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Decentralization

Newsletter of the lnstitute of Social Science, University of TokyoISSN 1340-7155

SocialScience 37

September 2007

Social Science Japan September 2007Page 2

Published by:The Information Center for SocialScience Research on JapanInstitute of Social ScienceUniversity of Tokyo

Editorial Committee:Hirashima KenjiYamazaki Yukiko

DistributionSocial Science Japan is available onthe World Wide Web at:http://newslet.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

All inquiries to:Social Science JapanInstitute of Social ScienceUniversity of TokyoHongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-kuTokyo 113-0033 JAPANTel +81 3 5841 4931Fax +81 3 5841 4905Electronic mail:[email protected]

Cover PhotoJapan in 1855

Editorial NotesPersonal Names

All personal names are given inthe customary order in thenative language of the personunless otherwise requested.Hence in Japanese names, thefamily name is given first, e.g.Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and inWestern names the familyname is given second, e.g.George Bush.

Copyright © 2007 by the Institute ofSocial Science, University ofTokyo, except where noted. Allrights reserved.

This issue of Social Science Japan brings several perspectives to bear on theincreasingly important issue of fiscal and administrative decentralization. Inthe first of the articles, Professor Kanai examines Japan’s 2006 DecentralizationReform Promotion Act for clues to the future evolution of policy in this area.According to his analysis, the key to future reform is whether control over fiscalrevenues is dominated by the central government or by the local governments.In the following article, Professor Kohara argues that Japan’s frenzied amalga-mation of municipalities from 1999 through 2006 was largely driven by fiscalincentives. He also laments that that this amalgamation has proceeded withoutcoherent and credible objectives or standards, and has diminished the roleplayed by the prefectural (or mid-tier) level of government. Next, ProfessorTamura outlines Japan’s prefectural system and recent prospects for doshusei,which seeks to combine prefectures into a regional structure of governance. Hisarticle explains the many obstacles confronting the introduction of doshusei, butconvincingly points out the prolific faults of the present system of centralizedgovernance. Lastly, Professor Wollmann’s article shows that the trend towardsdecentralization is not limited to Japan, but is also evident in varying degrees inWestern European countries.

In addition, the July 29 House of Councilor’s election resulted in a historicaldefeat for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. For the first time since its incep-tion in 1955, the LDP lost its leadership of the Upper House. There are manyreasons for this LDP defeat, but salient among them are the ruling coalition’sneglect of local conditions outside of the big urban centres. To the extent thatthis discontent with the central government continues to impinge on politics, itmay well affect the future course of Japan’s decentralization.

Contents

Decentralization

Kanai Toshiyuki Vectors of Change in Japan’s Political and Fiscal Decentralization……………P.3

Kohara Takaharu The Great Heisei Consolidation: A Critical Review …………………………P.7

Tamura Shigeru Japan’s Federalist Prospects ………………………………………………P.12

Hellmut Wollmann The Devolution of Public Tasks between Political Decentralisation and Administrative Deconcentration–a Comparative European Perspective ………………………P.16

ISS Research ReportIokibe Kaoru …………………………………………………………………………………P.22

Greetings from Visiting ProfessorsSun Ge…………………………………………………………………………………………P.25

Patricia Steinhoff ………………………………………………………………………………P.27

* The Kanai, Kohara, and Tamura articles are part of a 21st Century COE Project in the University ofTokyo. This project was entitled “The Invention of Policy Systems in Advanced Countries: Building aSynergy Core for Comparative Policy System Studies”.

Kanai Toshiyuki

Social Science Japan September 2007

Kanai Toshiyuki is a Professor of Municipal

Government and Administration at the Graduate

School of Law and Politics/Graduate School of

Public Policy, the University of Tokyo

Graduate School of Law and Politics/Graduate School ofPublic PolicyUniversity of TokyoHongo 7-3-1Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033

This paper sketches vectors of change underJapan’s Decentralization Reform Promotion Act.That act, enacted by the Diet in 2006, is an initia-tive for imparting renewed momentum to decen-tralization. Responsible for spearheading theintended decentralization is the DecentralizationReform Promotion Committee, a group of third-party experts launched in April 2007.

The Decentralization Reform Promotion Act, alsoknown as the New Decentralization PromotionAct, is the successor to the Decentralization Pro-motion Act of 1995. Work by the DecentralizationPromotion Committee under the earlier legisla-tion culminated in the 1999 enactment of theOmnibus Decentralization Act. The accomplish-ments of the committee were substantive andearned regard as the initial phase of decentraliza-tion. Numerous issues remained, however, andthe need for further decentralization was the coreemphasis of the committee’s final report, datedJune 20, 2001.

Decentralization was part of Prime MinisterKoizumi Junichiro’s “trinity reforms” for (1)reducing subsidies for specified public servicesfrom the national treasury to the local govern-ments, (2) reducing general grants for unspecifiedpurposes from the national treasury to the localgovernments, and (3) transferring some of thenational government’s tax-levying authority tothe local governments. A ruling-party agreementdated November 30, 2005, characterized adminis-trative reform for promoting decentralization asan “unending” quest.

I. Decentralization from the Perspective of theCabinet Advisory Council on Economic and Fis-cal Policy

The New Decentralization Promotion Act is anextension of the Japanese government’s ongoingprogram of “structural” reform, led by the Cabi-net Advisory Council on Economic and FiscalPolicy. It arose through debate in the council,whose members view decentralization as a meansof reducing national and local fiscal expenditures.They were especially eager to address an issuethat had impeded progress in that regard: theinsistence by the local governments that fiscalassistance should accompany any administrativereforms that included assigned or devolvedresponsibility for functions or services. The coun-cil members reached a generally clear consensusin regard to the following items:

1. Local fiscal constraint is essential to shrinkingnational- and local-government expenditures.

2. Decentralization should avoid measures, suchas requiring the local governments to performfunctions or services formerly determined bythe national government that would give thelocal governments a basis for demanding fund-ing from the national government.

3. Close coordination between the national andthe local governments is crucial in administra-tive reform likely to be perceived as disadvan-tageous to any local government.

Vectors of Change in Japan’s Political and Fiscal DecentralizationTwo decisive benchmarks: authority over administrative functions and responsibility for fiscal revenues

4. Legislators and government officials shoulddevote careful consideration to the above crite-ria in evaluating fiscal results and in establish-ing fiscal targets.

II. Decentralization from the Perspective of theLocal Governments

The local governments have an utterly differentperspective from that of the national govern-ment’s Cabinet Advisory Council on Economicand Fiscal Policy. Articulating that perspective forthe past decade have been six associations thatrepresent the local governments’ collective inter-ests. Those associations––of prefectural gover-nors, prefectural assembly chairpersons, citymayors, city council chairpersons, town headper-sons, and town council chairpersons–– have con-sistently stressed the following priorities inasserting local-government interests:

1. Decentralization is essential to revitalizingJapan’s rural regions.

2. Decentralization should avoid measures, suchas requiring the local governments to performfunctions or services formerly performed bythe national government, which would give thenational government a basis for interfering inlocal-government affairs.

3. Vigorous participation by the local govern-ments in the national arena of political decisionmaking is crucial in administrative reform like-ly to be perceived as disadvantageous to thenational government.

4. Legislators and government officials should

devote careful consideration to securing suffi-cient local sources of tax revenues in evaluatingfiscal results and in establishing fiscal targets.

The sway of the national government over thelocal governments remained basically undimin-ished through the initial phase of decentraliza-tion. Reforms ended the national government’spractice of assigning functions to the local gov-ernments by bureaucratic fiat. Still intact, howev-er, was the power of the national government toimpose functions on the local governmentsthrough legislation and administrative rule mak-ing.

Only by moderating the national government’slegislative clout, argued the six local-governmentassociations, could substantive progress in decen-tralization occur. They interpret the New Decen-tralization Promotion Act as reflecting theirdemands for curtailing the national government’slegislative sway over the local governments.Their interpretation thus differs subtly but cru-cially from that of the Cabinet Advisory Councilon Economic and Fiscal Policy.

III. Four Possible Approaches

The New Decentralization Promotion Act, in per-mitting two crucially different interpretations,was a quintessentially fuzzy Japanese exercise inaccommodating divergent interests. That fuzzi-ness was and is tenuous. Unambiguous decisionsabout concrete issues will become necessary asdecentralization progresses. Japan’s national and


National-governmentcontrol over sources offiscal funding

Strong

Weak

National-government power to impose administrative

responsibilities on local governments

1. Highly centralized governance––acontinuation of Japan’s postwarmodel

2. Decentralized governance accompa-nied by continued national-govern-ment control over fiscal rev-enues––a new framework consistentwith local-government demands

3. Centralized governance accompa-nied by extensive devolution ofauthority over fiscal revenues––areversion to the prewar model

4. Decentralized governance and small-er government overall––a new frame-work consistent with the vision of theCabinet Advisory Council on Eco-nomic and Fiscal Policy

What and how much to decentralize

Strong Weak

local governments will need to choose straightfor-ward courses of action and will need to acknowl-edge limits to their latitude for compromise.

Characterizing Japanese public administrationsince World War II have been national-govern-ment assertiveness in assigning functions and ser-vices to the local governments and strong nation-al-government control over fiscal revenues.Developments in those two characteristics underthe New Decentralization Promotion Act willdefine the course of decentralization. Outlined inthe table are the four basic potential combinationsof developments. The national government

1. remains assertive in delegating functions andservices and retains tight control over fiscal rev-enues;

2. becomes less assertive in delegating functionsand services but retains extensive control overfiscal revenues;

3. remains assertive in delegating functions andservices but devolves substantial fiscal bur-dens; or

4. becomes less assertive in delegating functionsand services and devolves substantial responsi-bility for and authority over fiscal revenues.

Responsibility for and authority over fiscal rev-enues are the chief subject of disagreementbetween the local governments and the CabinetAdvisory Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy.Economic shrinkage–inevitable in light of Japan’sshrinking and aging population––will unques-tionably reduce Japanese governments’ absolutecapacity for raising revenues. What remains to beseen is how much the balance of revenue-raisingcapacities between the national and the local gov-ernments will shift.

An issue of greater concern is the geographicaldisparity in revenue-raising capabilities. The localgovernments in economically strong regionsenjoy ample options in fortifying their revenueraising, but the fiscal viability of the local govern-ments in economically weak regions is question-able. For the famously homologous Japanese, theprospect of broadening economic differentialsamong regions poses a daunting challenge. Thatchallenge further complicates the impendingcompetition for access to fiscal revenues.

IV. Summary

Control over fiscal revenues––regardless of whocontrols the allocation of government func-tions––has huge implications for Japanese publicfinance, as well as for the political map of thenation. If the national government retains over-whelming fiscal control and responsibility (sce-narios 1 and 2 in the table), its fiscal managementwill become unsustainable. A fiscal collapse at thenational level would undermine functions andservices essential to the quality of life for allJapanese. It would decimate the national govern-ment’s capacity for subsidizing the local govern-ments and would therefore trigger a fiscal col-lapse at the local level, too.

On the other hand, a wholesale shift of fiscalauthority and responsibility to the local govern-ments (scenarios 3 and 4 in the table) would beequally disastrous. It would extend the fiscal via-bility of the national government, but it wouldbankrupt the local governments in urban andrural areas alike. That, too, would debilitate func-tions and services essential to regional vitalityand to the quality of life.

The cessation of fiscal support from the nationalgovernment would oblige Japan’s local govern-ments to fend for themselves. Each local govern-ment would presumably focus narrowly on itsown fiscal well-being. Public services would suf-fer as the local governments curtailed expendi-tures to match revenues. The quality of life woulddeteriorate, and the local governments wouldbecome essentially dysfunctional. Even if thelocal governments tried to maintain public ser-vices, the resultant deficit spending would drivethem to bankruptcy. That, too, would emasculatepublic services.

Different approaches to decentralizing fiscalresponsibility thus threaten to have the sameresult––of pauperizing Japan’s local governmentsand debasing the quality of life. Regional fiscaldebacles would necessitate emergency outlays bythe national government to maintain a minimumlevel of public services. Fiscal collapse at the locallevel would eventually prove fiscally devastatingat the national level, too.


We thus find that each of the approaches in thefigure would prove disastrous if applied in anextreme and arbitrary manner. Each approachwould require some compromise and moderationin practice to achieve sustainability. Determiningthe degree of decentralization to undertake willbe a pressing issue in adopting any of the fourapproaches. Nuance, in other words, is of theessence. The fate of regional governance in Japanwill hinge on the discretion employed in fine-tun-ing any approach to fiscal decentralization.

Powerful forces are converging on either side ofan epic confrontation. On one side are the forcesaligned in the cause of smaller government underthe banner of structural reform. Their flagship isthe government’s Cabinet Advisory Council onEconomic and Fiscal Policy. On the other side arethe forces of Japan’s local governments. In theirvanguard are the six main local-government asso-ciations.

The confrontation taking shape is the latestengagement in the continuing postwar skirmish-

ing between forces focused on national economicinterests and those focused on regional interests.In that sense, Japan’s political landscape hasremained essentially unchanged for half a centu-ry. The good news is that a workable solution tothe challenges described in this paper is possibleon that landscape. It will be possible if the forcesarrayed on either side of the national-local con-frontation are prepared to compromise.

