THE SOURCES OF JAPANESE CONDUCT: ASYMMETRIC SECURITY DEPENDENCE, ROLE CONCEPTIONS AND THE REACTIVE BEHAVIOR IN RESPONSE TO U.S. DEMANDS by Booseung Chang A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland November, 2014 © 2014 Booseung Chang All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Despite her enormous economic size and large population, Japan was reluctant to participate in the management of global affairs during the Cold War, but once the United States made her request clear, Japan tended to be flexible in accommodating U.S. demands. In 1988, Kent E. Calder presented the reactive state thesis (RST), calling this peculiar aspect of Japanese policy behavior reactive. According to Calder, Japanese foreign policy behavior remains to be reactive and its main explanatory variable is the fragmented governmental structure. The main arguments of this dissertation are (1) that the Japanese reactive behavior in the area of security policy indeed changed little, but (2) that the main explanatory variable is external rather than domestic. As an alternative causal variable, this thesis indicates the asymmetric security dependence on the United States. We reached these arguments through operationalization and comparison. In order to test the validity of the RST, we operationalized the concept of reactivity and applied it to the Japanese responses to the Gulf War and the Iraq War. The result showed no significant behavioral variation between the cases. In order to test the causal argument of the RST, we selected South Korea, where, unlike Japan, the executive power is highly concentrated, and compared the two countries’ responses to the two wars. The reactive behavior was uniformly observed across the cases despite the cross-national difference in domestic environments. The suggested causal chain for the reactive behavior is that the security dependence limits the capacity of the reactive state, and suppresses the proactivity towards external challenges. At the same time, it influences the role conceptions of core decision-makers, ii creating a shared feeling that once the United States demands assistance, it is inevitable to provide it. In addition to the continuity, we also noted the variations across the cases. We found two types of variations: the variation in the extent that the reactive states tried to discount U.S. demands under the limit of the reactivity and the variation in the size of the actually delivered assistance. As the causal variables for the first type, we suggested the degree of fragmentation and the existence of a veto player within the decision unit, and for the second type, we suggested the U.S. preconception on the providing capacity of a reactive state as an explanatory variable. *Readers: Kent E. Calder, Professor, SAIS, Johns Hopkin University Charles F. Doran, Professor, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University Karl D. Jackson, Professor, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University Francis Fukuyama, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University Eunjung Lim, Visiting Assistant Professor, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University iii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................II TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................................................... IV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................................. X LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................... XII LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................ XIII CHAPTER１. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 THREE ARGUMENTS .................................................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 THREE CAVEATS ......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Concentration on the Reactive Behavior ................................................................................................................. 3 Bringing the External Variables Back In ................................................................................................................. 6 Limited Generalizability .............................................................................................................................................. 7 1.3 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE JAPANESE PECULIARITY ......................................................................................... 8 1.4 DEBATE: JAPANESE FOREIGN POLICY, CHANGING OR NOT?; AND WHAT IS THE CAUSE? ................ 10 1.5 PROBLEMS OF THE CURRENT DEBATE AND THE DIRECTION OF THIS RESEARCH ............................... 11 1.6 THE THEORY AND THE CASES .............................................................................................................................. 13 Selection of the Theoretical Anchor ....................................................................................................................... 13 Selection of the Cases ............................................................................................................................................... 15 1.7 VALUES ADDED: OPERATIONALIZATION AND EXPLANATION ..................................................................... 19 Operationalization of the Concepts ....................................................................................................................... 19 Explanation of the Uniformity ................................................................................................................................. 21 Explanation of the Variations .................................................................................................................................. 22 1.8 ORGANIZATION OF THE CHAPTERS.................................................................................................................... 25 CHAPTER２. REVIEW OF PRIOR STUDIES ................................................................................. 28 2.1 POLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE REACTIVE STATE ............................................................................................ 29 2.2 REVIEW OF THE DEBATE ....................................................................................................................................... 31 The Reactive State Thesis ......................................................................................................................................... 31 Proactive Japan .......................................................................................................................................................... 37 Passive Leadership .................................................................................................................................................... 42 Passive but Rational .................................................................................................................................................. 46 Limit of Gaiatsu .......................................................................................................................................................... 54 Passive Only to the United States........................................................................................................................... 58 2.3 A BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE DEBATE ................................................................................................................. 60 iv Disagreement Group ................................................................................................................................................. 61 Partial Agreement Group ......................................................................................................................................... 62 2.4 LESSONS LEARNED: UNCLEAR DEFINITIONS AND TOO MANY CAUSES .................................................. 63 Lack of a Common Concept..................................................................................................................................... 63 An Operational Definition Required ..................................................................................................................... 65 Too Many Causes ....................................................................................................................................................... 71 CHAPTER３. FRAMEWORK OF MEASUREMENT ...................................................................... 74 3.1 FALSIFIABILITY AND OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT OF REACTIVITY ................................. 75 Who Acts First? .......................................................................................................................................................... 76 More Than Demanded? ............................................................................................................................................ 77 How Much of the Demand