Why has deliberative democracy been successfully transformed into deliberative mini-publics and accepted into the public policy field? Today, deliberative democracy and deliberative mini-publics are at the forefront of the collaboration between political theory and policy studies. Thisp aper pointso utth at this case provides a useful reference point for policy studies to re-envision its project as an integrated social science. Taking deliberative democracy and deliberative mini-publics as successful examples of interdisciplinary collaboration, this paper examines the factors involved and the two paterns through which political theory approaches policy studies. The paper confirms that (1) common goals are shared among political theory and public policy studies, (2) political theory translates normative concepts into models and institutional designs, and (3) loose interpretations of common goals are efective in the collaboration of political theory and policy studies. The first patern of political theory approaching policy studies starts with the translation of normative concepts by political theorists. The second patern is that fact-centric political theory requires similar knowledge required by policy studies. Fact-centric political theory utilizes the results of empirical studies in the construction of normative theories, as exemplified in the original case study of the analysis of the optimal composition of participants in deliberative discussions. Thisp aper examines the nature ofc ollaboration across the fields ofp olitical theory and policys tudies.

Administrative reforms based on neoliberalism have normalized “isolation” and “division” among administrative service providers. These are the (1) division between in-house and outsourcing, (2) isolation of local governments on contingency, (3) division of regular and non-regular staff, (4) division between older and younger generations within public field worker, (5) isolation and division of service delivery sectors within local government. In there, the following issues have occurred: (a) deterioration in the quality of administrative service, (b) inflexible organization on contingency, (c) improvement in the treatment of nonregular staff, (d) deadlock within organization.

It is unlikely that these challenges will be resolved over time. And it can be inferred that in ten years’ time the situation will remain as it is now or become even more serious. In particular, (a) and (c) are considered to be particularly serious social challenges. As for (a), the situation could be expected to make it harder to function as a stable outsourcing partner. As for (c), it could be expected that more non-regular staff would be recruited to cope with increasing administrative demands and new demand, therefore, the situation might become even more untenable and catastrophic.

In response to the weakening of administrative service providers as a result of administrative reform, a major societal challenge will be ‘how to regain the administrative assets lost through administrative reform’. Public policy studies needs to develop a discussion from an interdisciplinary field on the role of local government under governance by pluralistic actors.

This paper discusses the ideal form of basic local governments in 10 years, especially with small-scale municipalities in mind, as it is difficult to maintain basic local governments equipped with a full set of local governments in the current situation where the birthrate, aging population, and population decline are progressing. It is pointed that when focusing on the impact of wide-area cooperation on small basic local governments and how small-scale basic local governments should be perceived in relation to prefectures that already exist as wide-area local governments after the Great Merger of the Heisei period, as wide area cooperation was promoted, although it is appropriate that not all basic local governments are equipped with a full set and that local governments utilize their respective strengths and share information and resources, there is a Question of whether small basic local governments that will receive supplementation and support from the prefecture because they cannot be included in the cooperation central urban area and the self-sustaining settlement area, or whether the municipal-centric principle provided by the current Local Autonomy Act can be maintained. It is also suggested that belonging only to such basic local governments may conflict with the essence of local autonomy. It is concluded that since the premise that has been taken for granted in the past that all areas belong to basic local governments may collapse, it is necessary to consider the ideal form of basic local governments that can respond to such situations.

Community policy which is implemented by central and local government administration in Japan has so far centered on the distribution of subsidies. However, under the difficult situation surrounding local communities, it is necessary to reconsider community policy by making use of the perspectives and knowledges of public policy studies. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify “What phase is community policy based on the perspectives and knowledges of public policy studies, and what characteristics and issues are included?”. As a result of the research, it was found that the requirements for community policy are policy structure, diversity of actors, enrichment of content, and refinement of effect measurement. At the same time, issues can be sorted out such as how to manage the local community, how to rebuild the relationship between the local government administration and the local community, and how to encourage the activities of the local community. In any case, there is a limit to the consideration of improvement measures that rely only on individual academic disciplines, and comprehensive research from multiple perspectives is required. From these points, the social significance of public policy studies, which is interdisciplinary and problem-solving oriented, can be reconfirmed.

Based on how social exclusion/inclusion is positioned from the perspective of social policy, we discussed the issue of exclusion in the universal health insurance system. The “certificate of eligibility” issue in national health insurance can be positioned as a problem of exclusion in the universal health insurance system, but the reason why such a phenomenon occurs can be attributed to the values held by the social insurance policy. Social insurance is designed on the premise of a free market with a low paternalistic element, which makes it easy to maintain a high level of universal benefits and to be accepted by the public. It is believed that such a value norm has been adopted in order to achieve the objectives of social stability and social integration as a social policy, while respecting private property rights, in order to make it feasible in reality. However, it is also important for the sustainability of the system to address the issue of “exclusion,” which is an omission from that value norm. The key to this is the extent to which the system of premium reduction and exemption should be expanded, but the issue of such exclusion has not been examined extensively.