Maintaining a sound balance of power betweenthe national economic interests and the regionalinterests will be crucial. A sharp waxing of eitherside accompanied by a correspondingly sharpwaning of the other would be extremely disrup-tive for fiscal management and for the quality oflife, as well as for the political landscape. Trendsin decentralization will therefore shape Japandecisively in the 21st century. Their implicationsextend far beyond merely rationalizing local pub-lic administration. Japan’s approach to decentral-ization will reshape the nation’s political frame-work, its fiscal foundations, and the very fabric oflife.



Kohara Takaharu is a Professor of Public

Administration and Local Government at the

Faculty of Law, Seikei University

Faculty of LawSeikei University3-3-1 Kichijoji-Kitamachi, Musashino-shiTokyo 180-8633

1. The Great Heisei Consolidation: Facts andFindings

The Japanese central government pushed ahead

with the nationwide consolidation of municipali-ties from 1999 through 2006, in line with the Lawfor Exceptional Measures on Municipal Mergers(hereinafter referred to as the Municipal MergerLaw). The move was accelerated under theadministration of then-Prime Minister KoizumiJunichiro, who took office in April 2001.

Japan has undergone three major waves ofmunicipal consolidation since the Meiji Restora-tion. The first wave, often referred to as the GreatMeiji Restoration, came in 1888 and 1889, coincid-ing with the introduction to Japan of the modernlocal government system. The number of munici-palities was reduced from 71,314 to 15,859through this first round of mergers. The secondone, known as the Great Showa Consolidation,took place between 1953 and 1961 as part of thenation’s efforts to cope with the changes broughtabout by the so-called post-war reforms. Thenumber of municipalities was slashed from 9,868to 3,472 (Tokyo’s 23 wards, created after WorldWar II, are not included in these figures, whichalso applies to all relevant figures mentioned laterin this essay).

The Great Heisei Consolidation: A Critical Review

Kohara Takaharu

Table 1. Numbers of Municipalities by Prefecture

As of March 31, 1999 As of April 1, 2006 Ratio of reduction(b/a) bet.

1999 & 2006

Rankings Prefecture Total City Town Village Total City Town VillageIn

reduction (a) (b)rate

1 Hiroshima 86 13 67 6 23 14 9 0 26.7%2 Ehime 70 12 44 14 20 11 9 0 28.6%3 Nagasaki 79 8 70 1 23 13 10 0 29.1%4 Oita 58 11 36 11 18 14 3 1 31.0%5 Niigata 112 20 57 35 35 20 9 6 31.3%43 Nara 47 10 20 17 39 12 15 12 83.0%44 Hokkaido 212 34 154 24 180 35 130 15 84.9%45 Kanagawa 37 19 17 1 35 19 15 1 94.6%46 Tokyo 40 27 5 8 39 26 5 8 97.5%47 Osaka 44 33 10 1 43 33 9 1 97.7%

Nationwide 3,232 670 1,994 568 1,820 779 844 197 56.3%

Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

How can the third and latest wave, often referredto as the Great Heisei Consolidation, be comparedwith the preceding two? In the latest round, thenumber of municipalities was nearly halved from3,232 in 1999 to 1,820 in 2006. Some prefecturessaw the numbers of municipalities drop to almostone-fourth while others witnessed little change.This shows that the latest consolidation did notproceed evenly across the nation. Rather, the con-solidation affected western Japan and rural areasmore than eastern Japan and urban areas.


Table 2. Numbers and Ratios of Municipalities by Population Size as of April 1, 2006

Population Below 10,000- 50,000- 100,000- 200,000- 500,000- 1,000,000Sizes 10,000 50,000 100,000 200,000 500,000 1,000,000 and above

Numbers 503 779 276 150 86 15 11(Ratios) (27.6%) (42.8%) (15.2%) (8.2%) (4.7%) (0.8%) (0.6%)

Cumulative 503 1,282 1,558 1,708 1,794 1,809 1,820Numbers (27.6%) (70.4%) (85.6%) (93.8%) (98.6%) (99.4%) (100.0%)

(CumulativeRatios)

1) Population data taken from the 2005 census.2) The 10,000-50,000 bracket does not include 50,000; the same rule applies to other population size brackets.Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Let us look here at how population sizes ofmunicipalities changed after the Great HeiseiConsolidation. According to the 2005 nationalcensus, the average size of municipalities, as cal-culated by the total population (=119,270,000)divided by the number of municipalities (=1,820),stood at around 66,000. However, this average fig-ure does not necessarily represent the realitiesaccurately. A closer look at the figures seems topresent a different picture. At the time of the cen-sus, 26 big cities with a population of 500,000 andabove existed, accounting for 25 percent of thetotal population despite representing a mere 1.4percent of the total number of municipalities. Onthe other hand, municipalities with a populationof less than 50,000, which thus do not fulfill thelegal requirement for city status, numbered 1,282and accounted for 70.4 percent of the total num-ber of municipalities. Yet smaller municipalitieswith a population of less than 10,000 numbered503, representing 27.6 percent of the total numberof municipalities.

It appears, therefore, that the Great Heisei Con-solidation was characterized by significant dis-parities in terms of both geographical distributionand population size.

2. Why was the consolidation necessary?––Lackof Goals and Justification

The Great Meiji Consolidation was aimed at mak-ing municipalities large enough to carry out thecompilation of family registers, tax collection, mil-itary conscription and compulsory education. Bycontrast, the Great Showa Consolidation wasmainly intended to build administrative unitsthat could manage secondary education, a newtask assigned to municipalities through the post-war reforms. With these specific agendas, the cen-tral government laid out the conditions each newmunicipality had to meet in the first two roundsof consolidation. In the Meiji consolidation, adecree issued by the interior minister stated that anewly created administrative unit should in prin-ciple have 300 to 500 households. In the Showaconsolidation, a law stipulated that the standardpopulation size of a municipality should be morethan 8,000.

However, the central government forcibly pushedthrough the Great Heisei Consolidation withoutpresenting any specific and persuasive objectivesor standards. As a result, financial incentivesturned to be the only driving force. The most cru-

SocialScience

cial of these was the issuance of special localbonds. Under this scheme, newly merged munici-palities are allowed to issue special bonds for 10years after merger to cover up to 95 percent of thecosts of public works projects to build a newadministrative unit, with the central governmentpledging to finance 70 percent of the repaymentof the bonds’ principal and interest through taxallocations (chiho- ko- fu zei).

Only recently Yamasaki Shigetaka, a senior offi-cial of the Internal Affairs Ministry who hadplayed a leading role in the government mergerdrive, revealed what he called his personal viewon the purpose of the plan (Yamasaki 2004, 2005).According to Yamasaki, the purpose was, putsimply, to recreate municipalities into “compre-hensive administrative units” (so-go- gyo-sei shutai)that were suited to an era of devolution.

In my opinion, there are two meanings of theexpression “comprehensive administrative unit”:one meaning indicates an entity that can provideadministrative services efficiently with limitedresources; the other an entity that can carry out awide range of administrative services on its own,including such tasks as disposal of garbage andhuman waste, fire fighting and nursing care ser-vices, which are often undertaken by partial coop-eratives (ichibu jimu kumiai) or wide-area unions(ko- iki rengo-) rather than individual municipalities.

A document released by the Internal Affairs Min-istry (MIC 2003), which Yamasaki himself refersto, suggests that the per-capita cost for adminis-trative services surges when the population of amunicipality is below 10,000. It also suggests thatthe so-called wide area services mentioned aboveare most often handled by an entity with a popu-lation of around 100,000, be it a partial coopera-tive, a wide-area union or an individual munici-pality. This data indicates that in order for amunicipality to be an effective administrative ser-vice provider, it should have more than 10,000residents, while it should have more than 100,000residents in order to be a comprehensive serviceprovider.

As we see from Table 2, however, municipalitiesthat do not meet the first condition number 503,or 27.6 percent of the total, while those that do not

fulfill the second condition number 1,558, or 85.6percent.

The basic guidelines on municipal consolidationpresented by the Internal Affairs Minister in May2005, in accordance with Article 58 of the newlyenforced Municipal Merger Law, cited as a goal ofthe merger initiative the dissolution of smallmunicipalities with a population of less than10,000 people. This was the first time in the recentmerger drive that the central government official-ly defined any benchmark for population size.Some merger promotion plans drafted by prefec-tures have advocated creating cities populated bymore than 100,000 people together with the abol-ishment of municipalities inhabited by less than10,000 people (Nara Prefecture 2006).

3. Financial Effects of Municipal Mergers

Why is it imperative for the central governmentto dissolve smaller municipalities and mergethem into more effective administrative units?One major motive is obviously to help restore thenation’s fiscal health.

In recent years, the general account budget of thecentral government stands at around 80 trillionyen with 50 trillion yen covered by taxes and theremaining 30 trillion by the issuance of govern-ment bonds. On the spending side, 50 trillion yenis disbursed for policy implementation, 15 trillionfor tax allocations to local governments, and theremaining 15 trillion for the redemption of gov-ernment bonds. This means that every year fiscaldeficits increase by 15 trillion yen.

If costs for administrative services by smallmunicipalities can be reduced through mergers,this will allow the central government to make adrastic cut in local tax allocations, given thatsmall municipalities receive relatively generousallocations. Among three major options for reduc-ing fiscal deficits–tax hikes, reductions in policyimplementation costs and cuts in local tax alloca-tions–the central government apparently priori-tized the latter, deeming it the easiest means tocut spending.

The Internal Affairs Ministry released its esti-mates for the cost-cutting effects of municipal


mergers after the Great Heisei Consolidation hadpeaked (MIC 2006b). The estimates indicate thatwith regard to 557 municipalities newly createdbetween 1999 and 2006, the average annualamount to be saved after 2016 will be 1.8 trillionyen. The bulk of this amount, if the estimateproves true, will be deducted from local tax allo-cations.

The tax allocation is, however, expected to inflateas long as the central government has to helprepay the special bonds issued by merged munici-palities. Therefore, the question is whether areduction in the tax allocation brought about bymergers will offset an increase in the tax alloca-tion stemming from the repayment of the speciallocal bonds. To put this differently, the questionneeds to be asked whether or not the govern-ment’s merger initiative can be justified from theperspective of fiscal consolidation. The centralgovernment has not provided any satisfactoryanswer to this question. We can only assume thatthe government is of the view that the balancesheet will return to the black over the long term.

4. Unexpected Effects of Municipal Mergers

The Great Heisei Consolidation, on the otherhand, had some side effects that the central gov-ernment had never intended. First of all, amid themerger boom, information disclosure, particularlythe disclosure of fiscal data, and residents’ partici-pation in municipal decision-making, wereencouraged. For example, a total of 418 referen-dums were held on merger plans between 2001and March 2005. In stark contrast, the number ofreferendums held between 1996 and 2000 wasonly ten, most of which concerned plans to con-struct nuclear power plants or industrial wastedisposal facilities (Ueda 2003, 2005).

Secondly, a decline in the numbers of heads andassembly members of municipalities can have sig-nificant political implications. According to esti-mates compiled by the Internal Affairs Ministry,the number of municipal assembly members islikely to fall to 38,942 after 2006, down more than30 percent from 56,533 in 2003 (MIC 2006a).

For political parties with relatively weak organi-zational bases, municipal assembly members are

the most reliable grassroots activists as well as themost significant vote-gathering machines for thenational, prefectural and municipal elections. Adecline in their numbers inevitably causes adecline in grassroots activists and vote-gatheringmachines for such parties.

In addition, the falling number of municipalassembly members is certain to push up the mini-mum number of votes required to get elected to amunicipal assembly. It may be expected, as aresult, that rural-style pork-barrel politics, whichare heavily dependent on community bonds andblood ties, will be eliminated over time and bereplaced by urban-style, issue-oriented politics.

Hitherto, the main governing Liberal DemocraticParty has stayed in power by utilizing its localassembly members as vote-gathering machinesand doling out favors to rural areas through thenational and local governments. While formerPrime Minister Koizumi pledged to destroy hisown party and succeeded in his attempt to someextent, he fell short of establishing a new vote-gathering machine and a new election strategy toreplace the old LDP politics. Therefore, it is quitelikely that the LDP may face a structural crisis inthe near future at the nationwide level as a resultof the short-term effect of reduced vote-gatheringmachines and the long-term effect of the adventof urban-style, issue-oriented elections.

Viewed from another perspective, the LDP and itscoalition partner New Komeito may furtherstrengthen their alliance, as the LDP will needKomeito’s help even more badly because of itspowerful vote-gathering machine, i.e., the So-kaGakkai.

In 2007, the unified local elections and the UpperHouse election are held in the same year, a raritythat occurs only once in 12 years. It has beenpointed out that in such double-election years, theLDP tends to lose in the Upper House polls as theparty’s local assembly members cut back on theiractivities immediately after their own elections(Ishikawa 1984). Attention is now focused onwhether such a tendency will be aggravated bythe party’s loss of vote-gathering machines as aresult of recent municipal mergers.


