What is Japan's New Paradigm?

Richard Katz and other analysts had derided various aspects of Japan’s economic and political trajectory, using catch phrases such as “governance by negotiations”, “bargaining democracy” and “creative conservatism.”

Interest groups were described as “Lilliputians” who had “hog-tie the Gulliver of national interest in millions of tiny threads.” (Richard Katz, "The System that Soured: Toward a New Paradigm to Guide Japan Policy, Washington Quarterly Vol 21 No 4 (Autumn 1998)

While I can offer no prescription for Japan's economic malaise, and do agree that Japan needs to be reformed, I am not sure if adopting free market principles of profit-maximization, deregulation, and the whole hog of laissez-faire principles is the only way out.

After all, from a socialist democratic point of view, some of the things that Katz had derided (such as government policy being "continually confronted with the trade-off between promoting winners and compensating losers, between producing wealth and distributing it") can be an extremely attractive option to some societies that might be willing to sacrifice economic efficiency in exchange for greater and more enduring social stability.