抄録
Although it is often observed in advanced countries that set-aside programs for crops are directly conducted by government, what is unique in the case of the rice set-aside program in Japan is that the allocation of set-aside acreage among regions is supposed to be discretionarily determined by bureaucrats. Furthermore, a duty of set-aside acreage to each prefecture is unevenly allocated by considering selected factors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the political process of such a supposedly discretionary allocation by bureaucrats and to analyze the mechanism of mutual interdependence among various political actors such as interest groups and bureaucrats behind this allocation. Some hypotheses and a model were set according to conceptual considerations and then these were empirically tested.
Two major findings are as follows:
Firstly, it was empirically supported that bureaucrats, considering the balance of complaints against the set-aside program among regions, tend to revise the allocation of setaside acreage, not being proportionate to the acreage of paddy fields but inversely proportionate to the amount of complaints. Moreover, such complaints can be explained by the expected income from rice-production and the percentage of part-time farmers who have insufficient labor force but insist on rice-production because of their business for part-time work.
Secondly, among various factors, which are publicly announced as those used in the calculation of the allocated set-aside acreage with respect to each prefecture, it was found that those which may be naturally reflected even in the allocation under the market mechanism are influential actually as well as supposedly, while those, the features of which are contrary to the market mechanism, are less influential in reality. That is, it was concluded that the latter factors, such as the ratio of core professional farmers, are emasculated in the way of political process irrespective of bureaucrats' initial intention.