In the unified local elections in April, the LDPwon 47.6 percent of all contested prefecturalassembly seats, down from the 49.7 percent itheld before the elections, while the largest opposi-tion Democratic Party won 14.7 percent, doublingthe previous proportion from 7.8 percent(Komeito is up from 6.8 to 7.1 percent; the Com-munist Party down from 4.1 to 3.9 percent; theSocial Democrats down from 2.8 to 2.0 percent). Itremains to be seen whether the LDP s setback inthe latest unified elections signals its structuralcrisis or predicts its defeat in the Upper Houseelection in July. We should watch carefully whatwill happen in the upcoming polls.1

References

Ishikawa, Masumi. 1984. Deita Sengo Seijishi.Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communica-tions. 2003. Shi Cho Son Kankei Shiryo, pre-sented to Dai 30kai Senmon Sho Iinkai ofDai 27ji Chiho Seido Chosakai.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communica-tions. 2006a. Shi Cho Son Gappei KankeiShiryo, presented to Shi Cho Son GappeiTanto Kacho Kaigi held on April 25.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communica-tions. 2006b. Shi Cho Son Gappei no Koka nitsuite, presented to Dai 11kai Keizai ZaiseiShimonkaigi.

Nara Prefecture. 2006. Nara Ken Shi Cho SonGappei Suishin Koso.

Ueda, Michiaki. 2003. Jichi o Tou Jumin Tohyo.Tokyo: Jichitai Kenkyusha.

Ueda, Michiaki. 2005. '"Heisei no Daigappei" omeguru jumin tohyo wa nani o nokoshita-ka'. Kikan Jichi to Bunken, 20.

Yamasaki, Shigetaka. 2004. 'Atarashii "kiso jichi-tai" zo ni tsuite (1)'. Jichikenkyu, 80(12).

Yamasaki, Shigetaka. 2005. 'Atarashii "kiso jichi-tai" zo ni tsuite (2)'. Jichikenkyu, 81(1).

Yokomichi, Kiyotaka. 2007. The Development ofMunicipal Mergers in Japan. The Institute forComparative Studies in Local Governance.


1 This article was written about one month before the July 29th election for the Upper House of Parliament. In the election, the main governingLiberal Democratic Party suffered a heavy defeat, winning only 37 seats far below the level of the 64 of the contested seats it had held beforethe polls.

Tamura Shigeru is a Professor of Local

Government in the Faculty of Law at Niigata

University

Faculty of LawNiigata University8050 Ikarashi Ni-no-choNishi-ku, Niigata-shiNiigata-ken950-2181

Japan could be on the verge of a profoundrestructuring of its prefectural system. Thenational government’s 28th Local GovernmentSystem Research Council issued its final report onFebruary 28, 2006. Now, the government willdraw up a concrete design for a new frameworkof regional governments to replace the prefecturalsystem. It calls that framework doshusei, a termthat stresses an affinity with the U.S. federalmodel of state governments.

The Cabinet Office has set up a discussion groupand a formal council to prepare a vision for theprospective framework within three years. Thatvision will provide for integrating Japan’s 47 pre-fectures into a smaller number of regionsequipped with increased self-governing authority.Meanwhile, the Liberal Democratic Party, Japan’spresent ruling party, has established a researchgroup to debate different options for regionalgovernance.

I. The Doshusei Version of Federalism

Doshusei’s proponents argue that it would fortifyJapan better to cope with the exigencies of global-ization and demographic change. The ubiquitousregional offices of national government ministriesand agencies, they note, are an albatross aroundthe neck of the national government. Shiftingpublic services and functions to the regional gov-ernments would leave the national governmentleaner and focused on diplomacy and other func-tions germane to national governance.

The doshusei proponents cite Japan’s shrinkingand aging population as a further reason forreplacing Japan’s prefectures with larger, more-autonomous governing units. Demographicchange, they note, will help decentralize Japan’seconomy and reverse the long-standing concen-tration of resources on the nation’s largestmetropolises. Larger regional units and strength-ened regional administration will be indispens-able in capitalizing on the potential benefits ofthose trends.

Legislation enacted by the Diet in December 2006lays a legal foundation for undertaking regionalgovernance across broadened geographical units.That legislation designates Hokkaido as the test-ing ground for the new system. Hokkaido, how-ever, is a single prefecture, and for that and otherreasons the legislation falls far short of the remap-ping of Japan envisioned by the proponents ofdoshusei.

Japan’s 47 prefectures have remained unchangedin number since Kagawa Prefecture split off fromEhime Prefecture in 1888. The 47 prefectures,known in Japanese as todofuken, comprise one to,the Tokyo capital region; one do, the “circuit” ofHokkai-do; two fu, the metropolitan prefectures ofKyoto and Osaka; and 43 ken, the other prefec-tures. The to, do, fu, and ken originally operatedunder differing legal and administrative frame-works, but they have been legally and adminis-tratively identical for all intents and purposessince 1947, and the todofuken nomenclature is


Japan’s Federalist ProspectsRevamping regional governance

Tamura Shigeru

merely a historical vestige. To be sure, Tokyo dif-fers slightly from the other prefectures in itsadministrative structure and terminology, but thedifferences are largely inconsequential.

Repeated mergers, meanwhile, have reduced thenumber of cities, towns, and villages to barely1,800, from more than 70,000 in the late 1800s. Thegrowing average size of Japan’s municipalitieshas diminished the role of the prefectures. Forexample, the prefectural governments are respon-sible for public health centers in municipalities offewer than 300,000 residents, but the municipalgovernments wield that responsibility in largercities. Similarly, Japan’s 17 ordinance-designatedcities––municipalities designated by the nationalgovernment as regional metropolitancenters––have replaced the governments of theirprefectures as the administrators of children’sguidance centers; ordinary national highways;prefectural roads; and, subject to mutual agree-ment, teacher employment in the mandatory edu-cation (up to age 16) system.

Proposals have arisen previously for replacingJapan’s prefectures with fewer and stronger state-like units. One such proposal occasioned seriousdebate 80 years ago. A similar proposal, mootedin 1957, called for replacing the 47 prefectureswith seven to nine regional governing units.Broad-based sentiment for merging prefectureslater arose in the regions centered on Osaka andNagoya. A government advisory council voicedsupport for those mergers in a 1965 report, andmembers of the Diet submitted a bill in the fol-lowing year that would have made the mergershappen. Each of the proposals encountered pre-dictable opposition and fell by the wayside.

Japan’s business community has been consistent-ly supportive of the idea of merging prefecturesinto larger and more-autonomous administrativeunits. The nation’s business leaders have longfavored reworking the balance of power betweenthe national and regional governments on more-federalist lines, and they have floated repeatedinitiatives in that vein, largely in the spirit of rais-ing governmental efficiency, reducing costs, andloosening regulations.

II. The Local Government System ResearchCouncil’s Report

Regrouping Japan’s regional governments intobroader geographical units, argues the report bythe 28th Local Government System ResearchCouncil, is important for several reasons. Thereport notes the jarring socioeconomic changeunder way in Japan and expresses doubts aboutthe suitability of the nation’s 120-year-old systemof prefectural administration for addressing thatchange. It cites the trend toward the regionaldevolution of administrative and fiscal authorityand questions the effectiveness of the prefecturalsystem as a platform for that devolution. Thereport also emphasizes the need for accommodat-ing the ongoing mergers of cities, towns, and vil-lages throughout Japan and for addressing thegrowing range of issues that transcend prefectur-al boundaries.

At issue for Japan, insists the report, is the properrole of national government, as well as the opti-mal format for regional public administration.The report proposes a new balance of authority innational and local governance. It calls for refocus-ing national government on genuinely nationalresponsibilities and for entrusting local adminis-trative functions to regional public-sector organi-zations. The report offers concrete proposals forchanges in the schematic positioning of local gov-ernment, in the geographical scope of the regionalgovernment units, in the allocation of administra-tive responsibilities, in legislative assemblies andpublic-service administration, and in taxation andfiscal management.

Schematic positioningSchematically, Japan would retain a two-tieredstructure for regional governance. The geographi-cally expanded and politically strengthened alter-natives to the prefectures would be the upper tier;below them would be the cities, towns, and vil-lages.

Geographical scopeDecisions about the borders of the new adminis-trative units would depend on socioeconomic,geographical, historical, cultural, and other con-siderations. The Local Government SystemResearch Council offers three examples for thepossible remapping of Japan’s regions into 9, 11,or 13 administrative units. It calls for the national


government to issue a remapping proposal, forthe prefectures to respond with suggested modifi-cations, and for the national government to incor-porate the modifications suggested by the prefec-tures as much as possible in the final remapping.

The council assumes, for instance, that the gov-ernment would propose merging Tokyo Prefec-ture with its surrounding prefectures, but Toky-oites might reasonably insist that their prefecturecould function perfectly well as a stand-aloneunit. Meanwhile, the transition to broadenedadministrative units would well occur in stages.Acceptance of the national government’s remap-ping proposal might occur sooner in some prefec-tures than in others, and mergers could proceedin stages, in step with the pace of regional consen-sus building.

Administrative responsibilitiesA great deal of responsibility for local administra-tion would pass from the prefectural govern-ments to their cities, towns, and villages, and thegovernments of the geographically expandedjurisdictions would focus on administeringregionwide functions. The new jurisdictionswould, wherever possible, inherit the responsibil-ity for functions presently administered by localoffices of the national government. That wouldinclude transferring responsibility for nationalhighway maintenance, large river management,regional industrial promotion, environmentalprotection, and disaster preparedness.

Legislative assemblies and public-service admin-istrationEach new jurisdiction would have a legislativeassembly, the members of which the citizenswould elect by direct balloting. The electionprocess could supplement the present district rep-resentatives with at-large representatives. In addi-tion, elected officials would replace appointees asthe chief administrators of some public services,and their tenures would be subject to term limits.

Taxation and fiscal managementTransferring administrative authority from thenational government to the regional governmentswould entail increased demand for regional fiscalfunding, and tax revenues commensurate withthat increase would shift from the national to thelocal governments. That would include buildingregional tax systems suitable to Japan’s newly

decentralized framework of public administra-tion. It would also include some sort of revenuesharing to compensate for regional differentials ineconomic vitality.

III. Issues to Address

Efforts to rework Japanese public administrationon the doshusei model are bound to encounterstubborn resistance. Government ministries andagencies slated to lose authority will surely mobi-lize allied politicians and affiliated organizationsto protect vested interests ferociously. The Cabi-net Office will need to assert powerful leadershipfor the proposed changes to have a chance of suc-ceeding. Japan consolidated several governmentministries and agencies in 2001, and the struggleover the doshusei transformation of public admin-istration could occasion further governmentalrealignment at the national level.

Winning the hearts and minds of the citizenrywill be crucial. Ordinary people have been con-spicuously absent from the debate about reform-ing regional government over the decades. Nearlyall of the discourse has taken place among busi-ness leaders, politicians, national and regionalgovernment bureaucrats, and assorted academics.

Proponents of doshusei need to be especially sensi-tive to people’s sense of regional identity. MostJapanese identify strongly with their home prefec-tures. That is more than evident during the bian-nual national tournaments for high school base-ball teams. Countless Japanese passionately fol-low the exploits of teams from their home prefec-tures. Television sets are much in evidence incompany cafeterias and even in offices while thetournaments are under way. People are under-standably wary of anything that would diminishthe vibrant regional diversity of their nation.

Doshusei advocates need to explain the value oftransferring functions from the national to theregional governments and need to show how thatwill bring the national government closer to thepeople. They need to present the proposedchanges as something more than merely a matterof amalgamating prefectures. Otherwise, peoplewill get the opposite impression: that doshuseiwould distance government from the people.

Another issue is the widespread concern about


the power of the prefectural governors. Numer-ous Japanese regard the governors as wieldingtoo much power already, and a lot of people willview doshusei as amplifying that power ominous-ly. Their concern underlines the need for ensuringa robust framework of checks and balancesbetween the prefectural governors and legislators.

As for the governors, a majority support doshuseiin principle. That support is apparent in surveyresults published on March 5, 2006, by the AsahiShimbun, a national daily newspaper. Nearly 60percent of the governors reported that they werefeeling pressure from the mergers of cities, towns,and villages and agreed that regional publicadministration would benefit from adoptingadministrative units larger than the present pre-fectures.

Among the governors opposed to doshusei wereseveral who expressed concern that it mightheighten the concentration of population andresources in large metropolises. Some argued thatthe prefectural governments possess sufficientexperience and competence as presently consti-tuted to take over functions from the nationalgovernment.

The remapping possibilities for Japan’s regionsoffered by the Local Government SystemResearch Council are merely examples. They con-tain a great deal that will prove difficult to acceptfrom any perspective. One grouping floated in theexamples, for instance, would meld four prefec-tures that face the Japan Sea––Niigata, Toyama,Ishikawa, and Fukui–as Hokuriku. Those prefec-tures, however, share little in the way of tradition-al culture or lifestyles. About the only commonthread among the four is a lot of shared oversightby the regional arms of national government min-istries and agencies.

Here is another instance of a highly improbablegrouping. The research council tentatively investi-gated the possibility of a merger among 11 prefec-tures centered on Tokyo. That merger would pro-duce a unit of a population of nearly 50 millionpeople. The very consideration of such a mergerpromptly drew criticism for condoning anabsurdly excessive concentration of populationand economic might. Some critics even suggestedsplitting up, rather than merging, existing prefec-tures in the interest of economic equalitarianism.

Doshusei inevitably invites allusions to federalism.It would certainly oblige Japanese to rethink thedivision of legal authority between the regionaland national governments. Rewriting the nation’sconstitution would become unavoidable. The sizeof the regional units envisaged by the doshuseiproponents would overwhelm a conventionalfederal state. More than 35 million people wouldreside in the largest regional unit of the nine-unitremapping floated by the research council. That isbigger than the population of California, thelargest of the 50 United States of America.

