地域学研究
Online ISSN : 1880-6465
Print ISSN : 0287-6256
ISSN-L : 0287-6256
論文
財政赤字と上からの地方分権
藤岡 明房
著者情報
ジャーナル フリー

2011 年 41 巻 4 号 p. 837-851

詳細
抄録

Japanese regional systems of government are expected to undergo great reform. Regional autonomy laws have been enforced since 2000. A law to promote decentralization reform was approved to enact new regional autonomy laws in December 2006 and the decentralization reform promotion committee started in April 2007. In addition, a new local financial reform was also done though local financial reforms executed in terms of finances between the 2004 fiscal year and 2006 fiscal year. A scale reduction in the tax money allocated to local governments was one local financial reform. From April 2007, a new tax allocation was executed for simplification of the delivery standard. Fiscal resources were decreased by the local financial reforms, so local governments were requested to improve the physical conditions of their cities, towns and villages. Therefore, a large number of municipality mergers of the ‘ Heisei' Era are advancing now.
Introduction of the ‘ Do-Shu' system is being discussed as a system for not only the city, town and village governments but also for the administrative prefectural governments. In addition, the Act for Comprehensive Development of the National Land was revised by the Japan Development & Construction Co., Ltd. Plan based on the past Act for Comprehensive Development of the National Land of 2005, and the name changed to the Country Formation Plan. A variety of local system reforms have been continuously carried out since the 1990's.
In this paper, the following three points are clarified. 1. Finances in Japan lacked financial moderation in the 1990's and this caused the need for modulation. 2. Problems were caused by local public finance trying to carry out measures to boost the economy of the local government in the 1990's. 3. Problems have increased with local financial reforms being executed before the problems of the local public finances are corrected. A new problem has occurred in Japanese regional finances because of the introduction of decentralization and the Do-Shu system.
The central government faced a fiscal deficit in the 1990's. The local governments then experienced a fiscal deficit because the central government made the local governments subrogate the deficit. Therefore, the central and local governments need a fiscal reform. The central government hands over their work to the local governments to decrease their own fiscal deficit, and has reduced the local tax allocation distributed to the local governments. The central government is planning to further decrease the local tax allocation by introducing the ‘ Do-Syu' system in the future.

JEL Classification: H62, R51, R58

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© 2011 日本地域学会
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