Growing Democracy in Japan: The Parliamentary Cabinet System since 1868

The world’s third largest economy and a stable democracy, Japan remains a significant world power; but its economy has become stagnant, and its responses to the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 and the nuclear crisis that followed have raised international concerns. Despite being constitutionally modeled on Great Britain’s “Westminster”-style parliamentary democracy, Japan has failed to fully institute a cabinet-style government, and its executive branch is not empowered to successfully respond to the myriad challenges confronted by an advanced postindustrial society. In Growing Democracy in Japan, Brian Woodall compares the Japanese cabinet system to its counterparts in other capitalist parliamentary democracies, particularly in Great Britain. Woodall demonstrates how the nation’s long history of dominant bureaucracies has led to weakness at the top levels of government, while mid-level officials exercise much greater power than in the British system. The post–1947 cabinet system, begun under the Allied occupation, was fashioned from imposed and indigenous institutions which coexisted uneasily. Woodall explains how an activist economic bureaucracy, self-governing “policy tribes” (zoku) composed of members of parliament, and the uncertainties of coalition governments have prevented the cabinet from assuming its prescribed role as primary executive body. Woodall’s meticulous examination of the Japanese case offers lessons for reformers as well as for those working to establish democratic institutions in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and the new regimes born during the Arab Spring. At the very least, he argues, Japan’s struggles with this fundamental component of parliamentary governance should serve as a cautionary tale for those who believe that growing democracy is easy. Brian Woodall is associate professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology. Growing Democracy in Japan is a scholarly contribution to the understanding of an important—indeed central—aspect of Japanese government and politics. -- J. A .A. Stockwin, author of Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Resurgent Economy Growing Democracy in Japan is the only book in English that explicates the development of the cabinet system, the key institution in Japanese government. Woodall strikes the right level of detail, and his writing is lively. -- John Creighton Campbell, emeritus, University of Michgan Woodall addresses an important question in the field of Japanese politics: Why hasn\u27t the cabinet wielded more authority in the Japanese version of parliamentary government? To unravel this puzzle, Woodall carefully situates the Japanese case in a cross-national comparative perspective, and then delves into the history in its full complexity. He applies a keen analytical lens, demonstrating how crafty bureaucrats and wily backbenchers have resisted cabinet control. --Steven K. Vogel, University of California, Berkeley Matching in analytical depth what it attains in historical breadth, this book raises a question often posed but never satisfactorily answered until now: why has Japan failed to evolve into a fully-functioning Westminster-style cabinet system?”--Aurelia George Mulgan, University of New South Wales -- Pacific Affairs In this book Woodall makes a valuable contribution to the study of Japanese politics by carefully examining the historical development of the cabinet system, literally the centre of the Japanese government. [. . .] Utilizing a wealth of both Japanese and English documents, Woodall chronologically traces the evolution of Japan’s cabinet system by focusing on major political actors, their interactions, and political structures at different times, or “critical junctures.” [. . .] [T]his book is a welcome addition to the literature on Japanese politics.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_asian_studies/1003/thumbnail.jp

Emissions from Simulated Open Burning of Deployed US Military Waste

U.S. military forces have relied primarily on open burning as an expedient method of volume reduction and treatment of solid waste during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. This study is the first effort to characterize a broad range of pollutants and their emission factors during the burning of military waste and the effects that recycling efforts, namely removing plastics, might have on emissions. Piles of simulated military waste were constructed, burned, and emissions sampled at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Open Burn Testing Facility (OBTF), Research Triangle Park, NC. Three tests contained polyethylene terephthalate (PET #1 or PET) plastic water bottles and four did not. Emission factors for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5), polychlorinated and polybrominated dioxins/furans (PCDD/F and PBDD/F), and criteria pollutants were determined and are contained within. The average PCDD/F emission factors were 270 ng-toxic equivalency (TEQ) per kg carbon burned (ng-TEQ/kg Cb), ranging from 35-780 ng-TEQ/kg Cb. Limited testing suggests that targeted removal of plastic water bottles has no apparent effect on reducing pollutants and may even promote increased emissions

