Crisis and choice in digital transformation: COVID-19 and the punctuated politics of government DX in Japan

National political systems often favour incrementalism, vested interests, and traditional power structures resulting in a “tyranny of the status quo” that stymies efforts for disruptive and essential policymaking. Punctuated equilibrium theory argues that the interaction of political institutions, interest mobilisations, and boundedly rational decision-making during periods of crisis can create windows of opportunity for significant change in public policy. In this article, we apply this theory to the case of government digital transformation (DX) in Japan through a longitudinal study of stasis, crisis, choice, and change. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 served as a significant catalyst for large-scale departures from the status quo, resulting in waves of institutional, policy and technological innovation, including most recently in artificial intelligence. While movement towards the development of DX had begun years earlier, it was the pandemic that dramatically accelerated its formation and implementation despite longstanding stakeholder resistance. These findings are significant for both theories of public policy in general and for digital transformation in particular, as well as for the scholarship on Japanese public affairs in the 21st century.