Patricia L. MacLachlan, Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Kay Shimizu, Research Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh

Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA), the country's massive - and notoriously conservative - network of farm organizations, is experiencing some surprising changes. Against a backdrop of graduate market openings and severe demographic pressures, a small but growing number of coops at the local level are defying tradition and introducing market-oriented reforms to their governance structures and business strategies. Other coops, however, remain largely unchanged, while JA's national leadership has struggled hard to preserve the status quo. How can we explain these varying rates of innovation? To answer this question, we propose a model of institutional change that sheds new light on both Japan's shifting agricultural landscape and the methodologies of institutional analysis.

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Presented by the Asian Studies Center University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh with support from the Japan Iron and Steel Federation and Mitsubishi Endowments.