmasters, Iron Triangles, and the Limits of Reform
This essay seeks to explain the political power of the commissioned postmasters in the context of their participation in one of postwar Japan's most enduring iron triangles. I show how the postmasters have evolved into an electoral ally of the Liberal Democratic Party and how their relationship with national bureaucrats complements that partnership. These political and bureaucratic linkages have enabled the postmasters to prevent significant refo…
The State of Civil Society in Japan
For all the obstacles that remain, civil society is burgeoning in Japan, and the idea of civil society is at the core of the current debate about how to reinvigorate the country. This book gathers the insights of American and Japanese scholars from the fields of political science, sociology, social psychology, and history to investigate the nature of associational life and the public sphere in Japan. It goes beyond assessing the condition of civi…
Japanese Civil Society in the Age of Deregulation: The Case of Consumers
Although scholars have long been interested in the relationships among civil society, the state and the market in advanced industrial democracies, the implications of state disengagement from the affairs of private firms for civil society have yet to be explored in the contemporary literature. My purpose in this essay has been to address this issue by examining the effects of deregulation on Japanese consumer society, paying particular attention …
Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism
Providing comparisons to the United States and Britain, this book examines Japan's postwar consumer protection movement. Organized largely by and for housewives and spurred by major cases of price gouging and product contamination, the movement led to the passage of basic consumer protection legislation in 1968. Although much of the story concerns the famous "iron triangle" of big business, national bureaucrats, and conservative party politics, M…
Protecting producers from consumer protection: The politics of products liability reform in Japan
This article explores the processes and political origins of the new products liability regime and the impact of that regime on both consumers and producers in Japan. I show that, while the 1994 Products Liability Act is a significant step forward for consumer protection and an intriguing example of convergence between Japanese tort law and international norms, the Act has been weakened as an instrument of consumer protection by business interest…
Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest
The Electoral Power of Japanese Interest Groups: An Organizational Perspective
What explains the electoral staying power of many Japanese interest groups in the wake of electoral reform? Electoral explanations provide part of the answer; candidates in elections to both houses of the Diet continue to face incentives—many of them unintended—to court the organized vote. But missing from such accounts is an explanation of why economically noncompetitive groups provide the bulk of such support. The primary reason for this, I arg…
Post Office Politics in Modern Japan: The Postmasters, Iron Triangles, and the Limits of Reform
This essay seeks to explain the political power of the commissioned postmasters in the context of their participation in one of postwar Japan's most enduring iron triangles. I show how the postmasters have evolved into an electoral ally of the Liberal Democratic Party and how their relationship with national bureaucrats complements that partnership. These political and bureaucratic linkages have enabled the postmasters to prevent significant refo…
From subjects to citizens: Japan's evolving consumer identity
One of the most puzzling features of the postwar Japanese consumer movement has been its tendency to support pro‐producer goals in its political campaigns. This can be attributed to a distinctive postwar consumer identity that is rooted in the values and beliefs of the broader political economy and that stresses compromise among contending interests. Employing the theoretical language of ‘framing’, I explore the historical evolution of that ident…
Protecting producers from consumer protection: The politics of products liability reform in Japan
This article explores the processes and political origins of the new products liability regime and the impact of that regime on both consumers and producers in Japan. I show that, while the 1994 Products Liability Act is a significant step forward for consumer protection and an intriguing example of convergence between Japanese tort law and international norms, the Act has been weakened as an instrument of consumer protection by business interest…
Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest
Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism
Providing comparisons to the United States and Britain, this book examines Japan's postwar consumer protection movement. Organized largely by and for housewives and spurred by major cases of price gouging and product contamination, the movement led to the passage of basic consumer protection legislation in 1968. Although much of the story concerns the famous "iron triangle" of big business, national bureaucrats, and conservative party politics, M…
Japanese Civil Society in the Age of Deregulation: The Case of Consumers
Although scholars have long been interested in the relationships among civil society, the state and the market in advanced industrial democracies, the implications of state disengagement from the affairs of private firms for civil society have yet to be explored in the contemporary literature. My purpose in this essay has been to address this issue by examining the effects of deregulation on Japanese consumer society, paying particular attention …
The State of Civil Society in Japan
For all the obstacles that remain, civil society is burgeoning in Japan, and the idea of civil society is at the core of the current debate about how to reinvigorate the country. This book gathers the insights of American and Japanese scholars from the fields of political science, sociology, social psychology, and history to investigate the nature of associational life and the public sphere in Japan. It goes beyond assessing the condition of civi…
Civilizing markets: Traditions of consumer politics in twentieth-century Britain, Japan and the United States