This study discusses the possible divisions in society over child-rearing support policies and methods to minimize such differences. The fertility- and population- decline crisis are long serious concerns. Under these circumstances, the government’s child-rearing support policy may have undergone reforms to become more inclusive with the possibility that parents who were earlier ineligible for parental leave, parental leave benefits, and the use of day-care centers now being eligible for support. Until around 2020, the benefits of child-rearing support policies were mainly for couples in full-time employment. However, now, the government seems to be aiming to provide child-rearing support to parents working in a variety of jobs other than just full-time ones. Although the government does not explicitly use the term universalism, child-rearing support policies seem to be becoming more universal. In contrast, gaining public support for the universalization of childrearing support may face certain challenges. This study especially highlights these challenges arising from certain values of the people who identify ’working persons’ as only those who are independent and concerns over the possible splitting of public support at the individual project level. For the people who believe that workers should be self-reliant and self-responsible, it is difficult to accept that those who have difficulty becoming financially independent, such as part-time workers and the unemployed, will be able to receive child-rearing support. Moreover, even among those who agree with the universalization of child-rearing support policies, there may be concerns that the support may be divided depending on whoever the individual projects assume to be the caregiver. This study proposes focusing on the concept of “care without fixed caregivers” as a basis to support as many possible projects developed and introduced as universal child-rearing support policies. The aim of this proposal is to alleviate the divisions regarding the universalization of child-rearing support policies, and the role of this proposal in public policy studies is an attempt to support the building of consensus using normative policy analysis.

The promotion of renewable energy is one of the major climate change policies and will continue to be promoted in the future. This paper analyzes the current status of renewable energy policies in transition from two perspectives. That is, it analyzes the situation brought about by the behavior of the targets by focusing on the messages that the institutional design gives to the target populations and analyzes the recent systems for promoting renewable energy from the viewpoint of policy integration (policy coordination and inter-institutional collaboration).

The initial FIT system resulted in conventional development-oriented projects that proceeded based on free decisions made by developers and landowners. The key issues in dealing with problems in the local communities where the projects are located are the prior disclosure of information, participation and consultation in the project decision-making process, return of benefits and contribution to the community, and coordination with the natural and living environment. While the problems have been partially addressed by strengthening regulations in existing laws and by local government ordinances, the promotion zone methods used in recent years are attempting to comprehensively address these issues.

Promotion zoning is a system that incorporates policy coordination to combine the promotion of renewable energy with the community development, and has a high affinity with community power. The recent FIT system has been revised to strengthen the collaboration among these systems, to broaden the scope of certification requirements, and to add the function of renewable energy as a community power. These developments raise new issues in the institutional design of policy integration, such as what kind of projects should be encouraged in the community and what kind of message the institution should present regarding the balancing of values among policies.

How much money do MPs raise, and how does fundraising differ depending on factors such as electoral systems, competitive environments, political parties, and personal attributes? While it has been noted that resources tend to concentrate around party leaders, the actual income of MPs in Japan has not been identified since the 2000s. Additionally, the relationship between political fundraising, electoral systems, and competitive environments in the House of Councilors remains unclear as it has not been studied.

In this article, I examine the campaign financing of MPs by constructing data from political finance reports for all MPs who existed in 2017 and 2018. The analysis compares the data with secondary data acquired in 1996 to examine the relationship between electoral systems, political parties, individual attributes, and fundraising. The findings are as follows:

First, as aimed by political reformer, the income of MPs is decreasing, but there are differences in income among them. Second, members of the House of Representatives have higher incomes compared to members of the House of Councillors, and candidates elected from single-member districts (SMDs) have higher incomes than candidates elected through proportional representation (PR). Third, despite the decrease in income for all parties compared to immediately after the political reforms, LDP MPs maintain relatively higher income levels. Fourth, compared to individual factors, the electoral system and party affiliation have a significant correlation with income, with members elected through PR districts tending to have lower incomes. These results suggest that political reforms have functioned to some extent in restraining funding.

This paper examines whether the differences in the political systems of the House of Councillors and the bicameral system affect the behavior of members in the form of questioning in committee hearings, using the budget review of the 208th Diet session (FY2022) as the subject of analysis. The five factors that affect the skillfulness of parliamentary questioning are the House of Councillors’ oversight function, the expertise of its members, differences in the electoral system, political ideology, and former careers. The Budget Committee of the House of Councillors uses a one-way method, which allows for efficient examination through a large number of short questioning sessions, which is considered useful in fulfilling the oversight function.

In this paper, lists, contrasts, puzzle solutions, negative naming, Quotations of others’ statements (reinforcing, contrasting, neither), metaphors (positive, negative, neither), and episodes were identified and counted as political rhetoric. The unit of analysis was each Question, which was asked 1696 times in the House of Representatives and 2104 times in the House of Councillors, for a total of 3800 times. The number of times political rhetoric was used and the number of times negative metaphors/quotations of the statements of others (contrasted) were used as dependent variables and were estimated using a negative binomial regression model (NB2).