Any consideration of doshusei also needs toaddress the interests and concerns of prefecture-based companies, such as regional newspapers,financial institutions, and broadcasters, alongwith a diversity of special-interest organizations.A remapping of Japan’s regions would forcethose companies and organizations to scramble torealign their geographical coverage and their veryjustification for being.

Doshusei, in other words, would be a vast anddiversely disputed undertaking. It would encom-pass a wholesale transfer of governing and fiscalauthority from the national government to theregional governments. Pitching the project simplyin the name of reducing the cost of public admin-istration would be wholly unconvincing. Doshuseiwill happen only if and to the extent that itevokes the principle of universal participation ingovernment, that it brings about a genuine shar-ing of power between the national and regionalgovernments, and that it empowers people in theregions to decide regional matters. The decisionabout whether or not to adopt the doshusei con-cept needs to emerge from a truly nationaldebate. Interest in the future of Japanese publicadministration now focuses on the course of thatdebate.

References

200428 2006

http://www.soumu.go.jp/singi/pdf/No28_tousin_060228.pdf

Tamura Shigeru. 2007. Local Politicians in Japan.Niigata University.



Hellmut Wollmann is a Professor Emeritus of

Public Policy and Public Administration at the

Institute of Social Science, Humboldt University

of Berlin

Humboldt University of BerlinUnter den Linden 6D-10099 Berlin, [email protected]: http://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h0598bce/

I. Concepts and Definitions

Devolution and Decentralisation and Deconcen-tration

Modern states are typically multilevel politico-administrative systems whose intergovernmentalstructure and setting are made up of central, mesoor regional, and local government levels. The ver-tical distribution and devolution of powers andresponsibilities are a crucial constitutional, politi-cal, and organisational challenge.

With regard to the devolution of powers andresponsibilities, an analytically useful distinctioncan be made between decentralisation and decon-centration.

Decentralisation

Decentralisation has an intrinsically politicalimplication in that powers and functions, as well

as resources, are assigned to subnational entitiesthat, in the intergovernmental setting, possesssome political autonomy in their own right. Thedecentralised powers and functions are typicallyexercised within constitutionally and legallydefined limits by democratically elected decision-making bodies and politically accountable indi-viduals.

Decentralisation may be either regional or munic-ipal. The politically most advanced form ofregionalisation is federalisation, which ispremised on a vertical division of responsibilitieslaid down in a country’s constitution. A weakerform of regionalisation relates to the vertical dis-tribution of functions not entrenched in the con-stitution and that can be altered simply throughnational legislation.

The decentralisation of public functions to thelocal government level may be called municipali-sation. In most countries, municipalisation takesthe form of a general competence clause grantinglocal authorities the power to act on all matters oflocal relevance––in other words, that fall undertheir responsibility.

The full municipalisation of public tasks can bespoken of insofar as the elected local councildecides, without exception, on how to conductthose tasks. Furthermore, the supervision by stateauthorities of the exercise of full municipalisationby the local authorities is, as a rule, restricted to alegality review; that is, whether the local authori-ties have complied with the pertinent legal provi-sions. Under these conditions, the status of thelocal government vis-à-vis the central and region-al governments may be labelled separationist interms of a distinct institutional and functional linebetween the local and the state levels.

Deconcentration

By contrast with decentralisation and its essen-tially political implications, deconcentration is an

The Devolution of Public Tasks between Political Decentralisation andAdministrative Deconcentration––a Comparative European Perspective

Hellmut Wollmann


intrinsically administrative concept that capturesthe devolution of administrative functions froman upper to a lower administrative level or unit.

In its most blatant form, administrative deconcen-tration takes place through the transfer of admin-istrative tasks from an upper to a lower layer orunit of state administration, typically through theestablishment of regional or local field offices. Theestablishment, similarly, of central-level sectoralagencies that are independent but subordinate tothe respective sectoral central ministry, as in thecase of the executive agencies in Great Britain, is avariant of deconcentration rather than of decen-tralisation.

Another important type of deconcentration canbe seen in what can be called limited municipali-sation. Under the dual-task scheme of local gov-ernment that is a peculiarity of the German-Aus-trian state tradition the local authorities can bemandated to discharge, in addition to their gen-uinely local self-government responsibilities, pub-lic, or state, tasks that are explicitly delegated tothem by the state.

The implementation of such delegated tasks dif-fers from that of genuinely local governmenttasks particularly on two scores. First, the electedlocal councils have no competence in the decisionmaking concerning or control over the delegatedtasks. The execution of those tasks is entirelyassigned to the local administration and, specifi-cally, to its chief executive. Second, the oversightof the execution of those tasks by the state author-ities goes far beyond a legal review to comprisethe supervision of expediency and appropriate-ness to the point of direct instruction and inter-vention. As such, the local administration and itschief executive come close to acting as localagents of state administration and to being virtu-ally integrated into the state administration. Thatis why, in contrast with the separationist scheme,this form of deconcentration has been classified asintegrationist.

Functional and Territorial Reforms

Brief mention also must be made of the distinc-tion between functional and territorial reforms.

Functional reforms are characterised by the devo-lution of tasks, by way of decentralisation ordeconcentration, to lower political and adminis-trative levels. In the transfer of individual tasks,functional reforms are guided by the principles of“one administrative space” (Einraeumigkeit) and“comprehensive administration” (Einheit der Ver-waltung). Toward achieving an all-purpose, multi-functional profile of the pertinent political oradministrative units, functional reforms typicallyaim at extending the multi-functionality of thelocal government level.

Territorial reforms were undertaken in manywestern European countries particularly duringthe 1960s and 1970s. They entail merging, amalga-mating, and redrawing local government units toarrive at a population, territorial size, and admin-istrative capacity to cope with the multi-function-al mandate of local government.

II. The Devolution of Public Tasks betweenConvergence and Divergence

The following overview looks at the vertical tra-jectories the devolution of public tasks on thelocal government level have taken in GreatBritain, Sweden, France, and Germany––fourcountries representative of the main Europeanstate and local government traditions. Needless tosay, such a “nutshell” overview is bound to besketchy and oversimplified.

Great Britain

Historically made up of three nations (England,Scotland, and Wales), Great Britain has been longruled as a unified country under a central govern-ment. A fundamental territorial and organisation-al local government reform at the end of the 19thcentury resulted in a two-tier local governmentstructure of counties and districts. This madeGreat Britain what has been called a dual politywith a distinct vertical distribution of responsibil-ities. The central government (Parliament, orWhitehall) was responsible for “high politics,”such as foreign policy, “running the Empire,”general legislation, etc. Local authorities and theirelected councils dealt with “low politics,” includ-ing providing public utilities and social andhealth and the like services to the local popula-


tion and local industry. Much admired andenvied in contemporary 19th-century and early20th-century Europe, Great Britain exemplified aremarkably decentralised country with a multi-functional profile and a separationist form of localgovernment.

In the buildup of Great Britain’s modern welfarestate, particularly after 1945, the local governmentlevel lost important functions, such as health,energy, and water supply, to nationalised agen-cies. Its role, however, in the delivery of welfarestate social services was enhanced and its separa-tionist autonomy largely preserved.

In 1974, the country’s two-tier local governmentstructure underwent a massive territorial andorganisational reform. This brought the averagepopulation of the country’s districts to 130,000inhabitants, a size unparalleled in any other coun-try and criticised by many for being oversized.

Since the late 1980s, Great Britain’s central gov-ernment has experienced some deconcentra-tion––not decentralisation, but deconcentration––through the establishment of so-called executiveagencies meant to carry out executive tasks hith-erto discharged by central government ministries.The country, moreover, also was decentralised, in1998, by transforming Scotland and Wales intoregions with elected regional assemblies, etc.,putting them, it has been said, on the “road toquasi-federalism.”

Yet, in England itself, where 85 percent of GreatBritain’s citizens live, similar regionalisation hasnot progressed. On the contrary, subnationallyand locally England has experienced massive re-centralisation, since 1979 under Conservativegovernments and since 1997 under New Labour.

The central government has shorn the localauthorities of crucial functions and instead madeincreasing use of local organisations (so-calledquangos: quasi non-governmental organisations).These organisations operate outside local govern-ment control and are financially largely depen-dent on and otherwise directed by the centralgovernment.

The financial autonomy of the local authorities

thus has been severely curbed. In many policyfields, the powers of the central government andits secretaries of state to directly intervene andcall in local government decisions have been con-spicuously widened. Under the Blair government,a so-called Best Value regime was introducedthat, as an instrument of centralgovernment–guided performance management,put the local authorities under tight control.

In summary, England’s central government-localgovernment relations have undergone a sweepingre-centralisation.

Sweden

In Sweden, the buildup of the modern, Swedish-model welfare state, particularly since 1945, ischaracterised by a distinct distribution of func-tions between the central government and Swe-dens’s two tiers of local government. The centralgovernment is largely concerned with policymaking, which it undertakes through a strikinglysmall number of personnel and remarkably inde-pendent, central-level administrative agenciesthat date back, notably, to the 18th century. Only17 percent of the country’s public-sector work-force is employed by the central government andthe central-level administrative agencies.

Most public tasks in Sweden are carried out bythe municipalities (kommuner), with the countiesfocussed on the public health system. For this rea-son, fully 60 percent of the country’s public-sectorworkers are municipal employees, while another25 percent are county employees. Dating back tothe introduction of Sweden’s modern two-tierlocal government system in 1862, the municipali-ties and counties have the right and responsibilityto finance their tasks predominantly through localtaxes, which further buttresses their autonomy.

In 1952 and again in 1974, the Swedish parliamentdecided to carry through large-scale territorialreforms of the municipalities, bringing their aver-age size, in 1974, to some 34,000 inhabitants.These territorial reforms strengthened the abilityof the municipalities to discharge their multi-functional responsibilities as the country’s “localwelfare states.” Furthermore, the reforms pavedthe way for the central government to devolve


further public tasks upon the municipalities, par-ticularly, since the early 1990s, in the fields of pri-mary and secondary school education and thecare of the elderly.

Highlighting what is, by international compari-son, Sweden’s unusually high degree of decen-tralisation are the following:

- All public tasks assigned to the local authoritiesare regarded and treated as genuine, fully munici-palised local government tasks that fall, withoutexception, under the responsibility and control ofthe elected local councils. - In carrying out their fully municipalised tasks,the local authorities are subject only to a legalreview by the state authorities that does not com-prise the expediency or appropriateness of localdecisions and activities. - The regulation, by national legislation, of thelocal authorities in the exercise of their responsi-bilities is, by international comparison, remark-ably thin.

These factors combine with pronounced financialautonomy to grant the local authorities what canonly be interpreted as exemplary separationiststatus within Sweden’s intergovernmental set-ting.

France

Among western European countries, France hastraditionally very nearly epitomized a unitary,centrally governed state. Regional administrativeunits of the some 100 départements under thedirection of a centrally appointed civil servant(préfet) served as the regional backbone of central-ist, Napoleonic rule. A two-tier system of localauthorities (collectivités locales) with elected coun-cils on the departmental level and in the munici-palities, or communes, played an all but marginalrole except in the big cities well into the mid-20thcentury.

In the early 1970s, France fell in line with otherEuropean countries and embarked upon a territo-rial reform of its myriad small municipalities.France, however, failed conspicuously in thiseffort in the face, mostly, of resistance from localmayors. The boundaries of its 35,000 municipali-

ties, each with an average of 1,700 inhabitants,thus remained unchanged.

That multitude of small municipalities and theirlack of administrative capacity for local mattershad caused legislation to be introduced as earlyas 1890 to provide institutional forms of intercom-munal cooperation (Etablissements publics decoopération intercommunale). The creation of com-munautés urbaines in the l960s added to that inter-communal cooperation. Hence, intercommunalitéhas become a specific and almost exceptionalistfeature of France’s subnational, local environ-ment.

In 1982, France’s then-socialist governmentmoved toward a secular decentralisation of thecountry’s centralist, Napoleonic organisation. Itdid so by devolving some crucial state functions,particularly social policy responsibilities, primari-ly to the self-governing bodies (conseils généraux)on the départements level. By contrast, the trans-fer of functions to the municipalities (communes)was, probably because of their limited adminis-trative capacity, quite meagre. In 2003, in a newround of decentralisation (Acte II), a constitution-al amendment explicitly recognised France as a“decentralised republic” and further decentralisa-tion was undertaken, again benefitting principal-ly the départments and regions.

Another significant legislative initiative, the LoiChevènement, of 1999, aimed at reforming thecomplex subnational, local environment ofFrance’s intercommunalité. It induced the munici-palities and the maze of intercommunal forma-tions to reorganise on the basis of three types ofcommunautés. Hailed by some as an intercommu-nal revolution, the new communautés are appar-ently becoming functionally important actors sub-regionally and locally, although still without hav-ing directly elected councils, and thus lack politi-cal legitimacy.

