Group Solidarity and Social Order in Japan
Michael Hechter and
Satoshi Kanazawa
Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1993, vol. 5, issue 4, 455-493
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explain why Japan has attained a higher level of social order than comparably developed western national societies. To do so, it distinguishes the attainment of local order in social groups from the global order in national societies. Recent models of spontaneous, self-organizing order are insufficient to account for global order. In contrast to the more popular normative explanation of order in Japan, which holds that a consensus on fundamental values derived from Confucian roots is an essential cause, this paper proposes a solidaristic theory built on rational choice premises. This new theory views global order as a by-product of dependence and visibility mechanisms within key social groups such as families, schools and firms. A wide range of comparative evidence reveals that the solidaristic theory provides a superior explanation of the high level of social order in Japan than the normative one.
Keywords: crime; dependence; monitoring; rational choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692893005004002 (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:5:y:1993:i:4:p:455-493
DOI: 10.1177/0951692893005004002
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().