It will soon be 20 years since the large-scale consolidation of municipalities known as the “Great Heisei mergers” began. This policy was undertaken in response to the issue of municipalities, especially smaller ones, no longer being viable due to Japanʼs declining population and aging society. To put it another way, the aim of the policy was to pursue economies of scale by expanding the average size of municipalities through mergers and to make administrative and fi scal systems more effi cient by consolidating operations. It may therefore be said that decisions relating to municipal mergers were made based primarily on the issue of financial capability. However, it should also be noted that another purpose of the organizational reform was to strengthen municipalitiesʼ capacity to flexibly respond to policies in new areas. This paper focuses on the latter issue. Specifi cally, it takes the vacant house problem-which has received much attention as a new policy issue in recent years as an example and outlines how governments have responded to this issue and what kind of problems have emerged in light of municipal mergers.
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