Japan’s Cabinets have long been said to be structurally weak and prime ministers

Abstract

were generally reputed to lack strong leadership. Many commentators agree that these shortcomings come not only from politician’s personal impotence or cultural backgrounds but from legal arrangements governing functions of Cabinet and prime minister.

Cabinets under the Meiji Constitution were provided with legal instruments arranged to help make a Cabinet less centripetal. First, to make any political decision, a prime minister was required to gain a unanimous vote of ministers of state. That practically meant that each single minister was able to destroy the integrity of the Cabinet and to force it to resign en bloc. Army ministers made extensive use of this veto to build a new Cabinet which looked better to army officers. Second, a Cabinet was, as a rule, made of ministers each of whom was in charge of an administrative department. A minister usually worked more as an agent of his department than as a statesman sharing responsibilities for leading entire national politics.

Institutional arrangements changed drastically under the post-war constitutional law. First, though a prime minister still needs a unanimous vote of the Cabinet, she is authorized by the Constitution to fire dissenting ministers. Established practice encourages a dissenting minister to resign or, if he chooses to remain in the Cabinet, to behave as if he followed prime minister’s line. Second, a prime minister is further authorized by the Constitution to instruct a minister (namely, his administrative agency) to do or not to do something. This power greatly helps a prime minister control ministers working centrifugally.

A prime minister has never been more powerful than nowadays. Virtually no conceivable legal arrangements could make her more powerful and efficient as long as Japan sticks to the parliamentary cabinet system. Nevertheless people never stop complaining of deficiency of prime ministerial leadership and a lot of empowering plans have been proposed. But legal status of the prime minister does not seem to be responsible. Considering relatively comfortable achievements of some Cabinets, the most likely answer is that this deficiency problem is just a pseudo one.