Officials retire into the industries they regulated, which changes the regulation long before the retirement happens.
A 2017 investigation into Japan's education ministry identified 62 illegal acts of brokered re-employment and led to disciplinary measures against 43 officials, with a personnel division arranging landings for departing bureaucrats as standard practice. The mechanism is anticipatory: the official who expects the landing behaves differently years before taking it.
In practice
- An inspector nearing sixty writes a report on a firm whose board he may join at sixty-one.
- A regulator's staff turnover into industry is not itself misconduct, and it still changes what gets written down.
- Standing
- Restricted by successive amendments to Japan's National Civil Service Law and recurring regardless.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works