Regional Administration in Japan: Departure From Uniformity by Shunsuke Kimura

Author:Shunsuke Kimura [Kimura, Shunsuke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, General, National, Public Affairs & Administration, Political Science, American Government, State, Local
ISBN: 9781317265948
Google: JEhnDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 31148237
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The social context in the nineteenth century was different from the current one, but the idea of the unions as alternatives to ordinary governments popular at that time would be applicable today.

The new constitution (post–World War II)

Under the new constitution of 1947, LAL provided the basic structure of the local governmental system. The constitution and the LAL inherited the union system for wide-area cooperative methods. In addition, a major devolution to municipalities was conducted in the postwar institutional reforms. For example, the municipalities took on the responsibility of operating the new compulsory education.

However, because individual ordinary governments found it difficult to fully respond to their increasing administrative demands, the promotion of wide-area administrations was planned by the central government. In the 1952 amendment to the LAL, the councils, the shared administrative organizations, and the delegation of duties were provided for reducing the expenses and improving the efficiency of administrations. The 1952 amendment was the substantial starting point of full-scale wide-area administration in the Japanese local governmental system. Subsequently, in the 1956 amendment to the LAL, a system for managing personnel was introduced to improve efficiency.

At the end of the 1960s, as economic growth stabilized, wide-area government in the form of RAZ (the regional administrative zone) was promoted within regional development policies and became a crucial challenge. This idea was not merely about sharing administrative duties across jurisdictions; it was also about developing a vital region through a comprehensive plan and wide-area public services. The Ministry of Home Affairs (now the MIC) issued the “Guidelines for Measures to Promote Regional Municipal Zones in Fiscal 1969.” These guidelines stipulated that the municipalities within an RMZ) 2 form a PAA or a council as the regional administrator. 3

In the 1994 amendment to the LAL, the regional union system was established as the best approach for delegating responsibilities that were deemed to be more appropriately managed regionally than locally. The LAL provided for regional unions as a new type of union, which was a wide-area administrative method with corporate legal status similar to a PAA (as described later). It was anticipated that the Great Heisei Consolidation would decrease the 3,232 municipalities recorded in March 1999 to 1,757 in March 2010 through the consolidations. This local reorganization exerted a significant influence on the methods of forming RAZ that were in place at the time. The number of RAZ formed into one municipality as the result of the Great Heisei Consolidation was 37. RAZ was a policy through the inter-municipal cooperation. When the affiliated local governments of a RAZ became one municipality, the time had come to review the policy.

Under these conditions, in 2008, before the Great Heisei Consolidation concluded, the MIC issued “Guidelines for the Promotion of the Concept of Autonomous Settlement Zones.” At the same time, the “Guidelines for the Planning of Wide-area Government Zones of 2000” were abolished.

Around that time the idea of autonomous settlement zones (ASZ) was promoted to stem the emigration of people from rural areas and create a flow of people moving in the opposite direction back into the rural areas.

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