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labor, land, and antitrust reforms in addition to entrusting<br />

bureaucrats with expanded powers to intervene in economic<br />

affairs. 1 Political leaders in Japan were concerned<br />

that free trade and financial liberalization would prevent<br />

cartelized industries from growing and competing in<br />

the global market. In 1949, the government created the<br />

Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).<br />

This agency had vast authority to regulate exports,<br />

raise tariffs, and direct public investment. This political<br />

restructuring destroyed many of the institutional norms<br />

that had traditionally tempered the collusion between<br />

business and government in Japan and set the stage for<br />

the state-driven industrialization policies that would<br />

characterize Japanese economic policy in the following<br />

decades. Japan expanded MITI’s power after becoming<br />

sovereign in 1952 and used it as an important instrument<br />

with which to conduct the nation’s ambitious industrialization<br />

policies.<br />

Today, top government officials plucked from the<br />

most prestigious universities in the country still conduct<br />

industrial policy planning in Japan and discuss it<br />

with the most powerful businessmen in their respective<br />

industries. The lax enforcement mechanisms available<br />

to economic planning agencies prompt government officials<br />

to maintain informal ties with business leaders. 2<br />

Officials utilize the “soft” powers of their offices to form<br />

relationships with the leaders of the critical industries in<br />

the national plan. Special interest groups in Japan tend<br />

to form in response to government industrialization initiatives<br />

rather than forming out of a desire to lobby for a<br />

policy in the first place. 3 State-driven industrialization<br />

in Japan has thus led to the development of rent-seeking<br />

94 LIBERALISM AND CRONYISM

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