教育行政学と「民主主義」

─戦後初期の宗像誠也を素材として─

抄録

The term “democracy” has been widely used in postwar Japanese educational administration literature, yet its precise meaning has remained ambiguous. There is even a tendency to use “democratic” and “democracy” to describe whatever the writers deem favorable. Such widespread and rather unthinking endorsement is problematic for the study of educational administration as a scholarly discipline. Given that democracy is a broad and often controversial concept, it requires thorough academic analysis. To address this, the paper examines the relationship between educational administration and democracy, focusing on the early postwar theories of Seiya Munakata, a pioneering figure in the field’s development in Japan. Through a critical reconstruction of his theories, this study discusses how the concept of democracy can be redefined within contemporary educational administration research.

First, the paper distinguishes two distinct research interests in the relationship between educational administration and democracy: democracy in educational administration and democracy by educational administration. The former investigates how education should be governed in relation to democracy, such as the relationship between elected officials and education boards in municipalities――a relationship that reflects the tension between democracy and expertise. Conversely, the latter has been largely neglected in the recent literature, though there are studies on sovereignty education and citizenship education. However, Munakata’s initial theory predominantly aligned with the latter interest and pursued the former only in connection with it, emphasizing the realization of democracy by educational administration. Although the two interests have since diverged, the paper explores the possibility of reconnecting them.

Next, an analysis of Munakata’s usage of “democracy” reveals temporal changes and conceptual ambiguities. The primary cause of these ambiguities stems from his failure to clearly distinguish between democracy as a decision-making procedure and democracy as the quality of outcomes produced by such procedures. Munakata’s scholarship was deeply concerned with the democratization of Japanese society. However, after witnessing that procedural democracy did not produce the expected outcomes （“democratic view of education” in his words）, he began to prioritize the instrumental view of democracy instead. This raises the question of whether Munakata was, in fact, an advocate of “epistocracy”――rule by experts or the knowledgeable―rather than “democracy,” rule by the people. It is argued that his theory had an epistocratic inclination, rooted in his instrumental view of democracy. Despite this conceptual tension, he sought to determine whether and how the procedural democracy could be reconciled with the quality of outcomes. This unresolved tension remains a significant question for contemporary research in educational administration.