This repository contains the code used to clean and compile Amakudata, a dataset of all Japanese bureaucrats who have retired to positions outside of the bureaucracy (i.e., revolving door or “amakudari” appointments) from 2009 - 2019. Any and all comments are welcome!
A user-friendly dashboard that allows for data exploration and visualization can be found at Amakudashboard.
- Users can examine amakudari appointments by: ministry of former employment, agency of former employment, name of destination firm, destination industry, and destination firm type (e.g., private sector, non-profit, etc.).
- You can also examine the top hirers of former bureaucrats by year, as well as view the details of the hires made by individual firms.
The full dataset can be downloaded in CSV format here or in RData format here. Users who wish to only download data for e.g., a specific year, ministry, agency, or firm, can do so using the "Data Download" tab in Amakudashboard. The original PDF disclosures of civil servant re-employments from the Cabinet Office can be found here.
A letter-length paper describing how the dataset was created and validated, what the data reveals about the revolving door in Japan and beyond, and offering suggestions on how the dataset could be used to investigate empirical questions in political economy can be found at: Incerti, T., Miyano, S., Stanescu, D., & Yamagishi, H.. Amakudata: a dataset of bureaucratic revolving door hires.
A codebook describing all of the variables in the dataset and their values can be found here.
The following interactive visualizations offer high-level views of the patterns in the data.
- Flows of bureaucrats from ministries to top public corporations
- Flows of bureaucrats from ministries to top private sector corporations
- Flows of bureaucrats from ministries to publicly traded companies by industry
Please also note that not all intermediary data files will be made available, as some of the data used in the cleaning process (e.g., to identify firm industries, firm stock codes, add English names to firm, etc.) is proprietary.