17
3.4. Technocrats
Bureaucrats are technocrats and want to be rational, neat and tight. They frame their
questions in terms of what is best and what is true and they pride themselves on their
professionalism. A technocrat wishes to be an excellent executor of given policy
goals. For them, the goals have to be politically agreed beforehand. In this sense, the
technocrat is like a good chef. He has meat, fish, vegetables and flavourings. He has
his secret recipes, but definitely needs an order from his customers. Will the order be
fish or meat? Italian or Chinese? Having taken the order, the chef will make every
effort to satisfy customers’ appetite. He is not allowed to fail.
Like the chef, the bureaucrat inhibits himself from even imagining any failure in their
administrative execution. In fact, this psychological barrier seems commonly felt
among anyone who regularly engages in the policy-making process. Academics and
private-sector experts sometimes face such a psychological barrier when discussing
the national policy agenda. The scenario exercise “Urban Mobility 2040” implicitly
envisaged that the user of the scenario study would be the senior bureaucrats
experienced in urban planning. I observed there was an unsaid consensus among the
academic authors to discard any stories of government doing bad or foolish things.
“Urban Mobility 2040” was keen, probably overkeen, to find an audience with
bureaucrats.
Adding to the psychological barrier, there is an institutional one. For bureaucrats, the
possible existence of several different but equally plausible futures means that a
scenario project is going to jeopardize what the political process has officially
foreseen and agreed. This means that bureaucrats will not yet be able to hook their
policy packages onto the one comprehensive picture of the future. Hence, bureaucrats
will flatly carry on the scenario study until the scenario project gives birth to an only
child! The participants in any study around a politically sensitive issue, according to
bureaucrats, have to arrive at the one single future, which will be a great improvement
on the present, and bureaucrats will strive to bring about that future by spending
taxpayers’ money.
This is the institutional barrier that prevents the full usage of the scenario planning.
We may be able to say that the technocratic nature of the government institution
nourishes the technocratic personality of each bureaucrat. I have seen many times
bureaucrats – and how smart they are! – arriving at my workshop already well-armed
with their own thorough policy package, which would make Japan far better than it is
today. For them, a scenario exercise is simply muddying their clear vision of a better
future. Why, a bureaucrat asks himself, is this workshop so loosely managed? Why
does the facilitator stubbornly push me to think of ‘other’ visions? The future has
already been agreed, and shortly, the government will launch a concrete policy
package to bring it closer. This exercise is dysfunctional and even dangerous. Is the
facilitator a born cynic? Is he a trouble maker? The bureaucrat’s frustration boils
over. This is not simply a matter of a scenario exercise taking place at the wrong time
for the bureaucrat’s working mission, nor is he confused by the scenario making
process. Simply, he has found the scenario workshop to be a dangerous event.
18
3.5. Politicisation
Another reason why bureaucrats want to have a single future is more subtle and tricky.
Japan’s government organization is compartmentalized. It is divided into Ministries.
Ministries are divided into Secretariats (Kambo) and Bureaus (Kyoku), which further
divided into Divisions (Bu), and the Divisions into Sections (Ka) and Rooms (Shitsu).
Inside a Ministry, Bureau exercise huge influence over policy making process since
majority of cabinet-sponsored bill are formulated here in Bureau. Each Bureau works
almost independently and enjoys the independence. There is a saying “Bureaus but
no Ministry”. Thousands of bureaucrats, particularly in the higher ranks, are not
living as one united officialdom, but in a very competitive working place
8
. One part
of the government challenges another part. Each tries to promote its own policy
packages to influential politicians. In order to demonstrate “its” policy is much better
than “others”, a visionary story of a bright future, told with colourful graphics and
narration, is very much appreciated. Scenario stories can communicate well. They
make it easy for listeners to capture the holistic image of a bright future. The vision
and rhetoric are appreciated by politicians, who are the clients of the bureaucrats.
But my story doesn’t end at this point.
Japanese bureaucrats often make use of a scenario project as a benign negotiation
place for their stakeholders: a place where a small interest group can develop around
them. In the end the bureaucrats want to channel the stakeholders toward their
preferred policy package. In a policy paper they habitually produce, there is “Part
One: Vision”, followed by the lengthy administrative narratives, as “Part Two”,
where they describe in detail how to implement the Vision. Armed with numbers, the
writing style of Part Two is rather detached, passive and marked by compromise. It
looks like a non-partisan document, but in reality it often represents the particular
interest of one part of the government, most cases the interest of a particular Bureau
or down under in a particular Ministry. The policy experts in academia and in private
sector are welcomed to work on Part Two together with bureaucrats; however they are
only welcome as faithful supporters (or clients). Although the experts have a chance
to intervene and consider details in Part Two, the experts usually don’t challenge Part
One. As seen in “Nuclear Power scenario 2005”, experts can often stumble across an
important unsolved issue, a big fish, but bureaucrats ensure that at the end of the day
it is put back in the refrigerator.
To them, Part One should be the smashing showcase, which one branch of the
government wants to ‘sell’ to politicians; therefore it is understandable that the
bureaucrats don’t want to ‘sell’ a doomed future or a ‘shock scenario’
9
. The great
fear of political leaders is unexpected events, especially those which lie beyond their
control. So it is with bureaucrats. They cannot envisage the government doing its job
badly
10
. Bureaucrats are – and have to be – statists by nature.
8
For the short history of Japanese bureaucracy development, see Toye, John (2006), ‘Modern
Bureaucracy’, Research Paper No. 2006/52, UNU-WIDER, United Nations University (UNU), p.9.
9
A ‘shock scenario’ seen in the “Energy 2030” only works for confirming the legitimacy of the
existing policies around the
energy supply security, which Japanese government has been very much
eager to enhance.
10
This reaction looks common to an experience in the UK. Tom Ling writes in his ‘Decision making in
the public sector’ in Ringland [Ringland, Scenarios in Public Policy, 2002], P.129, that “If “what
counts is what works” is part of the credo of the new policy maker, it will be frustrating to