At the turn of the twenty-first century, consumers and politics stand in a paradoxical relationship. Never before have consumers in advanced economies had it so good. According to the proponents of more open and competitive global markets, consumers have been the principal beneficiaries of deregulation and trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, there has been a wave of consumer protests at international summits and in loca…
From subjects to citizens: Japan's evolving consumer identity
One of the most puzzling features of the postwar Japanese consumer movement has been its tendency to support pro‐producer goals in its political campaigns. This can be attributed to a distinctive postwar consumer identity that is rooted in the values and beliefs of the broader political economy and that stresses compromise among contending interests. Employing the theoretical language of ‘framing’, I explore the historical evolution of that ident…
Post Office Politics in Modern Japan: The Postmasters, Iron Triangles, and the Limits of Reform
This essay seeks to explain the political power of the commissioned postmasters in the context of their participation in one of postwar Japan's most enduring iron triangles. I show how the postmasters have evolved into an electoral ally of the Liberal Democratic Party and how their relationship with national bureaucrats complements that partnership. These political and bureaucratic linkages have enabled the postmasters to prevent significant refo…
Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States (review)
Reviewed by: Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States Patricia L. Maclachlan (bio) Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States. By Miranda A. Schreurs. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. xiii, 291 pages. $65.00, cloth; $24.00, paper. In this landmark new book, Miranda Schreurs seeks to explain why Japan, Germany, and the United States have pursued markedly different policy approaches [End Page …
The Evolution of Consumer Protection in Postwar Japan
Storming the Castle: The Battle for Postal Reform in Japan
This article explores the ideas and power struggles that have shaped the ongoing battle to privatize the Japanese postal services. For years, a coalition of commissioned postmasters, postal workers, bureaucrats and politicians resisted postal reform in part by appealing to the ‘traditional values’ symbolized by the state-run system and playing to the fears of ordinary citizens. Against this backdrop, Koizumi struggled to win the public over to hi…
One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective (review)
Reviewed by: One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective Patricia L. Maclachlan (bio) One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective. By Gregory J. Kasza. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2006. x, 189 pages. $32.50. It is customary in both scholarly and media circles to label modern Japan a welfare laggard. While focusing on economic growth, so the argument goes, Japan's developmental state has done far less than other advance…
The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 1871–2010
Koizumi and Japanese Politics: Reform Strategies and Leadership Style (review)
Reviewed by: Koizumi and Japanese Politics: Reform Strategies and Leadership Style Patricia L. Maclachlan (bio) Koizumi and Japanese Politics: Reform Strategies and Leadership Style. By Yū Uchiyama; translated by Carl Freire. London, Routledge, 2010. x, 210 pages. $130.00. Over the past five years, Japan has been plagued by a string of lackluster and short-lived prime ministers, each of whom did his bit to shatter the public’s hopes for strong, d…
The Electoral Power of Japanese Interest Groups: An Organizational Perspective
What explains the electoral staying power of many Japanese interest groups in the wake of electoral reform? Electoral explanations provide part of the answer; candidates in elections to both houses of the Diet continue to face incentives—many of them unintended—to court the organized vote. But missing from such accounts is an explanation of why economically noncompetitive groups provide the bulk of such support. The primary reason for this, I arg…
The politics and implications of postal reform
Japanese Farmers in Flux
The politics of Japanese agricultural reform is rapidly changing. Once dependent on foreign pressure, reform is now fueled by a deepening farm crisis and a breakdown in postwar political alignments. Focusing on the Abe government’s reform of Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, we explore Japan’s expanding capacity for executive leadership in the farm sector on behalf of market-oriented change
Eiko Maruko Siniawer. Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan
In Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan, historian Eiko Maruko Siniawer explores different manifestations of waste—garbage, squandered natural resources, profligate spending, the absence of leisure time—both as negative side-effects of mass production and mass consumption and as a site for debate about middle-class affluence. As such, Waste is a highly ambitious work that defies easy summation. And herein lies both its main strengths and its weaknesses…
Mechanisms of Resistance: Informal Institutional Impediments to Japanese Postal Privatization
Why has Japan failed to fulfill the mission of its 2005 postal privatization legislation? The answer is informal institutions that empower the postmasters within the electoral system and facilitate the mobilization of elites on behalf of anti-reformist goals. To support this claim, I analyze three such institutions: the postmasters’ ownership of postal facilities; the re-employment of former bureaucrats by the postal system and of top postal empl…
Japan in 2025
The year 2025 was a dramatic one for Japan. Domestically, it was punctuated by inflation and a rice crisis, the LDP–Komeito coalition’s loss of its majority in the July 20 Upper House election, and Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s replacement as LDP president by Takaichi Sanae, who went on to become Japan’s first female prime minister. In foreign affairs, Japan grappled with uncertainty in the US–Japan trade and defense relationship following Dona…
Political science (18 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Japanese History and Culture (11 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Public Administration (6 works) · Business (5 works) · History (5 works)