Political feasibility and empirical assessments of a Pacific free trade area

While much has been written about the significance of expanded intraregional trade flows in East Asia and the Pacific Basin, considerably less attention has been paid to the political feasibility and the economic benefits and costs of such. Is an East Asian free trade area (EAFTA) agreement politically feasible? What about a Pacific free trade area (PAFTA)? How likely is it that the governments of the various countries of the region can successfully negotiate an agreement establishing a free trade area? Which countries would stand to benefit economically and which will lose in the event that trade barriers are removed in conjunction with the creation of one or the other of the proposed free trade agreements? What about the effects of possible retaliation by the United States against EAFTA member countries? In this paper, we seek to provide answers to these and other related questions

Political feasibility and empirical assessments of a Pacific free trade area

While much has been written about the significance of expanded intraregional trade flows in East Asia and the Pacific Basin, considerably less attention has been paid to the political feasibility and the economic benefits and costs of such. Is an East Asian free trade area (EAFTA) agreement politically feasible? What about a Pacific free trade area (PAFTA)? How likely is it that the governments of the various countries of the region can successfully negotiate an agreement establishing a free trade area? Which countries would stand to benefit economically and which will lose in the event that trade barriers are removed in conjunction with the creation of one or the other of the proposed free trade agreements? What about the effects of possible retaliation by the United States against EAFTA member countries? In this paper, we seek to provide answers to these and other related questions

Refined forest land use classification with implications for United States national carbon accounting

The United States provides annual estimates of carbon sources and sinks as part of its National Green-house Gas Inventory (NGHGI). Within this effort, carbon stocks and fluxes are reported for six land use categories that are relevant to economic sectors and land use policy. The goal of this study is to develop methodologies that will allow the US to align with an internationally agreed upon forest land use definition which requires forest to be able to reach 5 m in height at maturity. Models to assess height potential are available for a majority of US forests except for woodland ecosystems. We develop a set of models to assess height potential in these systems. Our results suggest that ∼13.5 million ha of forests are unlikely to meet the international definition of forests due to environmental limitations to maximum attainable height. The incorporation of this height criteria in the NGHGI results in a carbon stock transfer of ∼848 Tg from the forest land use to woodland land use (a sub-category of grasslands) with minimal effect on sequestration rates. The development of a forest land use definition sensitive to climatic factors in this study enables a land use classification system that can be responsive to climate change effects on land uses themselves while being more consistent across a host of international and domestic carbon reporting efforts

Deep phenotyping of cardiac function in heart transplant patients using cardiovascular systems models

Heart transplant patients are followed with periodic right heart catheterizations (RHCs) to identify post-transplant complications and guide treatment. Post-transplant positive outcomes are associated with a steady reduction of right ventricular and pulmonary arterial pressures, toward normal levels of right-side pressure (about 20mmHg) measured by RHC. This study shows more information about patient progression is obtained by combining standard RHC measures with mechanistic computational cardiovascular systems models. This study shows: to understand how cardiovascular system models can be used to represent a patient's cardiovascular state, and to use these models to track post-transplant recovery and outcome. To obtain reliable parameter estimates comparable within and across datasets, we use sensitivity analysis, parameter subset selection, and optimization to determine patient specific mechanistic parameter that can be reliably extracted from the RHC data. Patient-specific models are identified for ten patients from their first post-transplant RHC and longitudinal analysis is done for five patients. Results of sensitivity analysis and subset selection show we can reliably estimate seven non-measurable quantities including ventricular diastolic relaxation, systemic resistance, pulmonary venous elastance, pulmonary resistance, pulmonary arterial elastance, pulmonary valve resistance and systemic arterial elastance. Changes in parameters and predicted cardiovascular function post-transplant are used to evaluate cardiovascular state during recovery in five patients. Of these five patients, only one patient showed inconsistent trends during recovery in ventricular pressure-volume relationships and power output. At a four-year recovery time point this patient exhibited biventricular failure along with graft dysfunction while the remaining four exhibited no cardiovascular complications.Comment: 53 Pages (including supplement), 9 figures in manuscript, 9 figures in supplemen

