An Ideational Institutionalist Analysis of the Japanese Trade Policy-Making Process vis-à-vis the EC: Focus on the EC-Level Voluntary Export Moderation in 1983

抄録

　The existing literature on trade conflicts between Japan and the European Community （EC）/the European Union （EU） usually focuses on interest-based bargaining between Japanese and European actors. Moreover, studies on Japan-EC/EU institutional development tend to analyze long-term institutional changes from “issue-driven” relations amid trade conflicts to “issue-seeking” political and economic relations. However, few empirical studies conduct a deep analysis of the process of change in specific “issue-driven” institutions during the Japan-EC trade conflicts. Therefore, from a “micro” perspective, through a case study of the Japanese EC-level voluntary export moderation agreed in 1983, this study investigates how an “issue-driven” institution on Japanese voluntary export restraints （VERs） changed. Examining negotiations on the Japanese EC-level voluntary export moderation is important because this was a “turning point” as regards developing sectoral trade negotiations from EC Member States level to EC level.

　This paper employs theoretical concepts from ideational institutionalism as subsets of new institutionalism. The existing literature already conceptualizes VERs as a “policy idea” of “revised trade liberalism” vis-à-vis the dominant idea of trade liberalism based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade （GATT）. Considering the distinct “duality of negotiation actors” （the EC Commission and EC Member States） in Japan-EC relations, this study focuses on how Japan and the EC began to share a policy idea in relation to EC-level VERs instead of those at EC Member States level, specifically from the perspective of Japanese policy-making.

　This study concludes that, during the first part of the negotiations, the existing policy idea of EC Member States-level VERs was dominant from both the Japanese and European perspectives. As a result, the institution concerning Japanese VERs to the EC “path-dependently” continued as EC Member State-level measures. The Japanese policy-making process continued to be led by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry （MITI） with little engagement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs （MOFA）. However, during the second part of the negotiations, especially after the French Measures in Poitiers in 1982, the EC Commission succeeded in spreading the policy idea of EC-level VERs inside the EC and also to the Japanese Government. Then, in the MITI-led Japanese policy-making process, MOFA “framed” the export moderation as a Japan-EC issue and engaged more actively in the process than during the first part of the negotiations. Consequently, the agreed moderation became the first institutional change regarding Japanese VERs to the EC from the EC Member States level to the EC level.