This article provides some important viewpoints for the creation of new legal systems by raising following several examples;

To enact a fundamental law or a fundamental local ordinance is indispensable for the social welfare to help incapable and poor people.

Law schools which have started in 2004 will definitely fail because total number of students in law schools is far larger than the total number of candidates who will pass the bar exam. The complete schemes must have set when the U. S. Law School system was introduced.

English Whistle Blowers system is another example. Under this Act, almost nobody is willing to report illegal acts of the company he belongs because the protection of whistle blowers is poor.

In comparative law studies, foreign laws should not be directly imported.

Traditional legal interpretation method must be abandoned when creating new legal systems.

Cost benefit analysis is insufficient in Japanese legislation.

New legislation should not deprive a person of their original rights.

Law must be clear and transparent for the benefit of users.

On September 24, 2003, the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany handed down a ruling in the case regarding the issue of whether the authorities could deny a job to a would-be teacher expressing her desire to wear a Muslim head scarf in class at elementary and secondary schools, or Grundschule and Hauptschule in German. There were two conflicting views on this issue: One considered it constitutional for the administrative authorities to refuse employment because of its influence on neutrality in public education and negative effects on students’ freedom of religion. The other regarded denial of a job as unconstitutional, emphasizing the religious freedom of teachers. The court ruled, contrary to expectations, that state legislators could pass new laws prohibiting a teacher from wearing a head scarf in class, while maintaining that the administrative office could not refuse employment unless it had any legal basis. Accordingly, the decision on this issue ended up in the hands of political process. These developments meet democratic demands in one respect; they involve the risk of lessening the value of human rights in another, especially when the rights of minorities in a certain society are concerned as they were in this case. Does the ruling given by the Federal Constitutional Court involve restoration of legislative power or refuge in legislation? This should be one of the topics to be addressed before starting a discussion on “legal policy studies”.

This paper explores the current characteristics and trends in ordinances concerning public involvement. Structurally, the paper is divided into four chapters and an introduction. The first chapter will describe the development of the partnership policy and ordinances in local governments. The second chapter discusses principles of public participation and partnership. The third chapter will address the concrete system for public involvement. By way of conclusion, I reiterate my point about reform design for ordinances.

This is a self-introduction of economics to legal policy making. Many economists study system building. They insist on market mechanism from the viewpoint of the fundamental theorem of welfare economics.

There are many cases of market failure, and they should be given much attention so that Pareto improvements can be made. In order to choose a Pareto efficient situation, we use the analysis of surplus. This requires the defective assumptions of measurability and a comparison of the utilities. We should use it by declaring to use them. It is important to make a system to assure some kind of equity and we lost some efficiency by it.

Economists use the assumption of individual rationality. In reality, individuals have many options and this complexity creates a computability problem. We must show the way of the irrationality of people before using paternalistic policies.

A Theory of social contract which is founded on individuality is a principle of norms to relate between law and politics, or rights and sovereignty. Though post-modernism unite in criticizing the theory of subjects (identification) on its logic of exclusion, the significance of social contract theory hasn’t been lost yet. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the matter. When we understand modern social contract theory as dialectic about an origin of political society, this means a democracy that voluntary judgment and practice by individuals make the society and politics. Therefore, this theory is a principle of social structure. Contrastively, when we understand contemporary social contract theory as an explanation of criterion for political society, this means a constraint to function of government. This is a theory of justice based on liberalism. On this article, I will think about a problem of its turn the principle of social structure into that of social criterion, and about a possibility of former principle (modern theory) for norms of law and policy.

This paper considers the analytical framework of policy transfer and analyzes the policy transfer process in the Japanese policymaking system. In this paper, we focus especially on the process of policy ideas being accepted and transformed.

In comparative political studies or policy studies, up to now there have appeared several studies on the policy diffusion process, set out through the concepts of “policy diffusion”, “policy convergence”, and “lesson-drawing”. According to these studies, the process that one country makes policy while referring to other countries’ policies as a policy model was noticed. And, based on these studies, the notion of “policy transfer” was developed. To analyze the policy transfer process, the three analytical viewpoints of “institutions”, “ideas”, and “learning” were utilized.

