ABSTRACT
This study has analysed the politics of labour market deregulation in Japan and Italy. Both Japanese and Italian governments implemented labour market deregulation under the neoliberal pressure of globalisation but the forms and extents of deregulation were different. The study has claimed that this difference can be attributed to the different distribution of power resources between labour and employers and the resulting changes in labour policy-making structures in these countries. The study has also specified the conditions under which the partisan effects of the government (the Diet in the Japanese case) on labour market deregulation are likely to be identified.
