Accepting Nurse and Certified Care Worker Candidates in Japan : How a Bilateral Policy Decision is Implemented at the Administration Level

There has long been an argument in policy studies on whether implementation failure comes from an initial political decision or other factors, including administrative activities. The author hypothesizes that failure in policy and programs are related to both initial policy decisions and their implementation process. In order to verify this, this study examines the acceptance of nurse and certified care worker candidates by the government of Japan from the Philippines as an illustrative case. The Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) is a formal bilateral agreement which was concluded on December 11, 2008. One policy objective of the Japanese government is fair and smooth acceptance of the nurse and care worker candidates based on the articles of the JPEPA in order to ensure that the candidates can pass the national licensing examination in Japanese and continue to work as professional nurses and certified care workers. However, only one Filipino candidate passed the national examination in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Some candidates have even returned home despite the fact that their visa remains valid. The purpose of this study is to find out the real reasons for this program failure by examining how the implementation gap between the acceptance policy decision under the JPEPA of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) and its administrative activities in the implementation process came about. Previous studies on the JPEPA regarding the candidates are mainly focused on the working conditions and welfare of the candidates themselves (Ballescas 2010). However, implementation studies do not analyze policy objectives. This study highlights issues which make it difficult to implement policy programs in line with policy targets at the policy implementation level. In addition, this paper argues that these gaps affected acceptance policy outcome and the following Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) policy decisions with other countries. The methodology employed is mainly through interviews with officials of the MHLW, the Japan International Corporation of Welfare Services (JICWELS), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in the Philippines and the President of the Philippines Nurses Association (PNA) as well as newspaper reports and government documents. There are two main reasons for the implementation gap. One is the imperfections and ambiguities of the initial policy decision, which are the result of multilateral negotiations. Not only within the government of Japan but also between the two governments, there is a divergence of views on interpreting the policy target among officials involved. In particular, the Philippines had different views on interpreting the concluded articles of the JPEPA, which were intended to be the core guidepost of implementation. The second reason comes from 1) Japanʼs unique institutional setting and administrative culture of public administration at the MHLW and 2) patterns of its organizational activities that affect policy implementation process and policy outcome. In addition, 3) the gap between central and local Accepting Nurse and Certified Care Worker Candidates in Japan ── How a Bilateral Policy Decision is Implemented at the Administration Level ──