Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/84840

KEYWORDS : Bureaucracy;policymaking process;political leadership;responsibility;pandemic

Masao Maruyama, one of the founders of post-war Japanese political science, formulated the concept ‘systematised irresponsibility’ in his analysis of wartime Japanese fascism. This concept is evident in the policymaking process surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan marks the worst death rate among the countries in East Asia and Oceania. The outlook of the bureaucracy in charge can be summarised as follows. The officials have failed to establish the order of priority among policy goals. They planned pseudo solutions without objective or scientific evidence, and concealed facts regarding the pandemic to avoid criticism. The institutional reforms of the government in the 1990s added new characteristics to the irresponsibility; concentration of power in the administration enables irresponsible political leaders to pursue meaningless policy.