Urban Regime Analysis and Civic Participation and Cooperation:

A Case Study of Chiba City

Abstract

    Movements to encourage civic participation and cooperation are being adopted by local governments across Japan . This paper explores the forces that execute these policies and the responses from local governments to these forces. This paper applies urban regime analysis to evaluate three policies for civic participation and cooperation in Chiba City. Since 1950, the city was governed by a “development oriented” regime, but an administration change in 2009 altered the orientation of government policy. During the time of the development-oriented regime, four different mayors were supported by the conservative party, businesses, and labor unions, which offered a stable alliance for many years. However, in 2009, the new mayor, Kumagai Toshihito, who was supported by many unorganized citizens as well as left-center parties, tried to increase general citizens' participation in Chiba's urban regime. This led to Kumagai adding many unorganized citizens to his regime.
    The analysis of these three policies showed that efforts toward civic participation and cooperation are progressing in the Kumagai administration, which is consistent with national trends toward increasing government participation.
    Using urban regime analysis, this paper suggests that progress by civic participation and cooperation policies is associated with an expanded number of actors involved in a local governmental regime and that some regimes are better able to attract citizen participants than others.