In recent years, public sector evaluation in Japan has made a steady progress, and its influence has expanded to non-profit organizations. However, theories of evaluation do not have an independent and distinct discipline; rather they are influenced by practices. Three purposes of this article are: (1) to streamline intricate various evaluation theories, to reconstruct types of evaluation, and relate them with institutional developments; (2) to give a sketch of positioning these developments in public sector reform; and (3) to clarify regimes of evaluation where a regime is defined as ‘method or system of government.’

Evaluation is comprehensive enough to be called a ‘semantic magnet’, and there are three theoretical regimes: evaluation (in narrower sense), measurement, and analysis. These three regimes have a common factor in contributing to more scientific and rational decision-making, and give impact on each other, but have distinctive historical developments. Audit and inspection are means to secure accountability in government, and have been influenced by these three regimes in recent times. In particular, the measurement regime, gaining leverage with its affinity for new public management, has emerged by immersing with generic management techniques, and expanded to influence the management control means of audit system. The current challenge is how to incorporate a democratic factor into whichever type of regime of evaluation to choose.

Evaluations of Public Policies in Japan are now moving from trial to implementation stages. The central and local governments endeavour to integrate evaluations with public sector management reform through building evaluation activities into the management cycle of policies. However, new public management (NPM) requires a reconsideration of the interrelationships between government and people in the democracy; the nature of problem solving is based on governance in addition to a market mechanism. In a governance relationship. evaluation and auditing also are needed to refine the approach, because public accountability itself is complex and interactive by contrast to hierarchical and straight line chains in a government framework.

In this regard, this paper will make clear the functions of evaluation in the context of NPM. Besides, it will be discussed how government auditing, a kind of evaluation in terms of financial management has been developed and responded to NPM and performance measurement in performance management through comparing to Supreme Audit Institutions in developed countries. Then the relations among evaluation, government auditing and governance will be investigated and finally some policy implementations are shown.

The new system of policy evaluation, which covers all the areas of administration of the Japanese national government, was introduced as a part of the comprehensive administrative reform efforts of the central government. It was put into effect first by the government guideline of January 2001 and then by the newly enacted law on policy evaluation since April 2002.

Policy evaluation (as is used here to cover not only policy in the narrow sense, but also program and project) is aimed at promoting efficient, high quality and result-oriented public administration and ensuring the administrative accountability to the people.

Policy evaluation is to be implemented by each administrative organization and by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs and Posts and Telecommunications which is responsible for the overall management of the government-wide evaluation system. Policy evaluation is conducted in the form of project evaluation, performance evaluation, comprehensive evaluation and others. To ensure the objective and rigorous implementation of policy evaluation, wide range of information is to be made open to the public at each stage of evaluation process, including the information on evaluation plans and results of evaluations and even the information on how evaluation results are reflected in policies.

Even though the newly introduced policy evaluation system has the potentiality to considerably change policies and the way the government operates, it still needs time and experiences until it is strongly rooted in the government. We have to address many issues and challenges such as the development of human resources for evaluation activities, the promotion of research, development and dissemination of evaluation methods, tools and skills, the acquisition of necessary information and construction of effective date-base, etc.

Rather than applying uniformly from the beginning highly sophisticated and rigorous evaluation methods it is important to use even simple evaluation methods, if they are accepted as useful, and to accumulate knowledge and experiences, and then to improve the quality of evaluation by gradually improving evaluation methods and tools.

From the outset, the aims of the “Mie Prefecture Performance Measurement System” were evidently to enhance transforming attitudes of Government employees’ attitudes, and to increase policy making capacity. This system is based on the premise that the mind-set of local government employees has developed and been molded over a long period of time in Japan’s centralized administrative system. This premise follows that as long as measures are not taken to reform the entrenched attitudes of employees, it will be difficult for system reform to make any realistic headway for a transition towards a decentralized society.

At Mie Prefecture, employee attitude reform, to some extent, has progressed due to the system since 1995. So have been reformed organizational and administrative practices which have extended over to the Prefectural Assembly and the Labor Union.

This reform model based on a governance level, is a shift from “traditional management” to “business management”. However, this model does not assume that the final stage is the “business management”. Instead, this model can be considered as a strategically developmental process which involves “network-type management”.

Over the past several years, the concept and practice of performance measurement (PM) has received considerable attention in prefectural and local governments in Japan. However, the rese impact has been fairly limited. For example, PM is often used as a template to find obsolete budget items or as a means to add performance data to longterm planning targets.

In addition, case study observations indicate that the full potential of performance measurement generally has not been recognized. For example, performance targets are not used as a key component in performance contracts between elected officials, such as governors/mayors, and their administrative leaders and managers. Responsibility and accountability often are not clear. Further, PM is not integrated with essential management processes such as the strategic planning and the budgeting process.

