Message

　
Preface to the research project

From April 2007, we started a joint research on “civil social democracy” on a grant-in-aid for promotion of science by the Ministry of Education. This project succeeds to the project on “Globalization and Governance” that terminated in March 2007. I am serving as a head of the new project as well as the previous one.

Nowadays, interest has been growing in inequality and poverty both in academic and journalistic world. I would say this is due to the fact that side effects of the neo-liberal structural reform have become evident. In order to overcome these diseases caused by simplistic neo-liberalism, our project aims at considering and proposing political philosophy and policy based upon such important values as equality, human dignity and social solidarity.

My intellectual interest was ignited by the stimulus given by Professor Colin Crouch’s Post-Democracy, which I myself translated into Japanese and was published by Seitosha in March 2007. Crouch is trying to explain the common paradox that advanced democratic countries are facing. By the notion of post-democracy, he designates the political phenomenon that democratic governments are destroying the welfare state regime under the pressure of global capitalism. We encounter a serious question, why ordinary people support such governments that are imposing cruel and harsh policy to themselves. Crouch’s book gives a clue to this question.

In Japan, we are also in the situation of post-democracy, where the slogan of small government has been undermining the humble welfare state, and the political leader is crying “removal from the post-war regime”.

Civil Social Democracy is a new concept to overcome post-democracy. This idea is combination of civil society and social democracy. (For detail, please see Challenge for Civil Social Democracy, edited by Yamaguchi, Miyamoto and Ogawa published in 2005 by Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha.) There are twofold meanings in this concept. We firmly believe that civil society can flourish on the fertile soil of social democracy while social democracy can be sustained by vitality of civil society at the same time. We are pursuing ultimate goal that citizens develop democracy which is capable of promoting social values.

Now, raison d’etre of political science is being questioned in Japan. We are convinced that political science has a social mission to consider and propose ways to overcome political difficulties in addition to produce scholarly work. This research team consists of most active scholars of 30s and 40s in Japan. We would like to challenge for possibility of political science. Besides academic works, we will try to dispatch as much message as possible by having public symposium and publishing books for citizens.