This study aims at reframing the policy process in terms of knowledge exchange and illuminating the contribution of a knowledge utilization perspective to understanding the policy process. Specifically, based on categorizing policy knowledge into three types -theoretical, experience, and local knowledge-, a sharp focus is placed on all combinations of knowledge exchange. The findings of this study demonstrate that a knowledge exchange perspective provides a wider view of the policy process; shortly, the policy process consists of a variety of exchange interaction of policy knowledge involving diverse actors. It is suggested then that every member of society, as a participant in knowledge exchange interaction, should be actively engaged in improving the practice of democracy. This study concludes by pointing out a remaining critical Question for more deeply comprehending the policy process; empirical studies have accumulated evidence of how knowledge exchange interactions occur in the policy process (e.g., the politicization of knowledge utilization), whereas philosophical research is insufficient to answer normative Questions such as how to combine diverse policy knowledge to make a policy decision.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the impact of cognitive factors (idea, knowledge, discourse, expertise, etc.) on public policy. Several studies have proved that policy knowledge can explain how institutional reform, policy change and policy termination were achieved in policy decision making process. The problem seems to lie in the fact that these approaches disregarded the policy implementation process. Despite the fact that policymaking continues in the policy implementation process, little is known about how the policy knowledge is created and utilized by local agencies. In order to grasp the characteristics of policy knowledge in local agencies and how these agencies create the knowledge, it is important to examine the knowledge conversion mechanisms by applying the Nonaka’s model of knowledge creation (the SECI model). The approach presented here can serve as a useful framework for policy implementation analysis from a cognitive point of view. This paper addresses the question how local agencies create and utilize policy knowledge in policy implementation process through case studies of child abuse and neglect prevention policy in Japan.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which became ap andemic in 2020, has had a major impact on countries. In order to respond to the virus that mankind encountered for the first time, policy-makers in both intemational and domestic politics are highly influenced by the opinions of “experts”. The relationship between science and politics has been actively discussed. In Japan, too, the views of expert meetings and the infectious disease control subcommittee had an impact on policies. In order to obtain insights of the relationship between experts and politics, theories of epistemic community and policy learning are very effective. When the government tries to acquire highly technical knowledge, “epistmic learning” is carried out by learning from a cognitive community composed of scientists, but as the government’s learning progresses, the role of the expert group is said to change to a “contributor” to ask experts only what they want to know. This has been confirmed in the course of Japan’s COVID-19 responses up to present, but even so, experts have been united internally to serve as “teachers” to partially amend government policy.

Advisory bodies are important tools for acquiring expertise in the policy process. Some of these advisory bodies have recently been established by jointly holding different ministerial councils or co-organizing a cross-ministerial meeting body. This paper discusses the functions and limitations of jointly established councils in the policy process, which have not received much attention. Although they vary in form and operation, they can be broadly classified into three types according to the purpose of their establishment: co-jurisdictional administrative processing type, overlapping coordination type, and conflict coordination type. A common feature is the widespread adoption of a rotation system in which the ministries in charge of the secretariat take turns. This system makes it easier to facilitate inter-ministerial policy coordination. The cases of food labeling policy, which is an overlapping coordination type, and climate change policy, which is a conflicting coordination type, show that the continuity of committee members combined with the secretariat rotation system forms the basis for policy coordination. On the other hand, it should be noted that this may act as a disincentive to policy innovation, for example, by avoiding conflicting agendas. In order to understand the overall picture of the joint establishment of councils, it will be essential to collect and compare cases that have been operated in various fields in the future.

Recent social policy development proposes new types of redistribution like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which integrate social security benefits and tax burdens. When the government adopts such an ew redistribution method, it needs to grasp people’s personal information on income and tax and set the appropriate target groups. In Japan, the newly established “My-Number” is expected to be a basic infrastructure for that data collection, but it currently cannot obtain the information about income and tax connected with other personal data. The local governments deal with the income and tax data very strictly, and they protect the information by their own unique rules, which the central government does not govern.

