Word: budgeting
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...Balance the Bureaucracy Tokyo's bureaucrats have long called the shots on everything from budget formulation to foreign policy. The bureaucracy can be virtually impervious to change partly because its members are not accountable to elected officials - there's no personnel overhaul with a change in administration. The DPJ has vowed to implement some checks and balances by expanding the power of the Prime Minister's office and the Cabinet. But it's a delicate job that could easily go sour. (See pictures of Japan in 1989 and Japan...
...Cabinet - and away from ministry bureaucrats - the DPJ will also replace the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, an advisory group to the Prime Minister's office set up in 2001, with a National Strategy Bureau (NSB) reporting to the Prime Minister. The NSB will be key in budget and diplomatic-policy formulation. The DPJ also wants to improve government transparency and crack down on conflicts of interest by eliminating amakudari, or "descent from heaven," a system whereby retiring bureaucrats are posted to plush private-sector jobs. "This is a new way of doing business in this country," says Curtis...
...which you can never be quite sure how things will get done, or what players hold strong hands. Moreover, because the U.S. is so powerful, its national system of government is to an extent a world government. The periodic horse-trading between Congress, Administration and lobbyists over the budget, size and shape of the U.S. armed forces, for example, has impacts far from America's shores. (Read: "Vicki Kennedy: The Woman who Saved...
...years on, though, the project is already three years behind schedule and $2 billion over the initial $4.2 billion budget, which has led to arbitration and other legal wranglings. Analysts say many of the problems stem from Areva's impossibly low bid. The troubles in Finland probably contributed to German engineering giant Siemens' January decision to pull out of its eight-year partnership with Areva...
Hatoyama will have to get the budget under control and help shift Japan away from the export-oriented economic growth that served it so well in its golden age of the 1970s and '80s. To accomplish that, Japan needs to boost domestic consumption. But its people will spend only if they feel economically secure, which is why thoroughgoing reform of the pension, health-care and unemployment systems is vital. Japan's current social-security programs hark back to an era of guaranteed jobs for life, which places unsustainable financial burdens on companies and individuals...