Deep phenotyping of cardiac function in heart transplant patients using cardiovascular system models

Heart transplant patients are followed with periodic right heart catheterizations (RHCs) to identify post‐transplant complications and guide treatment. Post‐transplant positive outcomes are associated with a steady reduction of right ventricular and pulmonary arterial pressures, toward normal levels of right‐side pressure (about 20 mmHg) measured by RHC. This study shows that more information about patient progression is obtained by combining standard RHC measures with mechanistic computational cardiovascular system models. The purpose of this study is twofold: to understand how cardiovascular system models can be used to represent a patient’s cardiovascular state, and to use these models to track post‐transplant recovery and outcome. To obtain reliable parameter estimates comparable within and across datasets, we use sensitivity analysis, parameter subset selection, and optimization to determine patient‐specific mechanistic parameters that can be reliably extracted from the RHC data. Patient‐specific models are identified for 10 patients from their first post‐transplant RHC, and longitudinal analysis is carried out for five patients. Results of the sensitivity analysis and subset selection show that we can reliably estimate seven non‐measurable quantities; namely, ventricular diastolic relaxation, systemic resistance, pulmonary venous elastance, pulmonary resistance, pulmonary arterial elastance, pulmonary valve resistance and systemic arterial elastance. Changes in parameters and predicted cardiovascular function post‐transplant are used to evaluate the cardiovascular state during recovery of five patients. Of these five patients, only one showed inconsistent trends during recovery in ventricular pressure–volume relationships and power output. At the four‐year post‐transplant time point this patient exhibited biventricular failure along with graft dysfunction while the remaining four exhibited no cardiovascular complications.Key pointsRight heart catheterization data from clinical records of heart transplant patients are used to identify patient‐specific models of the cardiovascular system.These patient‐specific cardiovascular models represent a snapshot of cardiovascular function at a given post‐transplant recovery time point.This approach is used to describe cardiac function in 10 heart transplant patients, five of which had multiple right heart catheterizations allowing an assessment of cardiac function over time.These patient‐specific models are used to predict cardiovascular function in the form of right and left ventricular pressure‐volume loops and ventricular power, an important metric in the clinical assessment of cardiac function.Outcomes for the longitudinally tracked patients show that our approach was able to identify the one patient from the group of five that exhibited post‐transplant cardiovascular complications.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156242/2/tjp14120.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156242/1/tjp14120_am.pd

Estimating the Cost of No-Shows and Evaluating the Effects of Mitigation Strategies

To measure the cost of non-attendance (“no-shows”) and benefit of overbooking and interventions to reduce no-shows for an outpatient endoscopy suite

Refined forest land use classification with implications for United States national carbon accounting

The United States provides annual estimates of carbon sources and sinks as part of its National Green-house Gas Inventory (NGHGI). Within this effort, carbon stocks and fluxes are reported for six land use categories that are relevant to economic sectors and land use policy. The goal of this study is to develop methodologies that will allow the US to align with an internationally agreed upon forest land use definition which requires forest to be able to reach 5 m in height at maturity. Models to assess height potential are available for a majority of US forests except for woodland ecosystems. We develop a set of models to assess height potential in these systems. Our results suggest that ∼13.5 million ha of forests are unlikely to meet the international definition of forests due to environmental limitations to maximum attainable height. The incorporation of this height criteria in the NGHGI results in a carbon stock transfer of ∼848 Tg from the forest land use to woodland land use (a sub-category of grasslands) with minimal effect on sequestration rates. The development of a forest land use definition sensitive to climatic factors in this study enables a land use classification system that can be responsive to climate change effects on land uses themselves while being more consistent across a host of international and domestic carbon reporting efforts