Whatever plans they have for Mr Koizumi, the mandarins cannot escape that uncomfortable truth.
With the LDP's blessing, the mandarins made policy, to be rubber-stamped by the cabinet.
Our economy is not managed by Washington mandarins the way Japan's still is by Tokyo mandarins.
It will study the system in New Zealand, where mandarins sign a contract setting out expectations.
This role has little political content, yet ministers remain accountable for the mandarins' performance.
Francis Maude said there have been cases where top mandarins have blocked initiatives agreed by ministers.
Foreign Office mandarins, previously unconcerned about Africa, have suddenly become passionately interested in it.
In return for awarding a licence, the mandarins have felt obliged to keep the beneficiary in business.
But even if Mr Koizumi's reforms do fail, the mandarins have surely entered a long twilight in Japan.
Mattson hints at a respectful longing for such bygone mandarins of the commentariat as Walter Lippmann and Stewart Alsop.
Treasury mandarins, however, are keen to avoid open conflict, hoping things will improve.
Our economy is not managed by Washington mandarins the way Tokyo's still is.
Even a love of talking unites mandarins from Beijing and Eurocrats from Brussels.
They would rightly fear bureaucratic hostility to change, after the mandarins' recent outburst.
Labour MP and ex-minister Gerald Kaufman once described the tales of double-dealing Whitehall mandarins and hapless politicians as "chillingly accurate".
All this is due to something leading politicians and BBC mandarins understand but is a mystery to most licence fee payers.
Few are shedding tears for the mandarins of college leagues, who have built a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate on the backs of unpaid labour.
Canberra's financial mandarins attribute Australia's resilience partly to the government's well-directed fiscal stimulus, and to tight regulations that kept bank lending fairly conservative.
ECONOMIST: A rare rich-world leader for whom a budget brings good news
Nonetheless, Mr Kondo, a former business journalist who once wrote a book on bureaucrats, has realised how valuable his own mandarins can be.
As a political event, it appeared to signal, with the injection of brutal Wall Street methods, a new realism among the mandarins in Tokyo.
At the Public Accounts Committee there's a hearing (at 3.15pm) on reforming the Ministry of Defence, with evidence from Ursula Brennan, the Permanent Under-Secretary, and senior MoD mandarins.
And, to the chagrin of his father's ageing mandarins, when King Mohammed moves among the crowds, he holds out his hand hoping it will be shaken, not kissed.
Our Treasury mandarins forget that the inflation we suffer at home will cost us more than whatever temporary advantage we gain on our trade accounts from a devalued dollar.
Treasury mandarins are now seeking to draw a distinction between charges for a specific service (the revenues of which can be ring-fenced), and general tax revenues that must remain sacrosanct.
Mr Prescott's bruising experience has taught him a hard lesson: that pre-election de-centralisation rhetoric does not impress battle-hardened Whitehall mandarins, who instinctively resist any attempt to encroach on their territory.
Such sceptical euro-mandarins favour rules demanding that at least 0.2% of voters in any given country back an initiative, in at least a third of the EU's members (ie, nine countries).
However, the greatest threat to the freedom of information bill now is that it will be delayed again, allowing mandarins and ministers plenty of time to pick its complicated provisions to bits.
The BCCI mandarins feel that they have taken due cognisance of the "crime" after a "proper" investigation of their own and the bans were not imposed merely on basis of the CBI report.
This may seem a logical system, but too often it amounts to an in-group of mandarins funding types of research they deem fashionable or are already familiar with, and the cycles of proposal and review are painfully slow.
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