日本の公共選択研究の黎明期と未来

抄録

　The author has researched the field of "public choice" for over 40 years, ever since the dawn of public choice studies in Japan. This paper discusses the dawn of public choice studies in Japan through a personal viewpoint, reviews the origins of public choice studies, and proposes Japanese research topics that should be explored in the future.

　Based on primary documentary evidence, the paper describes the contribution of the late Professor Hiroshi Kato to the founding of the Japanese Public Choice School in the mid - 1970s. In Japan, Professor Kato was one of the first to consider collective decision - making in democracy based on debate and discussion by each member of society, namely "deliberative democracy." This leads us to consider the location of deliberative democracy in the constitutional political economy. Finally, the paper points out that the challenge of public choice studies in Japan is to conduct research on history, theory, and policy in the context of Japan’s own democracy, to clarify the problems that exist in the current Japanese democratic system, and then to present possible solutions.