Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 29
Book Description
15 Years of Decentralization Reform in Japan
Author: Political Reform Reconsidered
Author: Satoshi MachidoriPublisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811994331
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
This Open Access book provides a comprehensive analysis of political reforms in Japan since the 1990s, emphasizing the role of ideas in shaping their goals and outcomes. For more than fifteen years following the collapse of Japan’s economic bubble, politicians, business people and academics tackled a range of institutional reforms. The sweeping changes they enacted—covering almost all facets of the public sphere, including elections, public administration, courts and the central bank—fundamentally altered Japanese political processes and policies. Taken together, they arguably represent the final touches of Japan’s political modernization, which had been unfolding since the mid-19th century. Throughout the reform process, advocates were inspired by a combination of liberal and modernist ideas. This book examines those guiding concepts and illustrates the often messy process of applying them to real-world institutions. While most reforms began from common goals, they ultimately produced different—and frequently unexpected—institutional outcomes, which continue to shape Japanese politics. By focusing on the relationship between the ideas and processes that shaped Japan’s reforms, this book presents a broad vision of institutional change in comparative politics.
Movement in Decentralization in Japan After the First Decentralization Reform
Author: Japan's Local Governance at the Crossroads
Author: Purnendra JainPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Local government
Languages : en
Pages : 32
Book Description
Cities, Autonomy, and Decentralization in Japan
Author: Carola HeinPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134341490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
Adding a new perspective to the current literature on decentralization in Japan, Cities, Autonomy and Decentralization in Japan, approaches the subject from an urban studies and planning approach. The essays in the collection present a cogent compilation of case studies focusing on the past, present and future of decentralization in Japan. These include small scale development in the fields such as citizen participation (machizukuri), urban form and architecture, disaster prevention and conservation of monuments. The contributors suggest that new trends are emerging after the bursting of Japan's economic bubble and assess them in the context of the country's larger socio-political system. This in-depth analysis of the development outside of Japan provides a valuable addition to students of Urban, Asian and Japanese Studies.
Local Government Development in Post-war Japan
Author: Michio MuramatsuPublisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199248285
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
This book examines the evolution of intergovernmental relations in postwar Japan. These relations are shown to be both complex and dynamic, and the Japanese model is revealed as one in which aspects of both central control and local autonomy have co-existed with the balance shifting graduallyover time towards the latter. The Japanese system has helped to maintain broad-based economic growth since it has at its core a strongly egalitarian fiscal transfer mechanism. At the same time, it has proved to be consistent, to a much greater extent than previously recognized, with politicaldevelopment, or progress in the attainment of such political values as liberty (personal rights) and equality (broad participation in public affairs) for individuals and communities. This is because the national government has proved flexible enough to accommodate, although not always with grace oralacrity, citizen concerns about the quality of life. The Japanese approach to intergovernmental relationships has also been successful in solving coordination problems which often arise between local and central government units and in building capacity to support greater and effectivedecentralization. Coordination problems have been handled through a variety of mechanisms including the practice of agency delegated functions, while local capacity issues have been addressed through such practices as the exchange of personnel across different levels of government and the use ofattractive compensation and training packages to recruit and retain local staff. The Japanese experience thus provides an example of gradual and guided decentralization based on shared responsibilities between local and central governments for mobilizing, managing, and spending public resources inthe pursuit of sustainable development.
Beyond National Uniformity
Author: Jung Hwan LeePublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
Well known for its centralized local economic system under the national equity principle, Japan has experimented with transforming this regional redistribution system into a new local economic system of governance for more autonomous local economic growth over the past decade. This new local economic governance has been characterized by the increasing involvement of social actors, such as large private corporations and local communities, in policy processes. This dissertation reveals that new local economic growth strategies for the new local economic governance have operated under very different models in different regions of Japan, although all new local programs have been introduced under the banner of public-private partnership. New partnership programs in the local economic policy arena in the 2000s have moved toward the market model, in which local authorities pursue growth by attracting international business resources, in the major metropolitan areas around Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, whereas they have moved toward the community model, in which local authorities purge growth by mobilizing local organizational resources, in the rest of Japan. The market model is embedded in market reform for deregulation that makes large private corporations' freer activities easy, whereas the community model is an attempt to strengthen the structure of endogenous networks among local authorities and local economic and social elites. This dissertation highlights two variables to explain regional variations of local economic growth strategies: dual local economic structures and diverging politico-economic coalitions. First, under the rule of Koizumi Junichiro, a coalition of promoting market reform among neoliberal politicians and large private corporations has won politically over a coalition for maintaining national equity among politicians embedded in traditional conservative center-local linkages, local business groups, and local leadership of underdeveloped areas, in national politics. The regional redistribution mechanism stopped functioning in this political choice. Instead, market reform and local community participation have been introduced as alternatives to regional redistribution mechanisms. Second, the major metropolitan areas and other underdeveloped areas, which came to stand on equal conditions for autonomous local economic growth strategies under decentralization reforms, are characterized by different situations in attracting private investment. The competitive regions of the major metropolitan areas have taken the market model as their main local economic growth strategy because they are competitive to attract private investment. In contrast, the protected regions outside the major metropolitan areas have taken the community model as their key local economic growth strategy because they have less competitive local economic structure of fading industries and scare population for attracting private investment. Over the past decade, reforms for public-private partnership in the local economic policy arena resulted in the disturbance of the Japanese way of balancing market powers and local interests in the postwar period. In the postwar period, the centralized regional redistribution mechanism, led by national politicians and central bureaucracies, functioned as a tool for social integration with consideration for national equity. However, experiments with the new form of local economic governance were not successful in balancing market reform with local community mobilization. The mobilization of local community resources could not match the political role of the regional redistribution mechanism outside the major metropolitan areas. In addition, market reform, which has been more effective in the advanced major metropolitan areas, has produced increasing regional economic disparity. Japan has faced a complicated stand-off between large private corporations detached from specific localities and local communities locked in place, which were connected by national political coordination mechanisms in the postwar period. Although each of two diverging local economic growth strategies has been effective in different regions, there was no national political mechanism for mediating local variations of these localized programs in the 2000s.
