When Will Pork Leave the Farm? Institutional Bias in Japan and the United States

Abstract

All industrialized countries have seen their populations "urbanize" over time. In democracies, this demographic trend ought to have ramifications for politics and policy. In this paper, I examine the effects of urbanization on agricultural subsidy programs in Japan and the United States. I show that even after malapportionment was dealt with, rural retrenchment was delayed by the balance of power within the majority party in each country. In Japan, once urban members constituted a majority within the ruling party in the House of Representatives, government policy changed quickly and dramatically. In the U.S., powerful House committees and permanent rural over-representation in the U.S. Senate delayed policy change much longer than was true in Japan, which has no similar institutional impediments.