The evaluation activities of development projects have a relatively long history in Japan partly because the projects have been conducted in abroad in a competitive environment among other donors, and an international standard has been applied not only how to conduct the projects but also to evaluate the projects. From a view point of result-oriented evaluation, an evaluation of social impact based on a logic model has been emphasized.

Several methodologies for social impact evaluation have been used so far and even a rigorous methodology such as RCT has been applied to the social impact evaluations in this field. However, different from the practices in natural sciences, it is difficult to control all of the factors affecting social impacts for experiment. That is why the results of social impact evaluation were thought to be not clear and hard to utilize or to apply the findings to other projects in different conditions directly.

It is expected that a development of database on impact evaluation results can help to draw valid generalizations for useful policy implications because it includes many cases in different situations. Although the results should be interpreted with some reservations, it is possible to use the results effectively if the limitations to use are understood well.

The civil foundation for our community is made to support the funds of NPO and social corporations. The community is considered to get the association and the work of citizens deal with the problems that don’t get the morality. It gives the source of funds as donation and, what is more, when we think donation is the tool that makes us join our society, it gives us the chance to establish various publish participation. We focused on “the civil foundation for our community” that people have got interested in recently, and we will show the background to establish and the social function. In addition when we think of the influence of the civil foundation for our community, we emphasize the importance of the value of the non-monetary aid that is designed deliberately in the process as well as the direct donative mediation, the sum and the result of the activity. It leads to the dynamism of the region to pick up the social problem or think it hard and develop it as various stakeholders. We will show how the civil foundation for our community gets the social confidence and produce the social impact.

The purpose of this paper is to survey and compare current regulations on investment-based crowdfunding in the US, UK and Japan in order to examine appropriate forms of regulation to be taken in future from the viewpoint of public policy. The growth of crowdfunding is having interesting social impacts in various fields. In particular, investment-based crowdfunding is expected to play an important role in contributing to society and the environment. Although it has such potential importance, among the whole crowdfunding models, its proportion is relatively small. As one of the limiting factors it is supposed that current financial and investment regulations may present obstacles to growth. Since investment-based crowdfunding is a kind of investment scheme, it must be subject to the financial and investment regulations of each country. Although these regulations are intended to provide adequate protection to investors, they may be a heavy burden in this case due to the small scale of investment. In order to accelerate the growth of this type of crowdfunding, it will be necessary to introduce some kinds of deregulation such as an exemption rule of disclosure, but if it were excessive, protection of investors might be diminished and investors could suffer some damage. Consequently, it’s very important to introduce well balanced policy incorporating both deregulation, to accelerate required growth, and adequate protection of investors, from the viewpoint of public policy. The financial authorities of these three countries plan to give priority to enhancing protection of investors and ensuring the confidence of investors, primarily.

In the background of growing social needs of social services, activities and contribution of social business and the third sector have become important and thus the concept of social impact intending to estimate its economic value is being established. In this paper we interpret the concept of social return on investment (SROI), which is for evaluating the social impact, in comparison with the concept of internal rate of return in the cost-benefit analysis. Then we examine the significance of evaluating the impact of social projects as the value for money and point out that there are difficulties and limitations to do it. Next, we take up social impact bonds (SIB) which have been attracting attention as the ideas to practice social impact activities. We organize the concept and the scheme of SIB and compare the merits and the demerits pointed out to SIB. We again confirm that to evaluate the results of social projects (outcomes and impact) has important implications in helping the SIB scheme to function. At the same time, it is emphasized that government failure might occur in the evaluation stage of outcomes and impacts. It is claimed that it is important to consider a system of governance from a wider framework in order to restrain conspiracy or collusion in the SIB scheme.

Public Policy Studies Association Japan has been studying the criteria or standard for the curriculum of public policy education. Even though there are a variety of views about the definition of the education, it has been decided to proceed with the work on the basis of the outlook that might be able to search the possible criteria of reference for the public policy studies in common. The “Study Group on the criteria of public policy education” by the Association was installed, and has been studied for two years of fiscal 2013 and fiscal 2014. In the course of its investigation, it is also including carrying out the report in the annual research meeting of the Association. Not only the Study Group members but also general members of association have joined and discussed, and then made the good advices for the study of education criteria. Its final report was submitted to the Association Board in autumn 2015. Based on the academic system of public policy studies, we have sought to discover the criteria for public policy education in line with the actual situation of the bachelor education in Japan. In this study, the basis of the experience as the faculties of policy studies that has been active during this quarter of a century might help the making of reference standard. In the present paper, while reviewing the history of the study of criteria of education concerning to public policy studies, we will deal with some topics: what may be considered in this study, how do we make the standard of education or the frame of reference, and what kind of factors will influence this criteria. We will also examine the background and significance of this study, and then make clear the our challenges.

