The Vanishing "Committee": A Comparative Case Study of Naming and Institutional Design in Japan's Executive and Oversight Bodies under the Cabinet Office

This paper examines a gap between the image of independence and neutrality that the term "committee" (iinkai) generally evokes in Japan's administrative organizations and the actual scope of legal independence such bodies possess, through three case studies: the Financial Services Agency, the Consumer Affairs Agency, and the Children and Families Agency. Under the National Government Organization Act, legal independence from ministerial direction is reserved for a specific type of body known as the "Article 3 committee"; the "agencies" placed as external bureaus of the Cabinet Office remain under ministerial direction. This paper analyzes this design pattern through the lens of "dilution of accountability" and proposes, as a tentative institutional-design contribution, a four-tier reorganization of Japan's administrative bodies into ministries, agencies, time-limited committees, and permanently independent authorities. This is the English-language version of a paper first published in Japanese (Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21447313).