A question about Japan

Hendryk

Banned
For one thing most Prime Ministers in Japan (if they're LDP, as they almost invariably are) are figureheads. Certain exceptions to the rule exist, including the man with the most awesome hair in the world, but mostly they—and most elected politicians in Japan—are there as a sop to democratic sensibilities. Whatever the most hardcore "the oligarchy runs the USA" theory you've heard is and regardless of how one wants to argue the politics of that (and let's not, please) take that as your lowest starting point for how much in Japan the bureaucrats actually do run the country.

If you're at the top of your class in Japan you join the government. A decade or two later you're helping run the country. Then you "retire" and join a corporation or a think tank or whatever and continue running the country for much more money.
France was sort of like that during the Fourth Republic. Prime ministers rose and fell, parliamentary majorities came and went, but the people really running the show were the high-level civil servants. Arguably, it was that way even under the first couple of decades of the Fifth Republic, with certain key administrations being more powerful than the ministries that officially controlled them. And when you tired of the civil service, you could become the manager of some bank or corporation, where you kept doing much the same thing for a higher salary.
 
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