2011 Volume 32 Pages 71-82
After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995, national and local governments as well as private foundations set up several institutions to activate NPOs including intermediary organizations. Taking advantage of such a favorable condition, NPOs have introduced community empowerment initiatives. As observed, the NPO sector became an alternative main policy stream to the conventional community organization (jichikai) or government agency type of welfare organization (syakaifukushikyogikai) in promoting community empowerment. Compared with the traditional policy stream, NPOs tend to be characterized as more independent, professional, and formal delivery vehicles. This paper focuses on the factors that created the dynamism of NPO intermediary organizations in Hyogo Prefecture (the area mainly affected by the earthquake) and how these organizations have been contributing to institutional settings for community empowerment. Regarding the theoretical framework for analysis, we positively took the viewpoint of New Institutional Economics. This theory could have an concept to ajust the rational choice new institutionalism and historical new institutionalism or sociological new institutionalism. Former theory puts more weight on economic rationalism of each actor and latter theories take into consideration of informal aspect of institution. Assuming bounded rationality under uncertain information, we adopted a broader definition of "institution" to include not only formal but also informal aspects such as rule or norm. Through close observation of the intermediary organizations and surrounding contexts, we argued that actors have set up the organizations under rational choices and have successfully continued their activities by harnessing a wide variety of formal and informal institutional supports which include central and government policy, private foundation's support, and advice from experts. For instance, official institution like law or ordinance contributed to reducing the transaction costs pertaining to the setup and management of the organizations while experts helped fill in information gap between the organizations and policy makers. Meanwhile, we also found that the voluntary activities of the intermediary organizations and NPOs in the affected areas contributed to heightening the visibility of NPO sector, making its significance understood across the nation. This triggered the public to accept the most important institutional setting for promoting community empowerment, which was the enactment of the Law to Promote Specified Nonprofit Activities in 1998. The enactment of that Law was also affected by various factors such as wide acceptance of the civil associations in the conservative factions by the end of cold war and expectation of the business sector for the NPOs as a means for saving the government expenditure. Finally, we drew a conclusion that community empowerment policy should be further rearranged and modernized in order to ensure sustainable development of NPO intermediary organizations. Focusing on the future, we could argue that it is important to design more proper institutions in which actor's rationality could be embedded.
