Abstract
It is often pointed out that the number of volunteers for the Great East Japan Earthquake was
smaller than that of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, and the reason for this is likely to
be assumed that a bureaucratic government exercised too much regulation and control of volunteer
activities. Although this framework was constructed to anticipate compensation for the failure of
coordination of volunteers, such as in the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, it is not appropriate
to interpret the relative shortage of volunteers for the later earthquake in March of 2011 in the same
way because the mode of governance in 2011 was different from that of 1995. In other words, the
Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake took place in an era of developmentalism, and conversely, the Great
East Japan Earthquake happened in an era of neoliberalism . Therefore, it would be reasonable for the
issue of volunteer shortage in the March 2011 earthquake to be investigated from the perspective of the
dysfunction of neoliberalism, not developmentalism .
According to data analysis results, contrary to the assumption of the view of developmentalism,
the shortage of volunteers was caused by the following two factors: the first was the diminishment and
damage of local government brought about by not only the tsunami but also regional policies from
the 2000s The second factor was the dualism of non-profit sectors structured by civil society policies
in Japan. The result could imply that NPOs and volunteers can be activated not in the context of
neoliberalism but in the context of expanding universal and inclusive social policies.