This paper examines people’s attitudes toward data linkages that include income and tax information when governments adopt new social benefits through a survey experiment. The results indicate that respondents tend to favor social benefits with data linkages that inc1ude income and tax information. The method of data collection may be as important as the selection of benefit targets. In addition,the author divided respondents into three groups according to their level of information sensitivity and conducted the same analysis for each group. For the group that is tolerant of information use,t he introduction of benefits was shown to increase support. For the middle group, the adoption of data linkages increased support

This paper examines the factors that impede the function of EBPM, contrary to expectations of its promotion, focusing on the “information making” and the “information use” in administrative organizations. In particular, we focus on the two main issues discussed in the processing of PPBS and the design of policy evaluation in the past: verification of policy effects and the politics of information use. First, as an issue of information making in organizations, I show that the excessive cost of producing the evidence for the verification of policy effects, together with its significance in pursuing objectivity, makes the process unstable and limits the scope of analysis. Next, in the aspect of the organizational information use, I point out the structural political mechanism, by which the pursuit of objective evidence can be naturally politicized, both at the higher levels ofthe organization and at the stage of use outside of the organization. Combining these trade-offs of information making and use, we show the structure that constrains the promotion of EBPM, which can be understood as the “organizational dilemma of EBPM”. In other words, the more an organization pursues objectivity of evidence the more structural constraints it faces: excessive internal administrative costs in terms of information making on the one hand, and the more it has to pass through ap oliticization filter in terms of information use on the other hand; and thus easily making the anticipated EBPM as keleton. Therefore, in light of the above, this study suggests again, t hat it is important to consider the mechanism of existing policy processes in the pursuit for a “Road to EBPM”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a positive change in the progress of EBPM within administrative agencies, inferring the practical reality of the connection between the management system and EBPM in Japanese local government. For this purpose, this paper focused on the behavioral norms of public officials, who are the actors in the system that determine the superiority or inferiority of the connection, inferred the behavioral patterns related to the connection, and discussed the connectivity of the two. The results of the search based on this inference are as follows. First, the utilization of scientific knowledge in the management system depends on the degree to which each actor recognizes the value of utilization. In light of the political games being played in the system, the attitude of the actors toward the use of scientific knowledge is generally not positive. Second, however, if internal factors are in place, that is, if the cost of acquiring scientific knowledge is organizationally acceptable and if some actors can predict in advance how to make positive use of the knowledge, the connectivity of the knowledge to the actors will change favorably. Third, even if the influence of direct external requests and interventions is strong, if the opposing views are high in society, and if actors plan to reduce their influence by making use of scientific knowledge, the connectivity will change favorably.

The knowledge that should be utilized in policy making includes not only the scientific knowledge of academic experts, but also the local knowledge of stakeholders. It is normatively and strategically important to utilize diverse local knowledge, as decisions that do not take stakeholders’ knowledge and interests into account tend to be less legitimate and acceptable. This study examines ways to utilize stakeholder knowledge and, based on the results, attempts a critical consideration of radioactive waste management in Japan.

Integrating stakeholders’ local knowledge, which is often held as tacit knowledge, with scientific knowledge is difficult. This is because there is often a lack of interactional expertise to bridge different types of expertise. In order to accumulate interactional expertise and integrate difterent knowledge,it is necessary for stakeholders and academic experts to go through a process of reconciling their knowledge through active participation and open, bottom-up dialogue that is oriented toward the coproduction of knowledge.

Stakeholder involvement is essential in radioactive waste management, however in Japan, only passive participation and closed dialogues are used, and it is difficult to utilize stakeholders’ knowledge and improve legitimacy and acceptability through this process. To address the high-level radioactive waste disposal as a wicked problem, a reconsidering of the decision-making process is required.

Japanese municipalities have developed multi-layered channels for incorporating the “common-sense knowledge of citizens” into their policy, especially since the end of the 1960s. In the 21st century, an approach that is rapidly spreading is to select citizens through random sampling of the resident register and invite them to examine and review municipal government plans and projects. These developments are in line with the global trend toward expanding deliberative minipublics.

In this study, we explored the issue of poolicymaking and citizen knowledge,” investigating the receptivity and response of municipal departments to citizens’ recommendations through participatory observation in the following random selection-based citizen panels: 1) priority assessment of the city’s public facility construction plans with randomly selected citizens in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, 2) priority screening (review and prioritization) of municipal programs with randomly selected citizens, academics, and other city officials in Wako, 3) examination of several projects scheduled in the municipal action plan with randomly selected citizens at a citizen’s deliberation meeting in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo Metropolis, and 4) evaluation of the city’s business performance with randomly selected citizens, association-nominated citizens, and city employees in Saitama City, Saitama Prefecture. Each panel had different organizational structures and deliberation processes, and the projects they handled differed in terms of issue salience.

