Abstract
Akita City and Okayama City decided almost the same policy, i.e. establishing a public six-year secondary school at the same time. The timing by which the establishment of these schools was decided was very early though both cities are the same as other cities in respect to financial ability. In traditional theory, the central government controls local governments, and prefectures manage and coordinate their cities as upper level local governments. Some researchers have shown that local government leaders are likely to be sensitive to the economic interests of their communities. Reed has investigated some problems in the way of political decision making in Japanese prefectures. However, he did not mention the policy selection by local government within educational policy. From another point of view, Hess's research provides us with useful information. He shows political explanations of policy selections in U.S. urban school districts. But he did not focus on governmental relations and competition between cities in opposition to each other. The first purpose of this paper is try to show that the political leadership of a mayor is an important factor in policy selection. The second purpose is to point out that a close connection between the central government and cities is now exists. In that case, prefectures and their cities are in competition with each other concerning the introduction of new educational policies. In this paper data have been collected from interviews with people who participated in establishing a six-year school (Gosyono-Gakuin Junior High and High School) in Akita City in 1998 and 1999. Recently in Japan political and institutional circumstances have been promoting autonomy of local governments. As can be seen in the results of research into the United States urban politics, it can be assumed that local government already has independence in policy making.
