The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society and Economy

25Deregulation and the Japanese Economy1998

All over the world, senior bureaucrats descend from heaven. The most extreme case is not Japan, where only the top people do that. The most extreme cases are Germany and France. Every real power position in Germany is filled by a former, upper-mid-level government bureaucrat who didn’t make it to the top and then becomes either the executive director of a trade association—which is compulsory in Germany and has real power—or, if you are a Social Democrat, the executive director of a trade union, with is equally compulsory and equally powerful. And France goes much further. In France, every power position in business and every university director comes out of the government.

So we are the exception. ...