"Policy Entrepreneurs: How 'Ordinary You' Can Change the Rules of Society"

2022/04/22

There is a fable known among those who work on social issues called the "Parable of the Drowning Baby." It goes like this.

You are a traveler. While passing by a river during your journey, you discover a baby drowning. You rush into the river, desperately rescue the baby, and return to the shore.

Relieved, you look back, only to find another baby drowning in the river. You rush to rescue that baby as well, but then another baby is drowning further across the river.

Before long, you become so busy saving the babies drowning in front of you that you fail to notice a man upstream throwing babies into the river one after another.

This is a fable that illustrates the relationship between "problems" and "structures." Every problem has a structure that creates it. While dealing with the "problem" of the drowning baby in front of you, you must also change the structure—the man throwing them in and continuing to produce the tragedy—by stopping him.

Private citizens who take this approach toward "structures" are called policy entrepreneurs. In the United States, people known as "policy entrepreneurs" establish non-profit think tanks and other organizations, lobby the government and bureaucracy, and implement policies one after another.

"Policy entrepreneur" is a literal translation of this term. Modern Japan is exactly where these policy entrepreneurs are needed. Why? The numerous government failures during the COVID-19 pandemic. An exhausted bureaucracy. Economic stagnation that could be called the "lost 30 years." The ongoing decline in the birthrate and the aging of the population. Rapid technological development and a body of laws that continues to grow obsolete. And the global climate crisis has already begun to cause major flood damage in Japan.

It is plain as day that we can no longer leave policy-making solely to politicians and bureaucrats.

This book introduces the methods of policy entrepreneurship alongside my own journey as a policy entrepreneur. After finishing this book, you might realize, "Oh, changing policy is something almost anyone can do." I want to give you that sense of surprise.

"Policy Entrepreneurs: How 'Ordinary You' Can Change the Rules of Society"

Hiroki Komazaki

Chikuma Shinsho

288 pages, 968 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.