Introduction

Formation of public policy in today's multifaceted society is persistently challenged by numerous ongoing agendas, as well as newly emerging social issues, often inextricably interrelated at local, national and global levels, with potential beneficiaries on one side and typical defrayers that inevitably exist on the other. Guiding public policy towards optimised points of social equilibria, particularly with individuals and groups claiming mutually conflicting interests and rights for their own sake, is deemed an extremely arduous task for any intermediating agents as it involves strenuous efforts through lengthy political and administrative processes of governments, as well as laborious negotiation with individual actors and interest groups.

It seems fairly natural that the increasingly demanding administrative and technical environment surrounding the platforms of today's policymakers and analysts calls for fully fledged ‘policy professionals’ who are equipped with a wide spectrum of cuttingedge analytical skills and knowledge, as well as ethical minds, in order to effectively serve the broad public interest. To this end, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (referred to as MEXT) inaugurated a new scheme of graduate-level professional schools in 2003 in order to ‘provide new graduate programs (professional degrees) that specialize in fostering high-level professionals to take leadership roles in all fields of social economy as well as active international roles’ (MEXT, 2007). Directly following the preceding model of public policy schools in the US, universities in Japan then began to establish their own version of higher learning, with specific missions of nurturing policy professionals and citizens who would make beneficial contributions to their social health and well-being. As a result of this government-led effort, a modest number of graduate-level professional schools of public policy, administration and management (henceforth referred to as PPAM) were launched in a short period between the years of 2003 and 2007. As discussed in the following section, however, a non-negligible number of universities and colleges had already provided undergraduate and graduate programmes in the field of public administration and policy analysis, often as a branch subject within other social science departments, such as political science and economics.