Threat perception, government centralization, and political instrumentality in Abe Shinzo’s Japan

Abstract

In this paper, we review the International Relations literature and derive from it certain expectations of how government centralization may affect threat assessment, and from these, generate formal hypotheses. We then test these against the evidence of the extensive structural changes within Japan’s national security apparatus and the government’s threat perception in the period spanning the first and second Abe administrations (2006–2018). Drawing from official government documents, we find marked change to certain metrics of Japan’s threat assessment beginning in 2013, the first full year of the second (and current) Abe Administration. We argue that political instrumentality, and in particular, Abe’s policy agenda of breaking the constitutional status quo and resolving the territorial dispute with Russia, were paramount in shaping official threat assessment during this period (2012–2018). Our findings lend evidence to both the scholarships on threat perception and government centralization, as well as to the debate of Abe’s legacy in Japan’s post-war security policy.