In principle, the full potential of performance measurement goes well beyond being a tool of government management. Indeed, all indications are that it has the potential to be a key management instrument for the network-based open systems organizations of the 21st century. Trends, of course, show that the traditional command and control model will be less appropriate not just for the public service, but for commercial service as well. Shortcomings of the traditional model of bureaucratic management include requiring permission from elected officials in parliament even for trivial changes in process or budget. Such practices consume much time and make it impossible for frontline managers to use their own judgment and respond to citizens’ needs in a timely fashion.

With a clear performance contract and targets, performance measurement makes it possible to delegate decision-making to frontline managers. PM rightly allows attention to be focused mainly on results and achievements, rather than on processes and procedures. This is a radical change for the public service in Japan, equivalent to a paradigm change or scientific revolution.

Japanese perfectural/local governments must carefully study and absorb the underlying implications of performance measurement. Otherwise, it will be used simply as a medium for presentation/communication and will soon be swallowed up as part of the budgeting or planning process.

In Japan, Central government and Local Government have introduced the policy evaluation system from 1997 to 2001. This evaluation system has been influenced by the NPM (New Public Management), and called the ‘NPM-type policy evaluation’. This type evaluation uses the ‘(program) performance measurement’ and the cost-benefit analysis or cost-effectiveness analysis, but lacks of the approaches of democracy. This article analyses the relation of the democracy and the policy evaluation, especially the possibility of the participatory evaluations, the empowerment evaluation, the collaborative evaluation, and the advocacy evaluation from governance theories. Because the policy evaluation needs not only the quantitative analysis methods but also the qualitative research methods for popular sentiments, we must develop the new evaluation skills and NPO (Non-Profit Organization) as ‘the citizen evaluator’ that use both qualitative and quantitative methods. ‘The citizen evaluator’ and NPO evaluate policy, programs, and projects in terms of the effectiveness, sustainable development of the community, ‘good governance’, partnership and collaboration of public sector and citizen. If the participatory evaluation is the ‘literacy skills’ of the democratic governance, NPO plays essential roles in the empowerment evaluation, the collaborative evaluation, and the advocacy evaluation.

New Public Management (NPM) is derived from traditional policy science and evaluation theories, not only the application of business model to public sector. But the application of business model has brought us to an innovation of public sector reform. NPM has brought about a way to political rationality in order to make the decision-making rational. Individual performance measure stands for a specific value, so that settling performance targets (indicators) represent selecting values. NPM theory has led to a breakthrough to policy science.

In the relation to evaluation theories. evaluation itself is transforming from strict objective one (scientific evaluation) to participatory one (practical evaluation). The latter has made a way to utilize performance measurement system.

The core concept of NPM is composed of the two factors, (1) Strategic management. and (2) Performance measurement system. Strategic management is defined as management by strategic plan. that clarifies a strategic vision. and programs and tasks in order to make the strategic vision come true.

In this case, it is very important to have a common vision among concerned parties (persons). Individual performance target is a tool to realize the strategic vision and strategic goals. Innovation and justification are dependent on how to make the strategic Vision. Originally speaking. settling a strategic vision and strategic goals is the role of politicians in the leading nations of NPM, that is led by politics, what we call, politics-leading system. But in the most of nations or governments, politics-leading system often don’t work so well, because of the two reasons, (1) the malfunction of political system. and (2) ‘government failure’.

Nowadays, there has become more and more important to assure external public management for strategic planning and management. Settling as trategic vision and strategic goals is becoming more and more based not on political system but on citizen-input, partnership, collaboration one. In the Post-NPM. citizen are considered as the three categories as follows, First is customer. that is based on the narrow meaning of NPM. Second is stakeholder, third is sovereign. There are coming a new public governance and management system based on the three characterized citizen-input ways through the external management system.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the future direction of the policy of quasipublic goods as cultural art by applying a theoretical and institutional analysis. The movement of the public finance system, which supports cultural art, is said to combine not only the government and the private sector, but also include the non-profit sector. Research concerning the support of cultural art through the non-profit sector is prospering increasingly. Based on such circumstances, this paper discusses market situation and type of income distribution categorized into two cases for analyzing the justifiability of the government support for cultural art. The analysis in this paper is based on the separation of the autonomous principle of the market as well as the intervention and coordination through the government, which are types of cultural art support policies. Furthermore, financial resources are categorized into three cases. First, there is the case of maintaining the financial resource from business return. Second, there is the case of using the income of sold admission tickets for covering one part of the costs, and using the remaining money as additional subsidy or transfer income. Third, there is the possibility to maintain financial resources through the public sector. Based on the analysis of these three cases’ merits and demerits and their transformation as well as mixture, we examine a suitable policy.

Additionally, this paper discusses the relation between government subsidy and private donations, focusing mainly on their substitution and complementation. It then takes a look at the relation between the efficiency of public support and supporting motivation as well as the optimal combination of private donations and public support. The paper integrates the consideration of the characteristics of tax system and tax policy in the analysis of cultural art.