The analysis revealed that members of the House of Representatives use more political rhetoric than those of the House of Councillors due to the one-way method adopted by the House of Councillors Budget Committee. The one-way method adopted by the Budget C ommittee of the House of Councillors was found to reduce the use of political rhetoric in order to maximize the limited questioning time. In terms of the fusion and division of power, it became clear that the differences in the electoral systems and screening methods of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors caused differences in questioning. Members of the House of Councillors questioned in an attempt to exercise their oversight function, while members of the House of Representatives used political rhetoric to address their constituents.

Horizontal movements of officers are common within Japanese administrative organizations. These movements, often called “generalist-type,” are commonly believed to aid skill development. As per the prevailing notion, individual officers are expected to become generalists by gaining experience in various divisions while acquiring diverse skills. However, a more realistic assumption is that officers often face challenges and uneven skill development. Studies on skill development often overlook cases where skill formation eforts fail. In contrast, this study offers a fresh perspective on frequent horizontal movements between an organization’s divisions by focusing on officers who struggle with skills development. As direct observation of individual skills poses challenges, this study uses a comprehensive personnel evaluation system to address this issue; specifically, it employs the outstanding teachers’ award system for Kyoto municipal schoolteachers. Findings reveal that individuals with low potential undergo horizontal moves more frequently than those with high potential. These findings challenge the previous assumption that horizontal movements serve as a means of skill development and suggest that they are, instead, a consequence of skill development. The implications of this study extend to personnel movements within the Japanese central government, where horizontal movements are frequently utilized for executive development.

This paper uses panel data from local governments in Korea to examine the impact of the activities of women’s organizations on the welfare budgets of local governments. Previous studies have argued that the participation of women’s organizations and other women actors in the political process leads to welfare expansion. In this context, it has been pointed out that women’s organizations, as outsiders, have played an important role in shaping public opinion in favor of welfare expansion, while at the same time acting as policy entrepreneurs, sometimes in cooperation with labor organizations and left-wing parties, in leading welfare policy. On the other hand, previous studies have rarely conducted empirical analyses using data on the relationship between women’s organizations and welfare policy, and there has been a gap between theory and evidence. Therefore, this paper analyses the determinants of the welfare budgets of local governments in Korea and examines how the activities of women’s organizations affect welfare budgets. To do so, this paper constructed unique data on the activities of women’s organizations in different regions of Korea by classifying newspaper articles in Korean using protest event analysis with the introduction of machine learning. Using the difference-in-differences (DID) method, this paper found that the presence or absence of women’s organization protest does not afect a local government’s welfare budget, but only when either only progressive women’s organizations protest or only protests with signals about women and welfare are observed. 2-3 years later, welfare budgets per capita in the population were found to increase.

This article examines how “going public” strategy, by which the governors promote themselves or their bills to voters, works for executive-legislative relations in Japanese local government. Although some case studies suggest that by going public Japanese governors can pressure the assembly to accept their offer, this article reveals that, ceteris paribus, public appeal can lead to institutional gridlock. Hence when the chief executives are supported by a large pre-electoral coalition in the previous election, they will not go public too often, that is, remain silent or “stay private” on their policy agenda to keep the coalition stable.

The “politics of blame” framework enables us to explain why some governors dare to go public despite this negative effect of the strategy. Introducing the constituents as a third-party audience into the governor-assembly veto bargaining, under some conditions amending or rejecting the proposals will result in less popular support for incumbent assembly members. This article tests these propositions empirically, measuring going public by the number of press conferences.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, employment adjustment subsidies have become a focus of attention as part of the policies for maintaining employment. While it is argued that employment adjustment subsidies prevent unemployment, it is also true that it has been criticized for encouraging employment protection for regular employees and delaying the transformation of the industrial structure. However, many previous studies have recognized that employment adjustment subsidies are effective in maintaining employment. Conversely, some issues remain regarding the expansion of expenditures for employment adjustment subsidies and fiscal management triggered by the 2008 financial crisis.

This study organizes the discussions on the changes in the fiscal management and policy effects of employment adjustment subsidies, and examines the issues of the system. This study organizes the discussions on the changes in the fiscal management and policy effects of employment adjustment subsidies, and examines the issues of the system. In particular, amid economic fluctuations owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the enactment of the Employment Insurance Temporary Special Provisions Act in 2020 and the establishment of the “Support Fund and Allowance for the Leave Forced to be Taken Under the COVID-19 Outbreak” were carried over from the general account. However, not all companies forced into severe circumstances are reuuired to receive the benefits, and although the employment adjustment subsidy has the efect of avoiding unemployment, there are many issues. On the other hand, in Japan, where employment insurance coverage is received for a short period and employment protection for non-regular employees is weak, it seems to have a certain significance as a policy to maintain employmentin ti mes ofr ecession.