In recent years, several measures have been enacted to promote transparency of policy making process (TPMP). Typical examples are, easing the access to administrative information and obliging administrative agencies to conduct and publicize policy evaluation. This note aims to examine the effects of increasing TPMP by using analytical tools of economics.

To summarize the results, while an increase in TPMP is expected to promote efficiency of policy, it may bring about inequality among electorates by making those with abundant resources to exert political influence relatively better off than those without it. Whether the latter undesirable effect can be avoided depends on the extent of political influence they can exert on the policy making process.

In this paper, I would like to consider the ideal policy process style in local governments through the case study of the Water Front Development Project in Tokyo.

The local government and the assembly have the unique functions in Japan comparing other countries because both the governor and members of the assembly are directly elected by residents. The relationship between them is also complicated, which will be one of the main points in this paper.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which has the largest local bureaucracy in Japan, is especially unique among other local governments because it has the largest local bureaucracy, and the relationship between Tokyo and the Japanese central government is also complicated. For these reasons, the analysis of the policy process of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government can be regarded as the best case for considering the policy process of the local governments in Japan. and I would like to analyze it in this paper through the case study of the Water Front Development Project in Tokyo.

The Water Front Development Project. which is the last big development project in Tokyo and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government played the key role in its policy process. can be understood as the really unique case from three reasons. First. the opportunity for residents to join the policy process was very limited. Second. the decision of the assembly was broken by the governor because of his change in the middle of the project implementation. Third. there was lastly the large gap between the vision and the completion of this project as the result of the first and second points.

The policy process is very complicated and it often brings unexpected results.

I would like to consider the ideal policy process style for residents.

The Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, which was introduced to strengthen the coordinating function of the cabinet, began to play an important role when Prime Minister Koizumi showed his intention to decide policy directions at the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy in effect. Especially members of the Council from private sector and academic sector played important roles for agenda setting. The role of members from private and academic sector can be characterized as advocacy from inside rather than as expert advice provision. Substantive function of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy is the materialization of the effective operation of the cabinet. Using the members of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy from private and academic sector as catalyst, it is made possible to have substantive discussion among cabinet members. This function of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy in Japan is unique from comparative perspective. The Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy is similar to the PSX (Public Service and Public Expenditure) cabinet meeting in the UK in that it contributes to the effectiveness of the cabinet. but is different from the PSX in that the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy relies on outsiders. On the other hand, the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy is similar to the CEA (Council of Economic Advisers) in the US in that it relies on outsiders, but is different from the CEA in that the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy performs advocacy function from inside in addition to the expert advice provision as economists. The Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy has an important role even from democratic aspect in that it contributes to making policy tensions and conflicts transparent. But issues such as the coordination between the cabinet and the ruling party, the relationship between the process of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy and the annual budgeting process managed mainly by the Ministry of Finance, and the establishment of effective knowledge base for the interventions by the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy need to be solved before the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy has stable function.

Analyzing information disclosure in politics illustrates its characteristics different from those of administrative information disclosure. It also features its significance in promoting political reforms that have been discussed for the past decade.

First of all, information and data should be open to public, simply because when most of political decisions and policies are made using these information and data. However, those in politics in this country have been accustomed to dealing with dubious data including figures reported by politicians under the Political Funds Control Law.

Secondly, no consensus has yet to be reached over how much information should be disclosed “during the decision-making process.” Some endorse “live broadcasting,” but others maintain disclosing some pieces of information when necessary. In this regard, information disclosure at the Diet and government advisory bodies have been well promoted, whereas, almost no access has been provided to information of ruling political parties when they are in the process of mapping out new polities. Likewise, information disclosure by government ministries and agencies comes only after bureaucrats complete their plans, not during working out the plans.

Thirdly, who should be granted the right to information? Is it general public, experts or those who are concerned? Securing accessibility means in a narrow sense providing information to only those who have the right to it and demand for it. However, some advocate information disclosure in a wider sense. Some local political leaders have promoted information disclosure at local governments so that they will eventually share responsibility with citizens.

Fourthly, information disclosure has been a topic in the context of political reforms. The issue in the political reform efforts for the past years has not been a priority. But prevailing the concept of accountability leads the public to demand for it, resulting in driving politicians to become more accountable for what they do. In this sense, promoting accountability has been considered an effective weapon in a long run.

Information disclosure in politics finally leads to issues involving governance, which are common in the fields of monetary or health care policies.

Japan’s Government has still held the attitude that she should have not explained a design making and not shown a concrete implementation process of her policy to avoid citizens’ criticism. Such the poor transparency has eventually prevented government bodies from being effective. The Council is an efficient apparatus of Japan’s Bureau to make a new policy. The functions of the Council are in troduction of advanced knowledge and impartial insights into a policy making process.