Compared with its centralist, Napoleonic legacy,France has made conspicuous strides towarddecentralisation. Yet significant reservations needto be noted:

- For one, the municipalities (communes), as theground level of local government, have so far


been largely ignored, with decentralisation mea-sures focussed instead on the country’s some 100départements. - Whether the reform drive under the LoiChevènement will make the intercommunalité afunctionally and politically viable structure at aninter- and supra-local level remains to be seen.- Notwithstanding the country’s ongoing decen-tralisation, France’s central government continuesto preserve its strong organisational and person-nel presence on the regional and local levels. It isimportant to note that since 1982, when decentral-isation began in France, the total number of cen-tral government employees, most of them placedregionally and locally, has increased notdecreased. Hence, a large chunk of France’s pub-lic administration has been, at best, deconcentrat-ed rather than decentralised.

Germany

Germany is a two-layer federal state made up ofthe federation (Bund) and the regional states(Länder) whose respective powers and responsi-bilities are laid down in the nation’s constitution.The federation is largely responsible for policymaking and legislation but is constitutionallybarred from having its own regional or local fieldoffices. By contrast, the legislative powers of theLänder, although enlarged recently through a fed-eralist reform, are scarce, whereas the Länder haveextensive administrative responsibilities.

Local governments have constitutionally not beengiven federal status but are regarded to be part ofthe Länder. Functionally and administratively,they carry out most of the public tasks. In fact,some 70 percent to 80 percent of all federal andLänder, as well as EU, legislation is implementedby the local authorities.

The vertical distribution of administrative respon-sibilities is evidenced in that only some 6.5 per-cent of all public-sector employees are federalpersonnel. Contrast this with the nearly 50 per-cent of Länder personnel and the almost 40 per-cent of local government personnel.

As mentioned, the functional scheme in which thelocal authorities operate is traditionally charac-terised by a duality of tasks. According to that

model, besides carrying out their own genuinelocal government tasks the local authorities alsoare in charge of public tasks delegated to themnationally. Hence, local administration presentsan ambivalent picture. On the one hand, insofaras the local authorities carry out genuine, fullymunicipalised tasks, decision making is up to theelected local council, and supervision by thestate, or Länder, authorities, is restricted to a legalreview (Rechtsaufsicht). On the other hand, theelected councils do not exercise any influence orcontrol over delegated public tasks. The executionof delegated tasks falls solely to the local adminis-tration, that is, essentially to its chief executive,the mayor, while the supervision that state, orLänder administration, authorities wield over thelocal conduct of delegated functions pertains toexpediency and appropriateness (Zweckmässigkeit:Fachaufsicht).

Clearly, in Germany the delegation or limitedmunicipalisation of public tasks can be equatedwith administrative deconcentration rather thanwith political decentralisation. The consequenceis that in the execution of its delegated tasks thelocal administration, and its chief executive,comes close to being integrated into state admin-istration.

In the recent round of territorial and functionalreforms in some Länder, there has been a tendencyto further devolve state functions to the localauthorities. Baden-Württemberg has gone fur-thest in this direction, abolishing most of its localadministrative field offices and transferring theirfunctions to local authorities. Yet, these functionalreforms continue to be effected largely by way ofdelegation, so that the trend of integrating localadministration into state and firstly Länderadministration is ongoing and may even gainmomentum.

III. A Conclusion on Decentralisation andDeconcentration: Convergence or Divergence?

This comparative sketch points to a somewhatambivalent picture and conclusion. Most of thecountries cited have shown convergent trendstoward decentralisation, Great Britain being themarked exception. The regionalisation of Scotlandand Wales certainly has been an overture to politi-


cal decentralisation, if not to quasi-federalism, butEngland has remained a far cry from regionalisa-tion. Instead, relations between the central andlocal government levels have seen massive re-centralisation in England. On the whole, however,there has been significant divergence between thecountries cited regarding the rate and the timingof decentralisation and the degree to whichdecentralisation has been accompanied, and pos-sibly marred and counteracted, by administrativedeconcentration.

- Among European countries, and not just thosecited in this comparison, Sweden has gone fur-thest in decentralising public tasks to local gov-ernment levels. Sweden has been particularly dili-gent in fully municipalising municipalities, mak-ing their elected councils responsible, withoutexception, for the conduct of public tasks andsubject only to a legal review by the state. Thus,Sweden’s local government system exemplifiesthe separationist model.- France appears still to be amid the transitionfrom a historically highly centralist state to amore decentralist organisation. Its 100 départe-ments, as the upper level of local government(collectivités locales), are still the main beneficiariesof decentralisation, while the bulk of its 35,000municipalities (communes) continue to be leftout. Whether the new bodies of intercommunalcooperation (communautés), under the LoiChevènement, of 1999, are viable remains to beseen. For the time being, decentralisation appearsto be retarded, if not thwarted, by the continuingstrong organisational and personnel presence ofthe central government at the subregional andlocal levels in the guise of deconcentrated stateadministration.- Germany’s federal tradition looks at first sight

typical of a decentralised system. This is true inthe relations between the federation and theLänder and with regard to the politically and func-tionally strong position of the local authorities inthe intergovernmental setting. Closer inspection,however, reveals that a good deal of the devolu-tion and transfer of public tasks from the statelevels to the local authorities has been and isbeing effected through the delegation and limitedmunicipalisation that constitutes administrativedeconcentration rather than political decentralisa-tion, with the tendency to integrate local adminis-tration into state administration.

References

Häggroth, Sören. , Kronvall, K., Riberdahl, C. andRudebeck, K. 1993. Swedish Local Govern-ment. Traditions and Reform. Stockholm: TheSwedish Institute.

Norton, Alan. 1994. International Handbook of Localand Regional Government. Cheltenham:Edward Elgar.

Wilson, David. and Chris, Game. 2006. Local Gov-ernment in the United Kingdom. 4th ed,Houndmills: Palgrave.

Wollmann, Hellmut. 2004. “Local GovernmentReforms in Great Britain, Sweden, Germanyand France: Between Multi-Function andSingle Purpose Organisations.” Local Gov-ernment Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 639-666.

Wollmann, Hellmut and Bouckaert, Geert. 2006.“State Organisation in France and GermanyBetween Territoriality and Functionality.”Hoffmann-Martinot, Vincent and Woll-mann, Hellmut (eds.). State and Local Gov-ernment Reforms in France and Germany.Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.


ISS Research Report

Iokibe Kaoru is an Associate Professor of History

of Japanese Politics and Diplomacy at the

Institute of Social Science, the University of

Tokyo

Institute of Social ScienceUniversity of Tokyo Hongo 7-3-1Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo [email protected]

Just outside the main entrance to the Institute ofSocial Science is a pond, Sanshiroike. That pondwas much in mind when I took up my duties atthe institute this April. I detested Sanshiroikewhen I was a student at the University of Tokyo.The trees around the water were overly lush, andthe greenery evoked a daytime atmosphere oddlyinappropriate to the campus. Once, I overcamemy resistance and strolled down to the water’sedge, only to find a stagnant pool, murky andunwelcoming. I learned to steer clear of the pondfor the rest of my days as an undergraduate.

My thoughts returned to Sanshiroike when I begandoing research, in 1996, on Okuma Shigenobu(1838–1922), who served as prime minister in1898 and again from 1914 to 1916 and who found-ed Waseda University. Newly graduated, I hadbecome a research assistant in the Faculty of Law.

Anti-intellectual currents in politics and societyhad begun to capture my interest in a vague sortof way, and Okumua––a veritable titan, richlyappealing and replete in contradictions––fur-nished ample material.

Okuma possessed an encyclopedic knowledge ofa vast scope of human activity, and he compiled apair of sweeping volumes that remain valuablesources of insight into the forces that shapedmodern Japan: Kaikoku Gojunenshi (Fifty Years ofNew Japan), 1909, and Kaikoku Taiseishi (History ofthe Situation of Opening the Country), 1913. Alsoof interest is the unfinished Tozai Bummei noChowa (The Harmonization of Eastern and West-ern Civilizations), published posthumously in1923. In that work, Okuma looks all the way backto Socrates and Plato and to Confucius and Lao-tzu in a comparative examination of develop-ments in Eastern and Western thinking. The ever-pragmatic Okuma was disdainful, however, ofanything he perceived to be purely academic andliterary and therefore of little practical value, andthe ambitious scope of his writing is prone toerrors of oversimplification.

In the political sphere, Okuma strived to infuseparty politics with policy proposals based onobjective facts and concrete, quantifiable goals.His approach, however, rendered difficult thekind of compromise needed to secure power, andthe party he led languished in opposition. Okumaembarked repeatedly on antigovernment initia-tives based on unrealistic demands.

My first book devoted to Okuma dealt with thedilemmas that he personified in the politicalrealm. That book, published in 2003 as OkumaShigenobu to Seitoseiji (Okuma Shigenobu andParty Politics), outlined the issues that Japan’sfirst political parties faced.

Political Musings by the WatersideExamining linkage between politics and society

Iokibe Kaoru


A Question of Connection

Studying Okuma was fascinating, but I began tohave doubts about the linkage between the politi-cal parties and society. I had sought in myresearch to determine the extent of the rationalgrounding beneath party debate. My premiseshad included an awareness of a basic politicalprinciple: the more intellectual the tone of thepolitical discourse, the less the discourse capturesthe imagination or even the interest of ordinaryparty members and of the people at large. The cir-cumstances of the general populace became adiminishing consideration, though, in myresearch. I concentrated increasingly on the waysthat parties frame their political arguments, irre-spective of how they shape their organizations insociety.

I became preoccupied with the challenge of estab-lishing social relevance for my research agenda.Just as I had been loath to approach Sanshiroike, Ihad shied away from asserting a contemporarysocial linkage for my research. I was frustrated atmy lack of theoretical tools for examining thelinkage between politics and society. Nor did Ihave a great deal of confidence in my grasp of thepolitics.

My initial research in regard to Okuma hadfocused on economic policy, but economics aloneis an insufficient framework for evaluating theinteraction between politics and society. I devel-oped an interest in nationalism as another medi-um for that interaction, and political activity ori-ented toward revising unequal treaties has sincebecome the focus of my research. A recent paperof mine appeared as ”Kaikoku to Fubyodo JoyakuKaisei” (The Opening of the Country and theRevision of Unequal Treaties) in Higashi AjiaKokusai Seijishi (The International Political Historyof East Asia), edited by Kawashima Shin and Hat-tori Ryuji and published this year, 2007.

After the Meiji Restoration (1868), Japan beganseeking to renegotiate treaties that the shogunatehad concluded on unequal and disadvantageousterms. That effort continued until around the endof the 19th century. A lot of the treaty provisionswere unilateral and unfavorable to Japan from theperspective of a modern sovereign state. Oneobliged Japan to turn over foreign nationalsapprehended for misconduct to the consuls of

their home nations for disposition under the lawsof those nations. Another robbed Japan of theright to establish tariffs autonomously. The natur-al desire to redress that kind of inequality mightseem to mesh perfectly with nationalistic senti-ment. Yet the kinds of unequal provisions citedhere had aroused little antipathy in pre-MeijiJapan. The resistance that arose toward thetreaties focused not on their inequality but on thevery fact that they institutionalized trade with theWest.

Japan began to seek more-equitable treaty provi-sions in its diplomacy at the beginning of Meijiera. But nationalism was a faint presence, at best,in that effort. The government’s endeavors toredress unequal treaties centered up to the 1880sless on jurisprudence and tariffs than on rudi-mentary administrative authority. The treatiesencroached little on administrative authority inany formal way, but negotiations with foreignpowers had become part and parcel of dealingwith the foreign enclaves in Japan. Regionalbureaucrats reacted indignantly to the de factorestrictions on their authority over the foreign set-tlements. Their expressed dissatisfaction at theconstraints on the exercise of Japan’s sovereigntywas an eruption of nationalism, but thepeople––the objects of the exercise of statepower––showed little interest.

Perceiving minimal prospect of recovering theirlost administrative authority, Japan’s leadersfocused on reasserting trial rights over foreignnationals accused of misconduct. Those lost rightsbecame symbolic of the unequal and unfairtreaties, and they became the chief focus ofJapan’s demands for the revision of the treaties.Trial rights were a more-spectacular issue thanmundane administrative issues, and they kindleda political mobilization under the banner ofnationalism.

Nationalists sought to enlist the people in acause––friction with the vested rights of foreignpowers––that had no direct bearing on their dailylives. Nationalism thus addressed a conceptualissue, rather than a tangible dispute, and it there-fore offered little room for compromise. National-istic sentiment fueled the criticism of the treaty-revision proposals prepared by Okuma as foreignminister and by Inoue Kaoru, who served earlierin that capacity.


The Radicalization of Nationalism

Japan’s renewed nationalism took shape in radi-calized forms. For example, lifting the geographi-cal restrictions on foreign activity in Japan was anatural bargaining chip in seeking treaty revi-sions, but that concession was unacceptable to thegrowing ranks of radicals. They felt threatened bythe power of Western capital and culture and bythe diligence and forbearance of Chinese labor.Their fears echoed, to some extent, the antiforeignsentiment that had arisen in pre-Meiji Japan.

Another form of radicalism pertained to interpre-tations of the significance of the Meiji Restoration.The restoration had occurred after the shogunatecollapsed amid dissatisfaction with the treaties ithad concluded with foreign powers. In the eyes ofnumerous Japanese, the nation had a duty to per-sist in seeking treaty revisions. To fail to do sowould mean that the sacrifices rendered in bring-ing about the restoration had been in vain. Thiswas an extreme position that transcended objec-tive calculations of practical gain. Satisfying itsproponents would require more than treaty revi-sions that simply secured more benefits for Japanthan they gave away; the revised treaties wouldneed to furnish convincing compensation for thesacrifice paid in bringing about the Meiji Restora-tion. Even more passionate in espousing this posi-tion than the restoration leaders were some for-mer shogunate figures, such as Katsu Kaishu.

