Issues concerning Public Administration in relation to Japan's Agricultural Technical Cooperation, and Some Strategies for Improvement

抄録

This paper is concerned with issues of Japanese technical cooperation for the agricultural sector. Regardless of the growing recognition of the importance of the socio-economic and institutional aspects of agricultural and rural development under the currently evolving development thought which embraces the key concepts of equity and sustainability, traditionally, typical Japanese agricultural technical cooperation (especially, Project-Type Technical Cooperation) has been heavily emphasized technological development through research and experimental activities and other technology-related activities, rather than relying on a direct approach to the farmers.

There are several possible reasons for such tendencies (for example, a relative abundance of agricultural technicians, the language communication problems of Japanese agricultural technicians, a lack of appropriate policy dialogue between governments, and the preference of Third World governments for high-tech and large-scale development projects). However, I estimate that more fundamental reasons come from Japan's domestic administrative environment for technical cooperation which is ruled overt by conventional technocratic thinking. Based on this recognition, in this paper I will examine and discuss aspects of Japan's current public administration system for technical cooperation and will show how this domestic administrative environment affects the characteristics of Japan's agricultural technical cooperation.

Based on the discussions, I suggest several strategies for transformation of agricultural technical cooperation from traditional technology-transfer to cooperation for sustainable rural development. The suggestions include utilization of social science knowledge, domestic human resource development, and some long-term bureaucratic reforms.