ABSTRACT
With globalisation, analysed in the next chapter, technological revolutions, notably on the Internet and in biotechnology, have formed one of the two bases of neo-liberal argument for putting into practice policies of structural reform, both in the world in general and in Japan in particular. The idea is that the world has entered into a new era, that ‘external’ conditions – technological and international – in each type of capitalism have changed, and that socio-economic systems should therefore adapt in the same direction. When we get into the detail, the two arguments of globalisation and the technological revolution have developed differently in the Japanese context. In the case of globalisation, the initial argument comes from the trade
partners of Japan, especially the United States, and to a lesser extent Europe, which call for greater openness both for trade and for foreign direct investment in Japan. The argument later extended to the incapacity of the Japanese system to confront global competition in the context of the rise of newly industrialised countries (in the vanguard of which was South Korea), and of China. We may distinguish a third period, more radical and less precise, in which was the idea that Japanese capitalism was ill-adapted to globalisation and should converge in the direction of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. As for the technological argument, it can also be split into two time peri-
ods. In the first period, it depended on the perception that the new technologies of the 1990s were developed mainly in the United States and not in Japan. In the second time period, the argument was extended to the innovation system as a whole and the emergence of new industries in general, for which the Japanese system was allegedly ill-adapted.1 The question of new industries is essential in that it represents a case where innovation not only changes the industrial structure of economies, but also responds to latent demand and thus has an impact on well-being (Krafft et al., forthcoming). It is in this background that a major reform of the Japanese innovation system was put in place. It recalls to some extent the Lisbon strategy adopted in Europe in 2000, in that it was narrowly associated with financial market and labour market deregulation, which should make it possible to take full advantage of the knowledge society and economy. It was, however, different in the fact that in terms of expenses, the means were granted to favour innovation.
