地方自治体の合併事例にみる民意把握の問題

抄録

This paper examines the problem of evaluating the attitudes of residents using an example of the failed mergers during the municipal mega-mergers of the Heisei era. In other words, the analysis examines the two aspects of the determination process and surveys of residents' attitudes. Firstly the problem of new city names resulting from municipal mergers is related to the sensibility of residents seen from their attachment to a place name or “local brand”. The failure of the Noshiro merger in 2004 showed that even though residents had objections during the consultative stages for mergers, the residents remained silent until their opinion was individually asked by way of signature collection activities for petitions or by resident attitude surveys. Consequently the transparency (information disclosure) of discussions from the publication of the new name until determination may be seen as not fulfilling the necessary and sufficient conditions for evaluating the objections of residents. As a result, there is a need for local government to search for a new means of evaluating the sensibilities of residents. Secondly the wide use of resident attitude surveys by local governments is shown to lead to the risk of a loss of long-term vision resulting in a tendency to focus on immediate problems faced by all resident demographic groups.