A third form of radicalism called, ironically, forenforcing the existing treaties more rigorously.The foreign settlements enjoyed several benefitsnot expressly provided for in the treaties; so, nar-rower and more-rigorous enforcement of thetreaties seemed an effective way to pressureJapan’s counterparties to agree to renegotiation.That position had majority support in the lowerhouse of parliament, and it vexed the governmentuntil Japan and the United Kingdom agreed in1894 to revise their treaty.

Among the privileges granted to the foreign set-tlements outside the treaty frameworks were sev-eral exemptions from municipal rules and proce-dures. Ending those exemptions and applying therules of public administration to the foreign set-tlements recalled, in concept and in the cast ofproponents, the early-Meiji opposition to unequaltreaties. That issue infused the concept of the

nation-state with the spirit of nationalism, and itgained the support of first-rate thinkers andpolemicists, such as Kuga Katsunan and Tokuto-mi Soho. They contributed arguments thatframed utterly unrealistic proposals in sophisti-cated, well-structured logic––a practice thatwould recur repeatedly in Japanese diplomacy.

My research has thus revealed important, thoughoften subtle, differences among the angrilynationalistic responses to the unequal treaties. Butit has not revealed any mechanism––economic ornationalistic––by which we can be certain thepolitical message fully entered the public arena.

The task before me now is to venture beyond theconfines of narrowly defined politics and diplo-macy and explore a diversity of pertinent sources.I also need to secure a theoretical grounding thatextends beyond analysis of the political process inthe narrow sense. That is all the more reason to beexcited about being in the Institute of Social Sci-ence. My distinguished colleagues here in theinstitute’s disparate disciplines present a wealthof potential insight, and I look forward to theopportunities for sharing ideas. I am happy tonote that people here undertake joint research inways that build on their different interests andperspectives.

A Friendlier Vantage on the Pond

The building that houses the Institute of SocialScience commands a view of the greenery of San-shiroike. One day recently, I encountered there aneighbor of mine whom I know to be an avidbirdwatcher. I asked what was special about San-shiroike for a birdwatcher. My neighbor reportedthat no one tends the trees much around thepond, so the spot is a veritable treasure trove ofbirds not seen elsewhere in Tokyo.

Now, I enjoy strolling through the lush verdureand around the pond. The comfortable atmos-phere of the Institute of Social Science allows meto let my mind wander happily over the watereven when I am confined to the laboratory doingresearch or participating in seminars or meetings.In the spirit of gratitude for my new workplace, Ipledge to tend more carefully to honing myresearch skills.


Greetings from Visiting Professor

ResearcherLiterature Research InstituteChina Academy of Social Sciences (China)(Visiting Shaken from February 16, 2007 to May 18, 2007)

Q. How did you first come to know about Shaken?

A. I had long heard about the Institute of SocialScience or ‘Shaken.’ But, aside from a few individ-ual researchers, I did not believe there was anyrelation between me and Shaken. This is because Ihad come to think that the intellectual history Iam aspiring for strays from more orthodox socialscience research. To put it another way, for aheretic like me Shaken somewhere along the wayhad gained the image of “orthodoxy” and seemedunrelated to my goals.

One day, however, I received a sudden invitationasking if I would like to spend some timeresearching at Shaken. The invitation had comefrom a historian of political thought, whom Irespect and would be delighted at the chance toresearch with. Without pausing, I accepted theoffer and, then, arranged my schedule to maketime for a prolonged visit to Shaken.

Q. What is the main purpose of this visit?

A. My primary aim in coming to Shaken was toexperience the ethos of Tokyo University. For theresearch on Maruyama Masao that I was plan-ning, I wanted this kind of corporal experience ofthe campus. Of course, the vestige of the TokyoUniversity of Maruyama’s generation is nowhere

to be found on today’s campus, but this is what Isought within the campus’ invisible topology.

Now having spent three months at Shaken, I haveachieved most of my goals. Moreover, in recog-nizing that Shaken is not representative of TokyoUniversity as a whole, I felt a tension lingering inShaken’s quaint building (though it was built inthe postwar period and is now receiving earth-quake retrofitting) that is not present in the solidprewar building of the Department of Law whereMaruyama once studied. This feeling was for mean unforeseen reward.

While proceeding with my own research plans, Ialso paid attention to the research situation at theShaken. At present, there are two projects. Thefirst is ”Kibogaku” (Hope Studies), and the secondis “Research on the East Asian Region.” And, itwas while participating in the discussion semi-nars for both projects that my image of orthodoxyat Shaken’s collapsed.

For instance, when I first heard about theKibogaku project, I had a simple question: For ahard to gauge emotional subject like “hope” data,how does one make the approach scientific?Reading among other things the project’smidterm report, this question only grew deeper.While making free use of sociology and economicmethodology, exactly what relationship doesKibo gaku have with these traditional social sci-ences?

With this question in mind, I began to participatein the Kibogaku seminars and at last understoodits members’ intent. Their aim is not to establish anew ‘––ology,’ rather it is to pour new life into theincreasingly sclerotic social sciences. Now, this issomething I can agree with. More than agreewith, the radical character of this thinking issomething I admire. With their focus on the con-crete location of the onetime steel-town ofKamaishi, what Shaken researchers may be creat-ing is the “hope” of a new advancement in thesocial sciences in Japan.

What potential is there for the social sciences tobe created anew is a question being asked the

Sun Ge


world around. Amidst the acceleration of eco-nomic globalization, the question Shakenresearchers are tossing about is what kind of“hope” should the social sciences hold for them-selves? There is no easy answer to this question.And, for me, this is not a dispassionate concern.That is, I also am grappling with the social sci-ences from this kind of perspective.

As in Japan, the social sciences in China were alsotransplanted as a foreign derived discipline. Ineach country’s history, these disciplines changedas they took root. Within the structure of the ColdWar, the Chinese intellectual community choseand used this thought born of the West in waysthat differed from Japan but yet also held many ofthe same concerns. “Where exactly are the socialsciences in China headed?” is already being askedby some in this young generation of scholars inChina. With this situation in mind, my interest inthe activities of Shaken’s researchers is related tomy concern for the social sciences in China.

Q. What do you like about Shaken?

A. While my three month stay went by veryquickly, I was blessed with excellent research con-ditions at Shaken and advanced my research andcontacts with the academic community in Japan.And, just before returning home, I learned of andwas able to collaborate for a short time on a newproject being inaugurated by Shaken. Covering anumber of disciplines, this is a China studies pro-ject. Even though academic exchange betweenChina and Japan is prospering, it is rare to haveinteraction about the ‘concerns’ that are latent inKibogaku. Beyond connecting with the ‘concerns’of Shaken, it is my sincere desire to continue thisjoint effort in China.

Q. What are your current research interests?

A. As for my own research, I emphasize thedevelopment of political thought since the post-war period in Japan. In a sense, the first ten yearsof the postwar were an important period that laidthe course for not only Japan but all of East Asia.Within our political thinking, however, EastAsia’s rich postwar history has been impover-ished due to our excessive reliance on Anglo-American derived keywords such as the term“Cold War.” For example, the oppositional rela-tionship that developed between China and the

Soviet Union is hard to incorporate within thestructure of the Cold War, but nonetheless it can-not be denied that this conflict had a large influ-ence on postwar East Asia. Indeed, because of theSino-Soviet conflict, the Cold War came to have adifferent structure. While fixating on the ColdWar structure as an important part of East Asia’spostwar history, elaborating on the even largerstructure encompassing the Cold War has becomean important issue for the field of politicalthought. Not limited to research on Japanesepolitical theory, this is an issue common to theexamination of all of Asia’s and East Asia’s post-war history.

During my stay at Shaken, I familiarized myselfwith the public opinion and debates of postwarJapan by using the comprehensive collection ofmagazines in Tokyo University’s library. Whatbecame clearly apparent was the effort of theintellectual community in Japan during theimmediate postwar period to keep astride ofinternational changes despite the worldwideblockade on the country. Though today there isoften theoretical use of liberalism and Marxism,in the postwar period the two had a mutuallytense relationship that also generated some com-monalities in playing out their complex historicalroles. While carefully concentrating on thesekinds of historical movements during my stay atShaken, I examined these movements’ relationshipwith the political theory of liberalism in the West,especially in Great Britain, during the SecondWorld War. Hereafter, while keeping in mindChina’s contemporary history, I hope to furtherinvestigate the circumstances of Japan’s postwarliberalism.

As with the social sciences in East Asia, politicalliberalism in East Asia is also a virulently foreignentity. That is, because it was cultivated in the his-torical landscape of East Asia, it has been com-prised of different elements than those of Westernliberalism and has thereby come to play a differ-ent historical role. The pursuit of these differencesis one of my research themes. Interest in this kindof research theme is grounded in the identity ofthose of us living in East Asia. But, in elaboratingon the unique context of East Asian history, wealso enrich world history. While my stay at theShaken was short, by providing further shape tomy thought, it was also an important and reward-ing time.



Department of SociologyUniversity of Hawaii (United States)(Visiting Shaken from April 1, 2007 to July 14, 2007)

Q. How did you come to know of Shaken?

A. In 1966 when I was planning to come to Japanto do dissertation research on tenko (“conversion”or “about-face”; in this context, renunciation ofpolitical activism) in the prewar Japanese com-munist movement, my Harvard advisor RobertBellah arranged for his friend Ishida Takeshi tosponsor my affiliation with Shaken. Henry Smithwas also at Shaken doing dissertation research ona somewhat related topic, the Shinjinkai (NewMen’s Club). Both of us made heavy use of theShaken library, guided by the librarian at the time,Oguro-san, who had amassed a wonderful collec-tion of materials relevant to the Left in the 1920sand 1930s. On subsequent affiliations with ShakenI have studied radical New Left groups of the late1960s and early 1970s (1982-1983), the anti-emper-or movement during the transition from Showa toHeisei (1990-1991), and trial support groups andthe long-term effects of the late-1960s protestcycle on the Japanese criminal justice system(1998-99).

Q. What is the main purpose of your current visit?

A. This time, I am writing a book manuscriptwith the working title Japan’s Invisible Civil Society,which is about contemporary groups, involved in

all sorts of social issues, whose origins can betraced to the New Left social movements of the1960s. I call this the invisible civil society becausethe mainstream of society is not aware of it and,further, it cannot be captured using formal insti-tutional traces such as organizational catalogs orofficial records. However, these groups form analternative civil society with a lively public spherewithin which people share information and ideas,form opinions, and act collectively to pursuecommon goals. The goals generally involve seek-ing social change through a range of organiza-tional structures, social movement activities, andforms of information dissemination. Through par-ticipation in this alternative civil society, individ-uals also acquire skills and relationships, andbuild mutual trust.

I have been studying these groups for many yearsin various contexts, so I already know the generalcharacteristics of the invisible civil society. When Iarrived I had a detailed chapter outline and Ithought I was ready to begin writing. However, Idecided I should also make use of my time inJapan to do some additional fieldwork. I wantedto broaden the range of groups under study, totest my understanding of how these groups forman alternative public sphere by more carefulobservation of details, and to collect data specifi-cally for some network analysis. Since I arrived atthe beginning of April I have been doing a smallsnowball sample of public meetings, demonstra-tions, and related events, focusing on how multi-ple groups participate in such events and howthey share information. In addition to my regularfield notes about the events, I collect all the hand-outs plus the handbills and other materials thatare available on the free “chirashi” (leaflet) table,and I photograph the room and the tables ofmaterials that are offered for sale. At demonstra-tions I also try to photograph all of the participat-ing groups so I can identify them from their ban-ners.

The information about groups, events, issues, andprint materials all goes into my Access database.Although my snowball sample is not complete, it

Patricia Steinhoff


will support certain kinds of network analysis. Ibegan the snowball with a meeting of a group Ihave been studying for a number of years, andthen selected the next links from materials thatwere distributed at that event. I have continuedthe snowball through a combination of familiarand new groups, choosing new events primarilybecause they were issues of immediate concern orinvolved different types of activity. I have learneda great deal more about the invisible civil societyby closely observing such events and document-ing specific kinds of network relations, and I amsure I will write a better book as a result.

Q. What are your current research interests?

A. All of my previous research interests are inter-twined, and I carry them all into my currentwork. Whenever I have the opportunity to cometo Japan, I also catch up on fieldwork related tomy earlier studies. Although I am no longerdoing anything on prewar Japan, my doctoralwork on how the Peace Preservation Law and theJapanese criminal justice system were used topressure dissidents to renounce their politicalactivities and ideas in the 1920s and 1930s leddirectly to my decision to study the most radicalgroups of the late-1960s protest cycle. My aimwas to use the comparison to see how the post-war structural changes in Japanese society affect-ed the ability of political activists to confront thestate and whether pressures were still exerted toinduce tenko. I chose to study the Red Army (Seki-gun), and then added another group with a con-trasting style that later became intertwined withthe Red Army, the East Asia Anti-JapaneseArmed Front (Higashi Asia Hannichi Buso Sensen,nicknamed Hannichi).

