Rich Nation, Liberal International: Ideology and Action in Japanese Foreign Aid Policy

Characterizations of foreign aid donors neglect the overarching importance of ideas in determining policy. This article explores Japan’s ideological criteria for foreign aid decision-making, differentiated both between goals and the instruments to achieve them, as well as between ideas in the specific foreground and the general background. Japan continues to operate with a recognizable postwar ideology, which synthesized aspects of an earlier militarist and economic nationalism paradigm with liberal internationalism. In recent years, the perception of a growing threat from China and other changes have catalyzed a shift in Japan’s ODA toward greater securitization and liberal value-orientation; however, aid policy still remains situated within this “Rich Nation, Liberal International” paradigm.