The results of this comparative case study revealed that random selection-based citizen panels have a positive effect on bureaucracy’s policy learning. However, we also found that the policy norms of the bureaucracy and the policy directives issued by the mayor to the bureaucracy constrain how much learning can occur from the citizens’ recommendations and limit the changes to projects carried out by the municipal bureaucracy. These constraints imply that the elected mayor, the administrative reform section that hosts the panels, and the department whose projects the panel examines need to come to a mutual understanding regarding the purpose of citizen reviews.

Therefore, it is crucial to design deliberation procedures that provide rich information resources to encourage “learning-based correction” by the bureaucracy. Making it easier to understand the rationale and procedures involved in evaluations and setting up mechanisms to improve commitment by the bureaucracy should also promote spontaneous improvements by the bureaucracy

Sustainability transitions can be promoted by policies pursuing long-term social benefits, but such long-term goals are often disregarded in policy making due to the myopia of democracy. This paper aims at proposing a multidimensional policy analysis method to derive essential insights to achieve the sustainability from case studies and to gain useful knowledge for designing policy making and implementation processes. A multidimensional policy analysis is practiced on decentralized energy systems and the Special Renewable Energy Act 2011 which fostered its development. The analysis is composed of a policy process analysis at the social level, case studies at the context level on the projects in Higashi Matsushima (Miyagi), Nakanojo (Gunma), and Odawara (Kanagawa), and a synthesis of the analyses at the two levels. The analysis at the context level conceptualized factors contributing to the sustainability of project that include a reciprocal relationship among stakeholders, which enhance the autonomy as a business, and measures to secure stakeholders’ continuous commitment to the project goals. It could be suggested from a synthesizing argument based on the analyses at the two levels that measures to enhance the project sustainability were restricted due to the policy design primarily aiming for rapid Quantitative expansion of renewable energy production. Multidimensional policy analysis can produce policy ideas, including ones on institutionalization of good practices, and fundamental knowledge to develop possible political interventions for certain policy making and institutionalization.

After WWII, Japan was occupied by the Allied Powers from 1945 to 1952. The beginning of that period, the black market infested nationally. The GHQ noticed the negative effect of the black market by the end of 1945 at the latest. The then Japanese government threatened to realize the effective measures towards the black market, therefore the Economic Investigation Agency (EIA) was established in August 1, 1948 as an affiliated organization of the Japanese Economic Stabilization Board (ESB). The EIA was responsible for accomplishing the smooth funning of the economic control.

According to the primary materials such as the records of the ESS (Economic and Scientific Section) of the GHQ and the Japanese EIA, the GHQ acknowledged the work and the performance of the EIA positively. On the other hand, the Japanese Administrative Administration Agency emphasized the poor performance of the EIA and the need to the abolition. Considering the reason why there were big gap of these assessment between the GHQ and the Japanese authority, the GHQ made a point of the numerical goal and the Japanese side paid attention to the cost and benefit or the legality, Furthermore, when the EIA was established, the reformist and centrist formed the Japanese administration. After the foundation of the EIA, the conservative party did it. Such the political situation in Japan, made the EIA politicize and effect the management.

The author believes this study makes partly clear that the fact concerning the creation and its performance of the EIA. However, the author cannot examine how the GHQ recognized the achievement of the EIA from the latter part of 1951 to 1952 because of the lack of primary GHQ materials. The author conceives all these are themes from now on.

This paper aims to examine effects of organizational integration on ODA evaluation. In 2008, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) merged. How have the evaluation processes changed through this integration? To answer this Question, we focused on the changes in the organizations and their evaluation programs. This paper consists of three parts: (1) tracing the ODA history leading to the integration; (2) tracing the JICA/JBIC integration process focusing on the changes in the evaluation process; (3) analyzing the effects of the integration. Although JICA and JBIC have been integrated externally, the evaluation programs were still divided in their operations. In other words, the evaluation processes were not sufficiently unified. The accountability mechanisms were fragmented due to the differences between the competent authorities such as the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Accountability fragmentation leads to “centrifugal force” not only in policy but also in evaluation. When integrating organizations, the “centrifugal force” to control accountability fragmentation will be an important issue