This paper examines the change of the environmental policies of the diesel vehicles (EPDVs) and the new diesel programme in Tokyo, called ‘the Say No to the Dirty Diesel Vehicles Programme’ (SNDDVP). This paper consists of theoretical discussion, the case study and the analysis. The first section deals with theoretical discussion on the policy network concept and the policy changes in a British context. It describes the concept and mechanics of the policy networks, the policy communities and issue networks, and theories of policy changes. After the theoretical discussion, the paper presents the case study of the EPDVs and SNDDVP. This section deals with domestic and international dimensions of the EPDVs and the case study of the SNDDVP.

In the third section the paper arrives at the analysis of the case study. The section analyses the policy network of the EPDVs and then the change of the EPDVs. Then this section shows that the policy network of the EPDVs is categorised as the policy community and the policy change took place because of several exogenous factors. Finally this paper identifies three conclusions; radical policy changes would rarely take place within the policy community; with the policy community, the policy actors even outside the policy community would find it difficult to achieve racial policy changes because it would require a simultaneous happening of several exogenous factors; and the local governments have potential to achieve radical policy changes.

The purpose of this study is multi-dimensional evaluations of the transport investment by “Nutzwertanalyse”. A Nutzwertanalyse is similar to a Cost-Effectiveness analysis.

General evaluation is limited to tangible effects without counting intangible effects of the project. For example the well-known Cost-benefit-Analysis evaluates its social costs and social benefits limited only to tangible effects in money.

However this Nutzwertanalyse is able to evaluate all benefits and all costs in the form of multiple criteria-scoring models. As a result, I can take effective evaluations of the transport investment.

This study aims to identify factors that motivate Members of the Japanese Diet and the Korean to use homepages as a means of political communication. Both countries have similar national policies promoting the use of the Internet. While Korea has rapidly expanded Internet accessibility during last several years, Japan has been much slower. In order to find the origins of these differences, we attempted to analyze main factors that influence the Internet accessibility of legislators.

We test the following hypotheses. Legislators with the following characteristics will be more likely to use the internet: (1) younger, (2) longer serving, (3) legislators from more competitive district, (4) from more urbanized the district, (5) with better academic backgrounds, (6) and legislators from stronger parties.

We find that age is negatively related with homepage accessibility, while the urbanization and competitiveness of electoral districts were positively related. In Japan, members of lager LDP factions were apt to be less active in using their private HP, while the smaller factions tended to be more active. Although there are some differences in homepage accessibility between the Korean parties, we were unable to find significant statistical correlation between party differences and homepage accessibility. This study suggests that the merits of Internet as a tool for political communication were recognized by the younger politicians in competitive urban districts.

Complete deregulation of the Japanese electricity market is to be started in 2007. It must be designed taking the following points into account: (a) environmental restrictions for the prevention of the global-warming, (b) consistency with the long-term energy policy including nuclear power and renewable energy, (c) achievement of universal service.

Sustainable non-fossil energy policy in the electricity market must be developed to be compatible with competition. A financial mechanism like the “Renewable Portfolio Standard” should be the first step in expanding renewable energy, and energy tax reform will be required as a second step. In other words, tax for electric power development promotion should be reformed to a carbon tax which will be levied in proportion to the amount of carbon.

Complete deregulation of the electricity market will open up the green power market and link up with the emissions trading market, which will create large incentives to cut down CO₂ emissions for suppliers and consumers.

The measure in Japan against global warming should be considered within the viewpoint of structural reform, such as electricity deregulation and tax reform.

The debates on civic participation in Japan should be reconsidered. Above all, those debates in public policy studies share a simple view about the mass society. The meaning of “civil society” has developed complicatedly in the field of the social theory. This paper intends to bring a practically applied theory of civic participation, criticizing ideological views.

The main interest of public policy studies is how the government and civic deal with the social problems. But the researchers of civic participation have not to paid attention to criminology (especially on the social norms). This paper focuses on the “social control theory” in Makoto Hougetsu (1998). Hougetsu explains the social control in terms of the symbolic interactionism. Social control works through the formal or informal institutions, which are mainly based on each individuals’ self-control. Therefore, actors can change institutions by reconstructing “universe of discourse” in everyday life, which can at last lead to a policy innovation.

When we solve social problems, we try to change a certain position in various social forces. This view is superior to that of ideological analysis. Charles Tittle (1995) suggested the “control balance theory” to integrate criminology. The main point of this theory is that deviant behaviors occur when a person is put in too little or too much controlled condition. In order to obtain a control balance, we need to reconstruct our networks by connecting various forces. Therefore, we can say that this theory closely links to the reflexivity of “public sphere” as Habermas or Giddens point out.

The major contents of this paper are as follows:

(1) to criticize the civic participation debates in Japan,

(2) to introduce the social control theory,

(3) to bridge control theories in sociology and public policy studies.