Downsizing the public sector has been high on the agenda of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government, and both his Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan are promising this campaign season to reduce the number of people on the government payroll.
However, neither party has offered details as to which sectors of the civil service they deem unnecessary and intend to streamline, or what the results of such moves would be, according to Atsushi Seike, a professor of labor economics at Keio University in Tokyo.
"The upcoming general election is the biggest chance ever to let the people choose how they want public service reform to be implemented," Seike said in a recent interview. "But they have not been given sufficient information to make that choice."