Power over family policy: Governing of or governing through individuals

Abstract

Family policy poses policy-making elites a dilemma over the exercise of power. The target policy outcome of family policy can often be achieved only through an individual’s act of choosing a particular family lifestyle by forming a family, while the political authority, even one in the authoritarian regime such as Imperial Japan, cannot force its people to commit to the family-forming against their wills. By referring to the theoretical discussion of governmentality and two brief case studies from Japan after World War II (WWII) (New Life Movements in the 1950/1960s and structural reform of the family in the early 2000s), Hiroko Takeda explores the question of how power should be exercised to optimize the policy outcome of family policy.