This award will support Dr. Jeffrey Broadbent of the University of Minnesota at St. Paul to conduct collaborative research with Dr. Yoshiaki Kobayashi of Keio University, Japan for 16 months. They will perform research on the Japanese aspects of a comparative study of how business and labor interests affect the establishment of public policy in the U.S., West Germany and Japan. In this research, questionnaires will be sent to about one hundred business and labor organizations to ascertain their own resources, degree of interest in various labor policy issues, and, most important, details of any interactions with other organizations which were intended to influence specific policy decisions over the last decade. Personal interviews will also be conducted. This data will be used to determine adversary/ally patterns, and how these patterns are issue-dependent. It is expected that an increased understanding of the Japanese political process will ensue from these studies. The Japanese collaborator's assistance will complement the Principal Investigator's considerable experience with these issues, and greatly facilitate this study.