The aims of this essay are to show the importance of the Council’s member ship by using a probabilistic model and to illustrate the role of transparency of the Council’s deliberating activity in order to maintain a high level policy outcome of a deliberation. To hold the transparency makes the Council’s performance be better off, since a monitor system eventually forces the Council’s qualitative output to be more effective.

The problem of a financial reform and administrative reformation is “Unbridgeable gulf of the idea and the technology” by “Two differentiations of the discussion” and “Deterioration from the reform to the arrangement,” “Unbridgeable gulf of the idea and the technology” revolutionizes an intermediate system by which the idea ties to the technology difficultly. And, this problem makes the approach of administrative reformation difficult evolution from the cost reduction to the process reform and the organization culture reform.

Especially, it is necessary to note universality in the use of the NPM theory which it is a methodology, and is the upward theory. The formation of a clear governance based on the formation of new financial accounting information like the cost etc. and the contract relation becomes inevitable in the practice of the NPM theory after the fact. The intermediate system design which supports the formation of information and the governance is not advanced. It is a factor that that leaves the vested rights constitution and the bureaucrat action mechanism by the old model. It is necessary to advance the revolution of an intermediate system by which a big influence is produced on the quality of the decision making so that the grade of the reform may be evolved to the process reform by a new system’s such as independence and the administration corporations effectively functioning. As a result, the distribution of the past when the incrementalism constitution was required can be reviewed by introducing a new evaluation axis into budgetary process by which the resource allocation is borne.

It is necessary to convert the introduced market mechanism from the authoritarianism type to the democracy type based on a new information sharing at the same time.

This paper investigates the diffusion and policy process of keikanjorei (landscape protection ordinances) in Japan. By using the method of cluster analysis, the paper classifies the ordinances in terms of similarity of policy instruments and identifies who transferred the ordinance from whom. Through the analysis, it is discovered that a municipality refers to peer municipalities, not because they are located near the referring municipality, but because the objectives of their ordinances are relevant to the ordinance that the referring municipality intends to enact.

This paper aims at examining whether voluntary regulations exercised by industry should be used as complements to environmental regulations like US or they should be used as a main measure for environmental policies like UK. This paper at first explains the next three suggested strengths of the voluntary regulations, high flexibility and efficiency, short-term establishment and implementation, and stimulation of innovation, that have supported the arguments by the advocates of the voluntary regulations that the voluntary regulations are better than the environmental regulations. Secondly, however, this paper tries to show that these three merits do not always exist, or that they turn out to be demerits.

Thirdly, using the results of questionnaires conducted in UK, it examines both if the public have been able to take part in the voluntary regulation-making process and if the public have trusted the voluntary regulations, both of which might be critically essential conditions for the admirable environmental policy tools. After these examinations, it becomes clear that the voluntary regulations do not have those three advocated strengths or they work as a demerit, the public cannot have participated the making process of them, and that the public cannot have trusted them.

Consequently, the voluntary regulations had better be used as complements to the environmental regulations. However, in order that the voluntary regulations do effectively and efficiently work, the public, environmental organizations and the government should actively get involved in the establishment and implementation processes of the voluntary regulations. Finally, this paper concludes that it is necessary that the public, industries and governments, that is the society as a whole, should change their attitudes towards the environmental protection and actively try to contribute to the environmental problems, if the voluntary regulations work both effectively and efficiently.

Agencification is intended to separate operating bodies from central departments in the delivery of government services ; thus shifting responsibility for operational management. To show how agencification influences the pattern of control inside the institutional framework of government, we compared Executive Agencies (EA) in the UK with Independent Administrative Institutions (IAI) in Japan.

We examined two operating bodies : the Pesticides Safety Directorate, an EA, and the Agricultural Chemicals Inspection Station, an IAI. There were three interesting findings. Firstly, agencification makes it difficult for operating bodies to manipulate objectives and performance targets they set since they are controlled by performance evaluation. Secondly, compliance with the established control schemes is a considerable burden for the operating bodies. Thirdly, the system introduces pluralistic regulating bodies. Therefore, even though the institutional framework of EA and IAI differs, we find that agencification in both countries results in more formal regulation inside government.

In conclusion, greater relational distance between sponsoring departments and operating bodies restricts the freedom to manage, which is a principal aim of agencification. More formal regulation is designed to satisfy the requirement for greater accountability with respect to operational management of both EA and IAI. More importantly, such institutionalization may result in higher compliance costs, these being the additional expenses that operating bodies have in order to satisfy regulatory obligations inside government such as the expense of additional reporting and compulsory evaluation.

