The Immortality Paradox: One‐Party Dominance, Political Tenure, and Organizational Continuity in Japanese Agencies

ABSTRACT In his classic 1976 study on organizational survival, Kaufman argued that public organizations are “immortal”. More recent research, however, has come to the opposite conclusion, finding that public organizations are frequently terminated. These findings largely relate to contexts where changes to the ruling party occur regularly. In contrast, this study examines the survival of government agencies in Japan, where the postwar political system has been characterized by one‐party dominance and short‐lived political leadership. The findings suggest that Japanese agencies remain largely “immortal,” and that when they do undergo transitions this tends to be linked to prime ministers with longer tenures who are able to implement minor, cosmetic changes; hence agencies typically persist even after such events. This study thus sheds new light on how political–administrative relations shape patterns of agency transition and highlights the importance of leadership tenure in sustaining commitments to organizational change.