分権改革はなぜ実現したか

抄録

  This article examines the political process of the 2000 decentralization reforms in Japan. Since World War n, most of the decentralization reforms have been frustrated in Japan. The 2000 decentralization broke this cycle and can be regarded as the most successful compared to the previous faltering attempts.
  This article identifies ‘the structure of the frustration’ behind the previous attempts. Though many researchers have tried to find out the reason of the success of the 2000 decentralization, they have failed to identify ‘the structure of the frustration’ and, as a result, have not given satisfactory explanations for the reason of the success. After identifying ‘the structure of the frustration’, the article depicts the political process of the 2000 decentralization as an overcoming process of that structure.
  Unlike many failed decentralization attempts, the 2000 decentralization acquired the support of the business and, as a result, high legitimacy among the government agenda. The article explains this process as ‘the politics of ideas’. The second distinctive feature of the 2000 decentralization was the creation of a highly influential advisory committee. The third distinction was the control exerted within this committee by members of ‘local government policy community’ who formed the majority. This article addresses how the committee formation was strongly influenced by Prime Minister Murayama and Chief Cabinet Secretary Igarashi who had the obvious intention of backing ‘local government policy community’