This paper examines the restriction on constitutional rights. Even if constitutional rights are established, laws which override the protection granted by such rights may be required. But, to allow such laws, some matters must be prescribed in constitution. Those matters include authorizing the power to pass bills which override constitutional rights to Congress, limiting the contents of such bills, and providing vote rules used to pass such bills. People, who are in a position to amend constitution and want to allow such laws, will consider these matters in such a way that reduce so-called interdependence cost.

　Arrow (1999) points out that the moral requirement to treat generations impartially is in conflict with the intuition that imposing an excessive savings rate is morally unacceptable (the conflict of basic principles of morality). The key to solving this conflict is that humans are being bound at specific times. When making choices towards the future, we are responsible for the degree to which the choices affect and weight future events according to the degree of responsibility. This is the foundation of the discount that is rooted in the essence of time, which is the succession of events along the sequence, and is the key to solving the conflict of principles of morality. There are two types of discount from the sequence: one is due to the intervention of subsequent generations, and the other comes from the succession of natural hazards. This paper, employing game theoretic models and empirical studies, elucidates the nature of the discount from these two types of sequences.

　There were two kinds of referendums concerning municipal mergers held between 2001 and 2011. One type was based on the particular municipality’s own referendum ordinance and the other was held on the basis of the national Special Mergers Law. In this paper, I focus on the latter type of referendum, mainly the 65 cases held before March 2005, in which voters were asked whether or not to set up a merger consultation committee. Both types of referendum are relevant to mergers in a broad sense, but the question asked in each type are different. Previous research has not paid sufficient attention to this important difference.

　Referendums based on the Special Mergers Law were typically held after a request by some part of electorate who supported a particular pattern of merger in defiance of an existing the merger consultation committee proposed another merger pattern. Such referendums confronted people with a choice between two merger patterns and tended to result in disapproval of the second committee’s proposed pattern. The situation affected both voter turnout and referendum results. Analyses revealed a deviation between the original intention of the law and the actual uses to which the law was put.

　This paper empirically examines the political determinants of the attendance at conferences of municipal mergers from FY1999 to FY2005. We use multilevel logistic regression models to analyze the relationship between municipal mergers and the political power of prefectures. The main conclusions of the study are as follows: First, LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) Governors significantly have a positive effect on the attendance at conferences of municipal mergers. Second, the probability of the attendance at these conferences is unlikely to be higher, when the governor was once a bureaucrat of the MIC (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). And third, LDP governors have more influence on the attendance at the conferences, rather than mayors.

　Twenty years have passed since municipalities of Japan Vegan the Heisei Municipal Amalgamations. The Heisei Municipal Amalgamations had a strong impact on local politics in Japan. Above all, mayoral elections experienced great change. Since most amalgamated cities expanded their population and finance, mayoralties of amalgamated cities become popular. Many strong candidates entered mayoral elections. Moreover, municipal amalgamations increased policy issues and political cleavages. Confrontation between central areas and peripheral areas in new amalgamated cities made mayoral elections competitive. However, it is not clear yet if these impacts continue today now. Furthermore we don’t know what kinds of issues were debated in mayoral elections in amalgamated cities.

　Using mayoral election data, this research reveals the previous occupations and partisanship of mayorals before and after municipal amalgamations. Furthermore, political issues during mayoral election in amalgamated cities are investigated. As a result of this investigation, it is revealed that political impacts of municipal amalgamations are decreasing. Furthermore, it becomes clear that financial crises and confrontations among municipalities prior to amalgamations encouraged the emergence of challengers toward incumbent mayors.

　Wide area cooperation is a mechanism for cooperation among local governments that is used for effective solution of wide area issues. Looking back at the past municipal merger and wide area cooperation, wide area cooperation is strongly used as an alternative to the municipal mergers. However, since the Heisei municipal merger, the situation surrounding the wide area cooperation has changed significantly, and the importance of wide area cooperation is increasing.

　In this paper, we review the past wide area cooperation and municipal merger and discuss the background and characteristics of the wide area cooperation. Furthermore, while considering the current wide area cooperation, we discuss the issues such as the center and the surrounding, the governance in the area, and the limits of the population dam.

　This paper examines the relation between the municipal mergers and public facilities by the case study in Akita and theoretical analysis. Firstly, I show that (1) the construction cost in Ugo town which is The representative case of non-merged municipalities in Akita significantly decreased, (2) the construction cost in Akita city which is the representative case of merged municipalities increased, especially in the central part of a city, whereas the one in the peripheral part is very small, during the great mergers of Heisei.

　Next, I theoretically show that (1) the project initiation in the non-merged municipalities may undersupply by the liquidity constraint, (2) the project initiation in the central district of the merged municipality may oversupply and the one in the peripheral district may undersupply, since the merged local government preferentially allocates the resources and the financial advantages of the municipal mergers for the central district for the purpose of welfare maximization in the region.