| Sumario: | This essay examines the lengthy struggle by Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) to break up Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), Japan's former monopoly telecommunications service provider. It argues that NTT was ultimately successful in avoiding genuine breakup in large part due to its ability to represent its continued unity as essential to Japanese competitiveness in advanced telecommunications and related Info-Communications (IC) markets. This argument was particularly salient in the Japanese policy discourse, given the historically developmentalist (political coordination and direction of economic development) orientation of the Japanese political economy. In this case, the ideological power of developmentalism persisted even as its institutional salience declined. However, since the resolution of the breakup debate with NTT's transformation into a holding company in 1999, NTT has not been able to play the role of sector leadership it claimed, beset by competition from new technologies and declining profits. This points to fundamental difficulties in maintaining a developmentalist perspective in the face of changed circumstances in telecommunications and related technologies, in particular, and the Japanese economy in general.
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