Much of the fieldwork has involved followinglengthy Japanese trials and interviewing personswho are in prison but still in the appeals process.These two organizations have produced four per-sons who are currently awaiting the death penal-ty for politically motivated acts, and they bothhad members in exile who have been arrested ordeported back to Japan since the late 1980s tobegin the trial process, long after the protest cycleof the late 1960s ended. This, in turn, brought meinto the study of trial support groups as a meansof continuing social movement activity and resis-

tance after arrest, and how that resistance in turnhas affected the criminal justice system. I am stillfollowing appeal trials and interviewing peoplein prison on this visit, and the current trials andinterviews are leading to new insights into boththe Red Army’s internal dynamics and the prac-tices of the criminal justice system. Further,although I do not study death penalty issues perse, I follow the anti-death penalty movementthrough my involvement with death penalty pris-oners and their support groups.

The Hannichi group was linked to the anti-emper-or movement, and the rise in anti-emperor activi-ty during the transition from Sho wa to Heiseioffered me the opportunity to see for myself,albeit on a smaller scale, the confrontationaldemonstration style and heavy police control thathad characterized the late-1960s protest cycle.During the early 1980s I had also begun doingsome fieldwork on the Sunday youth music sceneat Yoyogi Park, and watched it transform fromcostumed groups dancing to rock and punkboombox tapes into homegrown rock bands per-forming live, and then to be closed down as partof a crackdown on foreign workers in the early1990s. This research fused into the anti-emperorstudy because one particular anti-emperor groupthat was attracting a high level of police attentionhad its origins in the Yoyogi Park counter-culturemusic scene. My previous experience studyingthe police management of anti-emperor demon-strations has also illuminated my current obser-vations of demonstrations on less inflammatoryissues. One of the events in my current snowballsample was sponsored by anti-emperor move-ment groups, and by a scheduling fluke, attracteda huge counter-protest of right wing soundtrucks. To the astonishment of both the anti-emperor demonstrators and myself, this time theheavy police presence was deployed to protectthe left from the right.

Through my work on the Red Army I came toknow former student activist Takazawa Koji, aneditor and author of many of the major works onJapan’s New Left, who is also the author ofShukumei: Yodogo Bomeishatachi no Himitsu Kosaku(Destiny: The Secret Operations of the YodogoExiles), which won the Kodansha prize for non-fiction in 1999. My students and I have prepared


Greetings from Visiting Professor Greetings from Visiting Professor

an English translation of it that will shortly besubmitted for publication. Takazawa later donat-ed his vast collection of primary materials on theJapanese New Left to the University of Hawaii.With support from the National Endowment forthe Humanities, my students and I organized andcatalogued the materials and developed a bilin-gual bibliographic website to make them avail-able to scholars. Working with the Takazawa Col-lection deepened my knowledge of the kinds ofprint materials that Japanese social movementsproduce, and I am currently using these samekinds of materials to trace the networks amonggroups in the invisible civil society.

To sum up, I am still following the threads of allof my previous research interests, and askingmany of the same questions in new contexts. Mycurrent goal of writing a general study analyzingthe invisible civil society builds on my experiencewith a range of social movement organizationswhose origins are in the New Left, the kinds ofactivities they undertake, and the materials theyproduce.

Q. What do you like about Shaken?

A. As you can see from the foregoing, I have stud-ied a series of unorthodox and sometimes unset-

tling topics––topics that would have been too sen-sitive to pursue at many Japanese academic insti-tutions. After giving a guest lecture at one univer-sity about the student protests of the late 1960s,my host told me that I had just broken a twentyyear taboo on the subject at that institution. YetShaken has always welcomed me and its membershave never seemed to have any qualms aboutwhat I was studying. My affiliation with Shakenprovides important protection when my researchinvolves associating with groups that are underpolice surveillance. My presence at political trialsand meetings and following demonstrations hassurely been noted thousands of times in the note-books of plainclothes police, but they know that Iam a legitimate scholar affiliated with Shaken andthey leave me alone.

My work is primarily out in the field doing inter-views and participant observation or writing athome, so I do not spend much time in my office.Everyone at Shaken is very busy with their ownwork, so perhaps my presence is simply notmissed, but I experience it as a benign toleranceof my absence. Yet when I do have occasion totalk with Shaken colleagues, the interchanges arealways stimulating and enlightening. It really is aquite perfect environment, for which I am deeplygrateful.



Visiting Researchers at ISS

Pepper D. Culpepper Steffen Heinrich

Doctoral CandidateInstitute of Political ScienceUniversity of Heidelberg

Globalisation and the future of national social policy: a comparative study ofrecent labour market reforms and changing policy-making processes in Japanand Germany

In Japan and Germany the impact of globalisation has been widely dis-cussed as being closely linked to the need for comprehensive reform ofeconomic and social institutions. The prevailing view for well over adecade has held that reforms are essential for overcoming the longperiod of economic stagnation (which by now may or may not havealready come to an end) and for adapting the national economy to thechallenges of globalisation. Even though neither Germany nor Japanare unique in this respect, what sets the two countries apart from othersis the popular notion that many pillars of the once admirable and suc-cessful post-war economic model are challenged and, as a consequence,traditional and well-regarded concepts such as life-long employment inJapan and the “Normalarbeitsverhaeltnis” in Germany are under threat.

Although the need for reform seems to be widely accepted and similar-ly perceived in both countries, it appears that both countries have beenrather reluctant reformers – regardless of the fact that major institution-al features vary distinctively between the respective countries (e.g., therole and influence of unions, the number of veto-players, and powerresources, to name but a few). Furthermore, major reforms concerningthe flexibility of the labour market and the introduction of new formsof employment have been formulated and implemented with very dif-ferent actor involvement and partly contrary to what one might expectfrom traditional policy-making processes. For instance, unions in Japanhave actively attempted to increase their influence with respect tosocial policy issues (with mixed results), especially so in the field ofemployment policy, while the absence of German unions and employ-ers in key debates, e.g., concerning the liberalisation of part-time work,has been conspicuous.

My research project seeks to evaluate the underlying reasons for thesedevelopments by looking at policy output and outcomes in the field oflabour policy and, more importantly, by analysing changing actorinterests and their involvement in the related policy processes. Conven-tionally, studies in the field of comparative welfare research focus oneither of the two – although there are far fewer studies in the latter cat-egory. The combination of perspectives should allow for an improvedunderstanding of the actual impact of the much discussed, but perhapsstill inadequately understood, pressure to reform known as “globalisa-tion”.

I thus intend to address a theoretical problem that has existed in thefield of comparative welfare research for some time, that is, the lack ofexplanatory power of the existing theories in cases where ‘unlikelycoalitions’ of actors emerge that actively push or hinder policy changes,and instances where reforms do or do not take place despite the institu-tional and socioeconomic environment suggesting the opposite out-come. I will focus on selected cases that are usefully comparable, i.e.,the liberalisation of part-time work and strategies for employmentadjustment (e.g., via dispatching, lay-offs, or early retirement) andanalyse the changing interests of the social partners (the key actors inthis policy field in the respective countries) and, since globalisation iscommonly believed to strengthen the influence of employers, changesin the balance of power. In order to reveal the full extent of recentchanges I also intend, in a separate case study, to contrast the findingswith an analysis of policy reactions to the first oil crisis in 1973, whensimilar issues dominated the policy process. Ideally, the results willoffer some valuable clues regarding the question of whether one canexpect convergence of national policies and policy-making processes inthe long run.

My research in Japan is supported by a stipend from the German Insti-tute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo which is hereby acknowledged,and I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Hiwatarifor acting as my advisor at Shaken.

Associate Professor of Public Policy

John F. Kennedy School of Government

Harvard University

For the past several years, I have been studying the

political dynamics of change and stability in Euro-

pean systems of corporate governance. During the

postwar period, the continental economies had sys-

tems of ownership that provided managers with

“patient capital”–– that is, a set of owners whose time

horizons were relatively long, and whose monitoring

of managerial performance did not focus pre-emi-

nently on quarterly financial reports and share prices.

These systems have come under pressure during the

1990s, including from Anglo-American investment

funds that are increasing players in these markets, as

well as from domestic reformers seeking greater regu-

latory emphasis on protecting minority shareholders

and shareholder value. My empirical research on

France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands has

shown that change in these systems is not typically

driven not by the “high politics” of international

financial bargaining nor by diffusion of international

“best practice,” but by the interests and political

efforts of major domestic companies. I am currently

extending this work to Japan in an effort to under-

stand the dynamics of political change in Japanese

corporate governance since the mid-1990s. The sharp

decline in company cross-shareholdings in the late

1990s, and the consequent rise of investment funds

provoked some managers to seek alternative forms of

protection. In my research, I am trying to understand

how managers of Japan’s leading enterprises thought

about the increase of merger and acquisition activity

and the increasing potential for hostile takeovers dur-

ing this time, and what solutions they pursued to deal

with this situation, both individually (in terms of

company strategy) and collectively (by pushing for

regulatory or normative change through the Keidan-

ren or other organizations).


Kim, Sung-won Kim, Young

Research Assistant ProfessorCenter for Culture and Information StudiesSungkonghoe University (Korea)

My research expertise lies in Gender studies, LaborSociology, and Japanese studies. The focus of myresearch interest is on the labor market in relation tothree elements of the gender system: labor market,state, and family. In East Asia the labor market has aparticularly broad and deep impact on social lives ofindividuals, since economic development is oftenused to compensate for the inadequacies of the wel-fare system.

Over the past 10 years, I have conducted research onJapan’s part-time labor market, using case studies onthe operations of 10 large supermarket chains. Mystudies have revealed that the supermarket industryin Japan reflects some key characteristics of Japan’spart-time labor market, that is, the contradictionbetween a widening job-based wage differential andincreasing skill requirements. These studies also indi-cated that the Japanese gender system – that of thestrong, male breadwinner model – forces marriedwomen into part-time work via a series of institutions,which I describe collectively as the ‘housewife institu-tion’. Under this housewife institution, the majoragents in the part-time labor market – companies,trade unions, and part-time workers – interact witheach other to maximize their own interests, accordingto principles of behavior which I term ‘the housewifeagreement’.

In addition, I have also conducted comparative analy-ses of non-standard labor and women’s labor in Koreaand Japan, as well as the institutional structure ofwomen’s social rights in Japan. While these researchareas showed the gender system of male breadwinnermodel to be strong in both Korea and Japan, thedegree of institutionalization of the gender system inKorea appears to be relatively lower than in Japan,where the gender system depends mainly upon ideol-ogy. Although there are trends towards a transition toa work-life balanced model in both countries, thetransition is moving at a faster speed in Korea than inJapan, owing to strong women’s movements andweak institutionalization of the gender system inKorea.

I am currently conducting a comparative analysis ofsome important trends in Korea and Japan that haveemerged recently: the transfer of nonstandard work-ers to regular employment, and the social response tolow fertility and aging. I aim to provide deeper expla-nations for the possibility of gender system transition,as well as the social factors and agents that are bring-ing about such a change. My future plans are tobroaden my research scope to include the analyses ofthe characteristics of gender systems as organizingprinciples of society in East Asia.

Research AssociateInstitute of Social ScienceUniversity of Tokyo

My research topic is a comparative study of the welfare state inEast Asia. Mainly focusing on Japan, South Korea, China, andTaiwan, I analyze the historical process of the development ofthe welfare state in these countries. Welfare states in Westerncountries have successively experienced the early formation,expansionary, and restructuring phases over the course of theirdevelopment since the early 20th century, whereas East Asianwelfare states have generally experienced these phases concur-rently. This means that the “timing” and “tempo” of welfarestate development processes reveal significant differencesbetween the respective regions. Focusing on this point, I haverecently been conducting a comparative analysis of Westernwelfare states and East Asian welfare states, and also betweenEast Asian countries, under the theme of “Welfare States inTime”.

Since the 1990s there have been an increasing number of com-parative studies on East Asian welfare states. Many of these aredirectly or indirectly based on Esping-Andersen’s welfare-stateregime framework. While some studies characterize East Asianwelfare states as “fourth model” (for example “Confucian” or“Developmental/Productivist” welfare states) distinct from thethree established types of Western welfare state (liberal, conser-vative and social democratic), others identify East Asian wel-fare states as one or a hybrid of the three types. Despite the sig-nificant contribution of these studies, they are not satisfactoryas comparative analyses. This is mainly because the time lagbetween welfare state development processes in Western wel-fare states and East Asian welfare states is largely disregarded.In other words, these studies have focused only on the ques-tion, “What type of welfare state is the East Asian welfarestate?” However, it is important to ask “when?” in addition to"what?".

Against this background, my research on “Welfare States inTime” puts the focus on the issue of time in welfare state devel-opment processes. The time issue consists of the followingthree elements. The first is the “timing” of welfare state forma-tion, the second is the “tempo” of welfare state development,and the third is the influence of these two elements on “long-term processes” of development. As mentioned above, EastAsian welfare states have experienced the formation phase ofdevelopment at a time when Western countries have experi-enced restructuring of welfare state in response to globalization(i.e., revealing a difference in the “timing” of welfare state for-mation). However, globalization has had a major influence notonly on Western countries but also on East Asian countries’politics and economics, which has meant that East Asian coun-tries have faced a situation in which they have had to restruc-ture the welfare state simultaneously with the formation there-of (i.e., revealing a difference in the “tempo” of welfare statedevelopment). Further, because of differences in these two ele-ments, welfare states in East Asia will follow a different devel-opmental path from the Western countries (due to differinginfluences on the "long-term process"). Needless to say, thesethree “time” issues can also be used to explain differencesamong the countries in East Asia. My research based on timeframes as discussed above aims to establish a new theoreticaltool that may enable researchers to conduct historical/system-atic comparisons between East Asian welfare states and West-ern welfare states, and also among East Asian welfare states.


