2017 Volume 17 Pages 26-39
The purpose of this article is to contribute to the policy studies, theoretically as well as empirically, by providing new findings concerning policy implementation and public management. First, it focuses on the structural context that constrains the conditions to implement policies. While the traditional policy implementation studies have underlined the micro process of implementation, this article analyses the macro dimensions, focusing on fundamental and structural factors, which may cause policy failure.
Second, the article also bridges the gap between the policy implementation research and the pubic management study. It moves the boundaries between these disciplines by exploring the influence of administrative management on policy implementation, focusing especially on its negative effects. It elucidates how public sector reforms based on the ideas and approaches of NPM (New Public Management) will cause policy implementation failures.
It analyses a case concerning the development of child daycare centre policy in Japan. The number of children on waiting lists for daycare centres has increased due to the rising of the female labour participation rate and dual income households. This topic has become one of the most important governmental agendas since the 1990s. The number of children on the waiting lists has not decreased so much up until now, though the central government and local municipalities have implemented public policies to improve conditions and solve problems. This study focuses on the shortage of nursery teachers who take care of children in daycare centres as one of the fundamental factors that causes the waiting list problem.
This article concludes that NPM-type public sector reforms will give rise to shortages of nursery teachers. These reforms exacerbate working conditions of nursery teachers, in particular public employees who work in public daycare centres set up and managed by local municipalities. A lot of local municipalities are under fiscal pressure to cut the costs of public child care services through privatization of public daycare centres and decreasing their new hiring as well as increasing part-time and temporally staff.
