One of the perennial controversies in the study of Japanese political economy has centred on the role of the government in the economy and in Japan's economic growth. The best-known model of Japanese political economy is the ‘capitalist developmental state’, which offers both a descriptive model of Japanese political economy and an explanation for Japan's postwar economic miracle in terms of bureaucracy-led intervention. As a descriptive model, the ‘capitalist developmental state’ both over-generalises and under-generalises key features of Japan's political economy. It over-generalises because it builds a model of Japanese political economy based on government-business relations in a number of large-scale, export-oriented manufacturing industries ignoring inefficient or ‘laggard’ sectors or admitting them only as system supports. The model under-generalises Japanese political economy because types and modes of bureaucratic intervention are consistent across different sectors of the economy, and in fact are more prevalent in weaker sectors, such as agriculture.