Party Politics and Decentralization in Japan and France
Author: Koichi NakanoPublisher:
ISBN: 0415553059
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155
Book Description
Decentralization is a curious policy for a central government to pursue. If politics is essentially about the struggle for power, why would anyone want to give away the power that one struggled for and won? This book argues that it is precisely party competition in search of power that propels decentralization. Koichi Nakano develops his core argument through in-depth, qualitative research on the politics of reform in France and Japan. Introducing the concept of oppositional policy, he traces the process through which parties in opposition reinvent their ideologies and policy platforms in an attempt to present themselves as the voice of the governed, broaden popular support through the advocacy of enhanced democratic control of government, and proceed to implement some of these oppositional policies after capturing power. This book, thus, takes the role of political parties in the democratic process seriously - parties take up certain issues and espouse certain solutions actively as weapons in the power struggle both on the electoral front and in the policy process. Party competition is not merely a formal condition of democracy; it is also a mechanism with substantive policy impact on its evolution. Party Politics and Decentralization in Japan and France will be of interest to students of Japanese and French politics and comparative politics in general.
Examining Japan's Lost Decades
Author: Yoichi FunabashiPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317503368
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
This book examines five features of Japan’s ‘Lost Decades’: the speed of the economic decline in Japan compared to Japan’s earlier global prowess; a rapidly declining population; considerable political instability and failed reform attempts; shifting balances of power in the region and changing relations with Asian neighbouring nations; and the lingering legacy of World War Two. Addressing the question of why the decades were lost, this book offers 15 new perspectives ranging from economics to ideology and beyond. Investigating problems such as the risk-averse behaviour of Japan’s bureaucracy and the absence of strong political leadership, the authors analyse how the delay of ‘loss-cutting policies’ led to the 1997 financial crisis and a state of political gridlock where policymakers could not decide on firm strategies that would benefit national interests. To discuss the rebuilding of Japan, the authors argue that it is first essential to critically examine Japan’s ‘Lost Decades’ and this book offers a comprehensive overview of Japan’s recent 20 years of crisis. The book reveals that the ‘Lost Decades’ is not an issue unique to the Japanese context but has global relevance, and its study can provide important insights into challenges being faced in other mature economies. With chapters written by some of the world’s leading Japan specialists and chapters focusing on a variety of disciplines, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the areas of Japan studies, Politics, International Relations, Security Studies, Government Policy and History.
Planning for Cities and Regions in Japan
Author: Philip ShapiraPublisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 9780853232483
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
This book brings together a series of contributions which examine the processes of contemporary city development and urban planning in Japan. A central theme of the book is to consider, from a range of perspectives and situations, the role, policies, methods, and effectiveness of planning in guiding city development in Japan and in addressing present and emerging urban issues. Areas of particular concern include inner city development, the urban periphery, the institutional and regulatory context of planning, and planning for urban and regional economic and technological change. In many instances, the book draws parallels between Japan's urban experience and planning approach with those of Europe and North America. Earlier versions of all but two of the chapters were published in issues of the Town Planning Review, but not only does the book have the value of bringing these contributions together in one volume, but it has also allowed the authors to revise and update their work and incorporate new developments. The editors have contributed a substantial, reflective introductory chapter and have also included a chronology of Japanese planning legislation and an annotated guide to selected English-language literature on Japanese urban and regional planning. While the main aim of the book is to provide a detailed interpretation of current urban planning issues and policies in Japan, the chapters also provide a foundation for understanding how Japanese city planning may evolve in the future.