Nathaniel Smith Tuukka ToivonenDoctoral CandidateDepartment of Social Policy and Social Work, Green CollegeUniversity of Oxford

Since arriving in Tokyo and at Shaken in May just in time for the new academic year,the following rather straightforward question has been put to me numerous times:Why on earth would a student of social policy from a Nordic country – with a welfaresystem far more advanced than that of this nation – wish to come all the way to Japanto conduct research on social policies? Is there anything that North European societiescould possibly learn from the modest and struggling social programs implemented inJapan? After briefly commenting on the risks of viewing welfare systems as‘advanced’ (susundeiru) or ‘not-so-advanced’, my usual answer is that, for a student ofcomparative social policy at least, present-day Japan is in many ways the ideal coun-try to investigate. With a fast-changing demographic landscape, rising levels of eco-nomic inequality and new social problems seemingly coming off the assembly line,there is currently an overabundance of social policy-related research topics to choosefrom in this country. The focus of my Ph.D. research project – Japan’s emerging youthactivation policy – is one promising issue area within this dynamic set of public con-cerns and related responses.

While back in the United Kingdom, I started with this simple puzzle: Why was it that,out of a plethora of possible policy options, the government chose to enact a schemeknown as the Youth Independence Camp (wakamono jiritsu juku) following the vigor-ous publicizing of the so-called NEET-problem (which referred to the proliferation ofyoung people ‘not in employment, education or training’). The stated purpose of thisprogram – which is now being carried out at 25 locations across Japan by NGOs andother private organizations – is to accommodate a group of 10-20 young people agedbetween 15 and 34 for three months at a time, first providing basic ‘life skills’ andcommunication training and then hands-on job experience at local companies orfarms. The key goal is to help the participants to attach themselves to gainful workupon completion as opposed to having them enroll in further education or training(which seems slightly peculiar if the state of not being in ‘employment, education ortraining’ is considered the main problem to start with).

After beginning my actual field research, I soon discovered that while the discourseon NEETs was indeed a powerful factor in bringing about this new ‘independencepolicy’ for youth, the underlying reality was significantly more subtle and the cast ofrelevant actors highly diverse. Apparent dilemmas have also come to light: If thereare indeed 600,000-800,000 youth currently not in education or employment in Japan,how can they possibly be assisted via independence camps that only have a combinedcapacity of around 1,500 participants per year? Further, why are the participantscharged up to 300,000 yen for a three-month program when it is known that a largeportion of NEETs come from low-income families?

My research will first focus on tracing the policy-making process that eventually ledto the emergence of the Youth Independence Camp scheme against the backdrop ofthe vigorous youth debates raging at the time. I will also map the outstanding charac-teristics of this program and aim to situate it in a social policy framework to enablecross-national comparisons at a later stage. Next, through conducting participantobservation at some of the camp locations over a period of several months, I willstrive to grasp how the participants themselves experience the independence campprogram they are attending, and how perceptions at this level may differ from thedominant paradigms among policy-makers and media (this stage calls for an anthro-pological approach to the study of social policy). Finally, while devoting most of myfield research to this relatively minor scheme, I will strive to gauge the extent towhich a more comprehensive youth support system may be coming into existence inJapan. The so-called Wakamono Support Stations now appearing across Japan aredesigned to play precisely the role of constructing such a system, and thus they con-stitute another important initiative to consider when scrutinizing Japanese youth acti-vation policy.

I aim to make various contributions through my current research project. Besides themore obvious goal of shedding light on recent Japanese youth activation and supportpolicies, I will eventually strive to utilize this case study to analyze the relationshipbetween the social construction of a target population for social policy (in this case, pri-marily NEETs), the policy-making process, and actual policy practice. Furthermore, Iwill place both NEETs and the new Japanese activation policies into a comparativesocial policy context. I feel this is an absolutely crucial task as very few studies onJapanese social policy take a genuinely comparative approach, all too often failing tostep outside the ‘Japan box’ (to borrow John Campbell’s phrase) for a broader viewand novel ideas. Indeed, comparisons are indispensable when gauging the extent towhich specific Japanese social policies and issues can be said to be ‘unique’ asopposed to mere variations of policies and issues currently shared by all post-indus-trial societies.

Doctoral CandidateDepartment of AnthropologyYale University

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Yale Universityand an advisee of Dr. William Kelly. I am very fortunate to be affiliated withShaken for the duration of my dissertation fieldwork. In eighteen months ofethnographic field research under the auspices of a Fulbright-Hays fellowshipand a grant from the Yale Council on East Asian Studies, my dissertation projectwill explore the everyday practice, social structures, and moral visions of right-wing political activist groups in contemporary Japan. My research will addresshow these groups interact with the state and its agents of contact, explore pat-terns and structures of group socialization, and analyze how individual mem-bers of these groups negotiate perceived or actual social and political marginal-ization from mainstream Japan in the context of the family, workplace, and com-munity.

My project is constructed between the two concepts, “right wing” and “civilsociety.” I am investigating how contestations over the definitions of these con-cepts channel the experiences of members of groups on the activist right, theirinteractions within society, and their relationship to the nation-state. The Japan-ese term uyoku is used popularly to refer to both rightist groups and the politicalideologies they support. More specifically, it refers to a range of ideologicaltenets, styles of political activism, and social characteristics that mark thesegroups in relation to one another, to the Japanese public, to the media, and toagents of the state. The paradigm of right-wing activism rests upon a particularconstellation of these characteristics. Groups’ notions of their divergence fromthat model are based on how they evaluate the constantly shifting areas of over-lap between the archetypical forms of right-wing political activism and chang-ing standards of political engagement in contemporary Japan.

Conventionally, the notion of “civil society” refers to voluntary political associa-tions that are neither associated with the state, nor based in industry or kinship.Drawing on the Comaroffs’ work on civil society in Africa (2000), my project,however, locates civil society ideologically, as it is deployed as a concept in mul-tiple registers (and sometimes at cross-purposes) to regulate and assess bothsocial activism and the state. Standards of “proper” political engagement arecentral to how right-wing groups fashion their activism, are evaluated by othergroups and citizens, and are subjected to surveillance. These expectations framehow these groups and outsiders judge their activism. My project will examinehow local political and cultural histories inform the social landscape of civil soci-ety, and will pursue a political anthropology of the state situated in this margin-alized sector of voluntary, non-state political activism. In other words, I willinvestigate how right-wing activists negotiate the perceived standards of civilsociety and the received styles of right-wing political action.

Despite the coherence suggested by warnings of a nationalist resurgence, theright wing in Japan is not unitary. Conservative political groups in Japaninclude organized crime-affiliated, ethnic nationalist, religious and traditional-ist, and issue-based groups. While organized-crime affiliated groups havebecome the unmarked representational form of right-wing activism in Japan,ethnic nationalist groups (minzoku-ha) and the “new” right (shin-uyoku) take amore intellectual and philosophical approach to their activism. This distinctioncan be lost on the average citizen. It is difficult to separate economically orientedactions committed under the guise of politics from political violence motivatedby ideological zeal. Although many right-wing groups assert their democraticintent as public advocacy and pressure groups, the threat of political violence isnever absent. This contradictory nature is most apparent for new-right groups,which at once invoke and distance themselves from the historical legacies ofright-wing violence and criminality. They are thus doubly marginalized––per-ceived by the police and citizenry as similar enough to be classified with theorganized crime-affiliated groups, but presented by themselves in group publi-cations and public oratory as different from other rightists.

The goal of my study is to produce a fine-grained ethnographic study of thelived experience and mundane forms of collective practice of right-wing politi-cal activism in contemporary Japan. Using sustained participant observation,interviews, and institutional and individual histories, I will chart the trajectoryof individuals as they become politically active, detail processes of socializationinto and out of groups, and consider the way their political activities pervadeother spheres of life. To what extent are these activities “long engagements”(Plath 1980) or shorter affairs, and how do connections forged via membershipin a political group compare to social relationships based in the community,family, or workplace? I hope to untangle the nexus of political ideology, con-frontational politics, and underworld criminality characteristic of right-winggroups in order to understand the distinctive qualities of their activism publiclyand internally and contribute to our understanding of the nature of social expe-rience within this sector of the political landscape that is at once so marginal andso powerful.


Assistant Professor,Department of Government,

Smith College

Jacques HymansNon-Nuclear Weapons States and Nuclear Proliferation

March 20, 2007

AbstractThis presentation relies on Social Identity Theory to arguethat the robustness of the norm of nuclear non-prolifera-tion depends in part on whether states view the status of"non-nuclear weapons state" (NNWS) as a badge of honoror of shame. I further argue that states’ self-identificationinto the NNWS club does not necessarily imply a knuckling under to American wishes, but rathercan be experienced as a liberation from them. These points are highlighted through a case study ofWest Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which simultaneously adopted the Non-Prolifera-tion Treaty and went on a major nuclear export spree. Whereas the standard American interpreta-tion sees tension between those two policy lines, my interpretation sees them as running in parallel-as two sides of the same NNWS identity coin. These findings tentatively suggest the need for amore general rethink of our expectations and prescriptions about the stability and leadership of thenon-proliferation regime.

Assistant Professor,Department of Economics,Northwestern University

Moriguchi ChiakiIncome Inequality in Japan from Historical and Comparative Per-spectivesMay 8, 2007

AbstractThis talk presents findings on the evolution of income concen-tration in Japan from 1886 to 2002 by constructing long-runseries of top income shares and top wage income shares, usingincome tax statistics. This presentation also provides compari-

son with the evolution of income concentration in other OECD countries, including the UnitedKingdom, France, and the United States.

ISS Contemporary Japan Group at the Instituteof Social Science, University of TokyoThe ISS Contemporary Japan Group serves as a forum for researchers on Japan to receive criticalfeedback on their work. Researchers visiting Tokyo are invited to contact Professor Ishida Hiroshi([email protected]) for more information if they would like to make a presentation.Meetings are open to everyone.


Associate Professor of Public Policy,Harvard University

Pepper CulpepperThe Politics of Change in Japan's Market

for Corporate ControlJune 27, 2007

AbstractDuring the postwar period, Japan and many of the conti-nental European economies had systems of ownership thatprovided managers with "patient capital"– that is, a set ofowners whose time horizons were relatively long, andwhose monitoring of managerial performance did notfocus pre-eminently on quarterly financial reports and share prices. These systems have comeunder pressure during the 1990s, including from Anglo-American investment funds that areincreasing players in these markets, as well as from domestic reformers seeking greater regulatoryemphasis on protecting minority shareholders and shareholder value. Previous research in this pro-ject has discovered that in major European economies–France, Germany, Italy, and the Nether-lands–change in these systems is not typically driven not by the "high politics" of internationalfinancial bargaining nor by diffusion of international "best practice," but by the interests and politi-cal efforts of major domestic companies. This presentation presents first results from the extensionof this research to the dynamics of political change in Japanese corporate governance since the mid-1990s.


Recent Publications by ISS and ISS StaffRecent Publications by ISS and ISS Staff

中村尚史／鳥栖市誌編纂委員会（編）�『汽笛の記憶　鉄道員のオーラル・ヒストリー』�鳥栖市(2006年12月)��

佐藤博樹・藤村博之・八代充史�『マテリアル人事労務管理[新版]』�日本評論社(2006年12月)��

中澤渉�『入試改革の社会学』�東洋館出版社（2007年2月）�

本田由紀・平沢和司（編著）�『学歴社会・受験競争　日本の教育と社会―②』�日本図書センター（2007年2月）�

大沢真理�『現代日本の生活保障システム　座標とゆくえ』�岩波書店（2007年3月）�

小林英夫・丸川知雄（編著）�『地域振興における自動車・同部品産業の役割』�社会評論社（2007年3月）�

廣渡清吾�『法システムII 比較法社会論�　　―日本とドイツを中心に―』�放送大学教育振興会 (2007年4月)��


Recent Publications by ISS and ISS Staff*For more publications, please visit the ISS Homepage (http://jww.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/, http://www.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/).

Recent Publications by ISS and ISS Staff*For more publications, please visit the ISS Homepage (http://jww.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/, http://www.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/).

大沢真理（編著）�『生活の協同　排除を超えてともに生きる社会へ』�日本評論社（2007年4月）�

佐藤博樹・藤村博之・八代充史�『新しい人事労務管理　第3版』�有斐閣（2007年4月）�

中村圭介�『実践！自治体の人事評価　�　「評価される側からのアプローチ」』�ぎょうせい（2007年4月）�

丸川知雄�『現代中国の産業　勃興する中国企業の強さと脆さ』�中公新書（2007年5月）�

宇野重規�『トクヴィル　平等と不平等の理論家』�講談社（2007年6月）�

希望学釜石プロジェクト�『八幡登志男　オーラルヒストリー』�東京大学社会科学研究所（2007年７月）�

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