Ⅱ 研究報告
市町村教育政策形成における議会の影響力
――茨城県旧総和町を事例として――
2014 年 40 巻 p. 38-54
詳細
2014 年 40 巻 p. 38-54
This article focuses on the influence of a local assembly in education policy formation. Using a case study of former Sowa town, Ibaraki prefecture, the author examined the employment of part-time teachers for implementing a Team Teaching (TT) policy. TT is a policy that aims to improve the educational environment by reducing the teacher-pupil ratio.
Since decentralization reform of the national and local government has been progressing, the mayors have relatively more authority in their local government. Consequently, the mayors have strengthened their involvement in education policy making. On the other hand, although the members of the local assembly are elected, and they can and do participate in debates in policy making, such as through the budget deliberations, we have not so far examined their participation in educational policy making.
In 1999, when the town introduced TT in junior-high schools, the mayor took on the leadership of it. In the process of decision-making, the assembly aimed at reducing the number of proposals from the mayor. As a result, the TT policy in junior-high school was slimmed down. In an to expand the TT policy to the elementary schools, the mayor proposed budgets to the assembly in 2000. However, because of insufficient deliberation time, in addition to the “petition problem”, this proposal was not given approval from the assembly.
Based on these studies, and applying the veto players’ theory, the author analyzed the case studies theoretically. The author showed diagrammatically the interaction between the mayor and assembly. Sowa town assembly focused on reducing the estimated budget for the TT policy. In 1999, they were able to persuade the mayor and the school board to compromise the budgetary limitation. On the other hand, when the mayor tried to extend the TT policy to elementary schools in 2000, the assembly rejected the expansion because of the “petition problem” and the poorly-thought-out nature of it, and the assembly took a tougher line.
