Unlocking Policy Management | Tomoki Kamo, Dean, Faculty of Policy Management
2022.10.26
In my diary entry from last December , I mentioned that we were creating a book that explores the current state of policy management. The book is scheduled to be published next January. We are all working hard on it. The series is titled "Unlocking Policy Management." We plan to hold a session at the Open Research Forum (ORF) in November. We will also launch a website to coincide with the publication of the series.
I would like to briefly outline the aim of this book series.
Policy management was born in the 1990s as a new academic field. The establishment of the Faculty of Policy Management at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) by Keio University in April 1990 was a pioneering effort in this area. Since then, the establishment of faculties named "Policy Management" or similar at multiple universities in Japan indicates, I believe, that the importance of policy management as an academic field has been recognized in Japan.
So, what is policy management? As the history of its proposal as a new academic field suggests, policy management can be described as a discipline that is strongly required to constantly question what it ought to be.
Professor Motohiro Tsuchiya states, " As long as society continues to change, the knowledge of policy management is constantly becoming outdated and must be continually updated. As long as problems continue to emerge in society without interruption, a fixed body of knowledge that one can simply learn and be done with is insufficient.pdf " The Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) and the Faculty of Policy Management, which have clearly championed the banner of policy management, have repeatedly attempted to summarize their progress over the past 30 years.
The most comprehensive of these efforts was the publication of "The Forefront of Policy Management" on the 20th anniversary of the faculty's founding. Professors Tomoyuki Kojima and Mitsuaki Okabe, who were members of the editorial committee for that series, define policy management as " a methodology or research area that provides a perspective for accurately understanding the trends of human society, which is undergoing major transformations ."
Furthermore, the research project that formed the basis for publishing this series was the "Center for the Study of Policy Management in Japan and Asia," a 21st Century COE Program funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in fiscal year 2003. Professor Jiro Kokuryo, who led this project, concisely describes policy management as " the study of practical wisdom ." Its trajectory and achievements are housed in the Keio Associated Repository of Academic Resources (KOARA) .
This five-volume book series, "Unlocking Policy Management," was planned and written amidst the major flux in the world order, including the COVID-19 pandemic that began in late 2019 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The current "fluid order" is reminiscent of the situation from the late 1980s to the 1990s when the faculty was conceived and established.
The international order is now in a period of great fluctuation. Perceptions of values and interests that the international community believed it shared are in flux, and the institutions (the rules of the game) commonly understood in the international community are being shaken. Including minor shifts, order is constantly in flux. For this very reason, many of the problems we face are skeptical of existing solutions and constantly demand new ways of thinking.
Furthermore, the various problems we face are all unfolding in the infinite space beyond the confines of existing academic systems. Policy management, which seeks to be well-versed in individual cutting-edge academic fields while re-examining them comprehensively and stepping into interdisciplinary areas, is appealing because it is equipped with a mindset that seeks to adapt to this change. We must not neglect to grasp the forefront of existing disciplines. Based on that, interdisciplinary research can open up.
The sixty-six authors of this book series reflect on the 30-plus years of policy management since the faculty's establishment, confirm the current state of the discipline, and attempt to answer the question: What is the discipline that students who have chosen to study at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) should learn in order to navigate the world 30 years from now?
This book series is the beginning.