The protective system of preservation district for groups of important historical buildings has been used by municipal governments to protect their historical buildings, views and streets and then to promote regional development. We did questionnaire survey to municipal governments which have a preservation district in order to grasp their policy measures and the present situation. We investigate how municipal governments try to make a balance between protection of historical buildings, views and streets which are proposed by Cultural Properties Protection Law and promotion of regional development and sightseeing under this protective system, and also how they recognize the effect of subsidy for repair of historical buildings in preservation districts and now are concerned about the vacant house problem.

From the results of investigation, we recognize that selection and designation of preservation districts and subsidy for repair of historical buildings could do protect historical buildings, views and streets to some extent, but that it would take about 50 years to finish all historical buildings in each district to repair. Meanwhile, a population decline and lack of successors will be coming worse, and a subsidy will decrease and a vacant house will increase. It is concerned about that a local community will decline remarkably. The vacant house problem in preservation districts is more serious than other normal districts. So purchasing a vacant building by municipal government or the vacant house bank system cannot solve this problem fundamentally. It might be said that the protective system of preservation district for groups of important historical buildings, which was 40 years after set up, is about the time to reconstruct from the origin, particularly when we are concerned about local sustainability.

In the past decade or so, a series of works in the transition studies literature has generated more insight into how and to what extent system innovations and sustainable transitions can be emerged as a result of non-linear processes of multilayered, co-evolving interactions. In the process of doing so, some forms of basic theories and perspectives―named as multi-phase perspective and multi-level perspective―have been made from disciplines like complex system theory and social studies of technology. Although studies applying these perspectives often describe a transition as dynamic processes associated with a transformation of the dominant configuration of actors, institutions and structures and a particular power struggle between current vested interests and upcoming reformists, there has not been explicit references to power. Many have thus pointed out that in order to have more improved and contextualized understandings on the dynamics of structural transformation in societal systems, it is necessary to develop a framework in which power is explicitly conceptualized in relation to a long-term temporal scale and possibilities of social change.

In light of this academic background, Avelino and Rotmans (2011; 2009) and Avelino (20011; 2009) have come up with the most power-laden conceptual tool in the transition studies literature so far. This analytical model that they call ‘multi-level power-in-transition (Multi-PIT) framework’ develops a typology of the different ways in which power can be exercised and based on actor-specific point of view, a distinction is made among innovative, transformative, constitutive and systemic power. In addition, resources of power and power relations are conceptually defined and operationalized so that Multi-PIT is made more accessible to a more wide range of interdisciplinary studies for sustainable transitions. With all these newly-invented concepts, Multi-PIT redefines some of essential components of the existing transition frameworks.

Reviewing their works, this article first introduces Multi-PIT by laying out its basic foundations in relation to those of the existing perspectives and theories in the transition studies literature. Next, the article argues the significance and potential that one can seek from Multi-PIT. With reference to existing literature on power found mostly in political science and sociology, the article sheds light on how and to what extent Multi-PIT differs from the conventional conceptualization of power. The article then explores how likely it is for Multi-PIT to live up to the potential, utilizing its uniqueness for doing more refined analyses on power in sustainable transitions.

This paper analyzes the process in which the Japan Initiative (JI: Koso-Nippon), a small non-profit independent think tank, succeeded in introducing Program Review, or Jigyo-Shiwake, to Japan’s central government. Local governments, with the full cooperation of JI, have been implementing Program Review―a process whereby several independent reviewers openly scrutinize government programs one by one―since 2002. In 2009, soon after the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) historic succession to power, Japan's central government began to implement Program Review for the first time. Program Review thus became one of the signature political initiatives of the DPJ administration. This paper traces the process by which Program Review has become a national initiative, mainly focusing on the role and influence of the think tank JI. Previous studies have considered Japanese think tanks to be relatively weak, vulnerable, and immature policy actors. Recognizing the persisting structural weakness of think tanks in Japan, this paper examines a critical case study to show how a small non-profit think tank succeeded in introducing the original idea of Program Review to Japan’s central government. While the DPJ’s succession to power was an important trigger, this paper proposes the possibility that the stronger premiership, strengthened by institutional reforms beginning in the 1990s, might play a critical institutional role in helping Program Review become a key policy initiative of the central government, through an analysis of a case study as well as previous research not directly looking at think tanks.

