The Political Impact of Municipal Merger of the Heisei Era

Abstract

This study examines the political impact of Municipal merger of the Heisei era through exploring the causes of incumbent mayor loss in merged cities. Former studies examining this issue have focused mainly on the financial impact of the merger and have not fully investigated its impact on local politics. Thus, this article explores increases of incumbent mayors' losses in newly merged cities, arguing thatmost incumbent mayors are challenged by strong elected officials such as former heads of local governments or members of prefectural assemblies. The results obtained by regressing incumbent mayors' election results on the pace of budget cuts and type of merger show that mayors who succeeded in reducing budgets were reelected, and the mayors of merged cities (consisting of towns and villages) were not able to leverage budget cuts to get reelected.