ABSTRACT
The aim of this volume was threefold. Firstly, it sought to develop and apply an alternative constructivist approach to the analysis of foreign policy processes. This was achieved by applying the conceptual prism of risk which critically deconstructs the nexus of threat, security and state behaviour in international relations. Secondly, the volume has identified, across a variety of policy sites, how similar mechanisms driven by a diversity of actors each lead to recalibrated risks operationalized in Japan’s foreign policy processes. Finally, the combination of case studies sought to highlight specifically how the current Abe administration has reshaped political discourse in order to direct these changes. As a collective whole, the chapters have elucidated the agency behind this in terms of the current leader’s effective adaptation of risk in response to international and transnational challenges – from China, North Korea and Russia to trans-border pollution and national identity construction. A growing body of literature on post-Cold War Japan’s foreign and security policy has contested whether Japan evolves into a ‘normal state’ that revises its pacifist constitution and engages in military modernization as a response to its changing security environment or whether its domestic institutions which enshrine the norms of Japan’s post-war pacifism and culture of anti-militarism will sustain. And indeed, recent moves of the administration led by Abe have targeted Japan’s post-war defence and security regime as a key site of policy innovation.