This paper examines the issues surrounding ordinance-designated cities by studying statistical data on their scale and concentration of people or establishments. In recent years, the systems of these cities have especially used measures that were planned to expand their districts and administrative authorities.

The author organized the conflict structure of controversy that occurred while these cities’ systems were forming as preliminary works for the analysis. Furthermore, the author applied principal component analysis to twenty types of data in order to grasp “the concentration degree of urban functions.” The results allowed the author to synthesize the four types of indicators, and categorize the twenty ordinance-designated cities into multiple clusters.

This paper describes the background of the diversification in these categories using the results. The author found that regional ordinance-designated cities lack unity, and that overcrowding in large cities is enough to overwhelm each metropolitan area. These cities were designated after the peak of the large merger of the Heisei Era in 2005

Large city systems in Japan lack viewpoints to reflect these cities’ socioeconomic situations, which consist of complex and different elements. Therefore, it is necessary to have an individual discussion about each city, based on their attributes in the process of establishing their systems.

The purpose of this study is to explore what factors lead to performance information use for learning purposes in collaborative networks, focusing on the effects of relational characteristics and interaction patterns among network participants. The strength of collaborative networks is that they provide a collaborative advantage in addressing complex public problems through accessing, mobilizing, and integrating a broad range of resources, information, and skills possessed by organizations with different capacities. However, collaborative networks do not necessarily provide efficient and effective public services due to coordination and cooperation problems. Moreover, they face accountability problem. Since collaborative networks face performance and accountability problems, it is recognized that measuring and evaluating collaborative networks’ performance are essential. To improve network performance and accountability, the information obtained by performance measurement or evaluation needs to be used for learning purposes among network members. This study, using a case from a health and human service network, examines what factors explain performance information use for learning purposes among network participants in the collaborative network. Results obtained using a network autocorrelation model show that (1) when one in a pair of actors uses performance information for learning purposes during their communication, the other in the pair is likely to use performance information for learning purposes; and (2) network members use performance information for learning purposes when they perceive that performance information is useful.

The purpose of this article is to ascertain the driving forces for liberalization of civil air transport (i.e., Open Sky) between Japan and the U.S. that had not been realized for a long time, as well as the stumbling blocks for full agreement due to discord over allocating daytime slots to the U.S. at Haneda Airport.

The problems of airports are influenced by historical decision-making. It is difficult to change the location of international airports because the airline companies who had invested in the airport will oppose the transfer since they would have to invest again in a new airport.

Therefore, this article will set up an analytical framework referring to the viewpoints of historical institutionalism, such as the study of Pierson (2004) and focusing on coordination problems, veto points, asset specificity and positive feedback that Pierson mentioned as factors that make revision difficult, but sometimes influence the conditions under which revision may be possible. After that it will analyze the factors of institutional change for the aviation liberalization between Japan and the U.S.

As to the method of the case study, this article will adopt the qualitative approach by conducting interviews with people related to the negotiations for the Civil Air Transport Agreement; the Department of Transportation in the U.S.; the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) in Japan; and the airline companies. This article aims to contribute to the study of histric institutionalism, international aviation policy, and liberalization.

From the results of the case study, the liberalization of civil air transport between Japan and the U.S. was realized when the conditions of coordination problems, veto points and positive feedback changed. More concretely, as to veto points, the local governments around Narita Airport agreed with the slots increase at Narita Airport, and the influence of airline companies and their behavior toward the Open Sky agreement changed following the bankruptcy of JAL. As to coordination problems, the opinions of airline companies toward Open Sky were changed by the introduction of anti-trust immunity (ATI), and ATI also changed the opinion of MLIT about of protecting Japanese airlines from international competitions. In addition, a change of government changed the policy that Narita was the only international airport in the Tokyo metropolitan area. These changes gave choices to MLIT in the negotiation for Open Skye with the U.S. The agreement was limited by asset specificity by which airlines opposed moving to a new airport from the stand point of investment.