Japan's Housing Policy in Comparative Perspective

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24730109
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Politics
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: KAGE Rieko 東京大学, 総合文化研究科, 准教授 (10362807)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 住宅政策 / 比較政治学 / 福祉国家 / 政党政治

Outline of Final Research Achievements

What determines the variations in housing policies across different industrialized countries? Housing policy has been an underexplored field in political science. Nevertheless, given its present-day importance -- real estate bubbles have played a major role in both the financial bubble in Japan in the late 1980s as well as the more recent Lehman shock -- housing policy deserves more systematic inquiry.
The variations in housing policies across different industrialized countries also do not conform to expectations from the "varieties of capitalism" framework. Drawing on historical process-tracing both in Japan and in several Western European and North American countries, the study found that differences in left-right partisan dynamics played a crucial role in shaping housing policies in different industrialized countries. Left-right partisan dynamics was found to exert a greater impact over housing policies than either the urban-rural divide or prewar legacies of housing policies.

Free Research Field

政治学