European Institute of Japanese Studies East Asian Economics

As market competition replaces state regulation in many economic fields, competition policy has become an area of increasing significance. Against this background, Suzuki highlights the importance of the domestic political structure for competition policy. He does this through the comparative analysis of competition law reforms in Britain and Japan. He argues - controversially - that a country's domestic political structure should be considered a major factor in causing the reform of competition law, and rejects the established view that it is necessarily a result of changes in international economic and political conditions. The book outlines the history of competition law reform in Britain and Japan throughout the post-war period, and also contains case studies of the most remarkable reforms in the 1970s and the 1990s. Suzuki uses the policy network approach in order to understand the domestic political structure, viewing the policy-making process as the interaction of relevant parties with their own interests and power resources. Thus, he interprets competition law reform as the result of interactions between 'core actors', such as leading business organizations, government politicians and public officials in charge of industrial policy, and existing competition policy. Competition Law Reform in Britain and Japan makes comparisons, based on over half a century of competition law reform, demonstrating that while British and Japanese competition policies are apparently following the same trend of international convergence, the interests and power relations of the core actors in the competition policy network are quite different. This innovative book brings to the fore the political aspects of competition policy rather than the more usual legal and economic concerns. It is the only book to compare Britain and Japan's competition law reform in depth.