The main purpose of this article is to show the points at issue and the problems to be solved in regional policy, from the point of view of partnership and nonprofit organizations. Examining the institution of European Regional Policy and the practices in each European region, we can conclude as follows : First, partnership is a governance system which embodies the change of policy structure, rather than that of agents. Second, institutional arrangements of partnership need to be accompanied with that of policy contents and policy phases. Finally, in order to make partnership work, regional or local government must have some administrative and fiscal autonomy under decentralized (deconcentralised) system, so that it can function as a substantial channel in which various partners including nonprofit organizations can actively play own roles.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effect of public works in inducing production and employment and that of social welfare services in inducing production and employment using Miyazawa’s extended Leontief multiplier model and to make a comparison between the two effects. Miyazawa’s extended Leontief multiplier model is able to estimate the combined effect of inducing production through interindustry transactions and inducing production through household’s consumption. Before making the above analysis. we reorganized the official input-output table in 1995 and produced a new input-output table which consists of 28 goods industries and 24 service industries. While the public works sector classified as a goods industry is a representative sector in stimulating economic activities. the social services sector is regarded as a growing sector in an aging society. In our analysis, we considered two concepts of consumption, that is, consumption in a narrow sense and consumption in a broad sense. Consumption in a narrow sense means that of households and consumption in a broad sense means the total consumption of all of economic agents, that is, households, non-households (firms), non-profit organizations and government. In either case, our result of the analysis shows that the difference between the effect of public works in inducing production and that of social welfare services in inducing production is within 1%. This suggests that not only public works but also social welfare services may be an option as means of stimulating economic activities.

Now, the animal welfare policy of Japan is on the turning point. The reason is the alternation of the Law of Concerning the Protection and Control of Animals in 2000. It was the first case that the public involvement-the animal welfare promoters-was established as the institution on the act.

But in Japan, there were scarcely the partnerships between government and citizens in the discipline of the animal welfare in the past.

Even though the animal welfare promoters are citizens, they are not completely private sectors. They are semipublic. They do not have the inspection authorities based on the act and they are only talents for enlightenment.

This application of the institution of the animal welfare promoters in Hyogo Pref. is the first model case in Japan. The author takes part in its application as the collaboration coordinator. The author’s stance is a neutral position between the local government and animal welfare promoters. The author also designed the process for creating local society.

The author explains about the public involvement in the animal welfare administration in Japan through the results and the subjects of this model case. The results are to promoting the consciousness improvement in government and citizens through the collaboration-type application, creating scenarios in collaboration to solve subjects in the local society, the important functions of the collaboration coordinator and conquering sectionalism in government based on citizens’ viewpoints.

The subjects are correspondence to various public involvement levels.

The author presents the necessity of moving from the agent-type public involvement to the collaboration-type public involvement, using collaboration coordinator and rebuilding of the ethical meanings of the animal welfare as the conclusion of this paper.

In the middle of 1980, the health service policy in Japan shifted from the supply promotion programs to the restraint programs. Generally this period has been characterized by the spread of neoliberal projects including market deregulation and state decentralization. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, however, contrarily introduced and strengthened the direct regulations such as the containment of hospitalbeds and the control of medical institutions. The article examines this policy change process in this period.

We analyze the policy change comprehensively through the policy regime model that Carter A. Wilson suggests. This model that focuses on power arrangements, policy paradigms, organizations and policies is useful in explaining both stability and change in public policies. Normally these factors maintain long-term stability. However, policy changes occur when regimes become stressed and all the factors change : stressors/enablers impact on policy regimes, then alternative policy paradigms arise, legitimacy crises occur, power arrangements shift, administrative organizations arereorganized, and goals of policy change.

This case study describes the four stages in the health service policy regime change. At the first stage, stressors-the crisis of the post-war welfare state, the aging of the population, the transition of the disease structure and so on-pressured the policy regime. At the second stage, an alternative paradigm arose, an old paradigm lost credibility and then legitimacy crisis occurred. The rise of the alternative paradigm that controls the health service system led to discredit the dominant paradigm of supply promotion. The third stage in the regime change involved power arrangement shifts. In the health service policy network, a professional community consisting of medical officers and the Japan Medical Association was shaped and the SDPJ (Social Democratic Party, Japan) became weak due to the decline of the classbased labor movement. At the last stage, the medical offices in the Ministry of Health and Welfare were reorganized, and the new policy programs and direct regulations to control health service system were implemented in the mid-80s.