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Japan’s Ministry of Education “becoming the Right”: neo‐liberal restructuring and the Ministry’s struggles for political legitimacy

This article first examines the controversial revision of the Fundamental Law of Education (FLE) by situating it in the larger global context of neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative state‐restructuring and education reform. It then focuses on the domestic politics behind what seems to be the global convergence of education policy along neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative lines. Focusing on the political agency of the Ministry of Education (MOE) and tracing its shifting political interests in regards to the FLE amendment, the article illuminates the MOE’s strategic move to “become the Right” to secure its political legitimacy in the relentless neo‐liberal pressures for fiscal and administrative decentralisation.