This paper selects the deregulation process of the Japanese airline industry as “the critical case”. We analyze the four stages in the policy transfer process, which are: 1) the generation of policy ideas of deregulation in the U.S., 2) the diffusion of policy ideas of deregulation, 3) the opposition to perfect competition, and 4) closed policy making. We consider how policy ideas of deregulation were transferred from the U.S. and transformed in the Japanese policymaking process. The results of our analysis of the case study show that “distortion of learning” was caused by “institutional change of policy ideas” and “confusion of ideas”, and this distortion changed the policy ideas of Japanese airline deregulation.

Chances for the non-profit sector (specifically NPOs) to participate in the policy process are increasing with public budget pressures and a wave of civic participation. The role of NPOs is being sought not just in policy implementation, but in all phases from proposal to evaluation. In this climate, the accountability of NPOs involved in public policy is an important issue, and is considered herein on the occasion of the promulgation of Japan’s Government Policy Evaluation Act (GPEA). This paper discusses NPO accountability with a focus on areas newly open to their policy evaluation.

NPO accountability may be examined from two perspectives: one based on the evaluation process and the other on the system, organization, and activity patterns of the given NPO. In the former, the object, contents, and nature of accountability varies depending on what stage (s) the NPO is involved in, while in the latter they vary according to the organization’s public benefit, management skill, and the subjectivity and freedom of will of the personnel and backers both at the time of establishment and during subsequent activities. In both cases, factors such as the aggressiveness (or lack thereof) or activeness (or lack thereof) of involvement and stance will determine the contents, nature, importance, and degree of accountability.

Thus, diverse accountability exists for NPOs involved in policy evaluation. In spite of occasional conflicts caused thereby, taking on diverse accountability (the object, contents, and nature of which vary) allows the validity of NPO involvement in policy evaluation to be guaranteed and the rationality of the result of that involvement to be secured.

This paper aims at examining the government bill of Public Pension Reform according to the criteria of public policy making and evaluation, and seeking more reasonable alternatives.

Firstly, it studies the criteria of policy making and evaluation in the field of Public Pension and shows “effectiveness”, “equity”, “efficiency” and “practicality” as specific criteria.

Secondly, it examine the four major issues of Public Pension Reform, namely, (a) finance of the Basic Pension, (b) finance of the Employees’ Pension, (c) adjustment of benefits and premiums and (d) limited benefits for the upper income brackets, according to four mentioned criteria.

As a general conclusion, it supports the government bill in the respect of keeping the balance between age-groups by fixing the level of contribution and introducing indexation system based on macroeconomic growth, but it points out the unsolved problem, that is, non-compliance in the National Pension and emergence of no-pension or low-pension people as a result.

The financial administration of Japan before the financial liberalization, called “the convoy-fleet system,” is widely believed as the regulation that enabled all financial institutions including even inefficient banks to continue existing. This paper explains the “convoy-fleet system” that operates and creates the “circulation structure of rent” in which amakudari plays crucial role. Though private financial institutions tend to target the short-term profits in a competitive market, the rent is assumed to create incentives for banks so that they could seek for the long-term profits including the financial stability. On the other hand, the MOF (Ministry of Finance) / BOJ (Bank of Japan) amakudari introduced the cooperative principle into the financial market. Thus, the special market structure so called “cooperative competition” was created where competition and cooperation coexist.

This paper analyzed the effect of the amakudari on the attitude of management of banks, and competitive markets system amongst banks. The finding was that there was a significant negative correlation between amakudari and the efficiency of management as well as soundness. The implication of this finding does not necessarily mean amakudari reduces the incentives for sound management, but rather “cooperative competition” created by the circulation structure of rent contributed to stabilization of the financial system until at least the 1980s. However, it suggests that the financial crisis occurred in the 1990s was caused by the destabilization of the convoy-fleet system where incentives for the long-term profits no longer exist.

This paper explores analyses the content of the homepages (HP) established by 733 members of prefecture assemblies. The HP data was collected in March 2003. After offering a view about the political and policy information on their HP, data on their political party, age, education, successes, and the degree of urbanization, the menus and the policies/campaign pledges was classified. A logistic regression makes it clear that a “Digital Divide” exists among local members. Next, a comparison using the Kruskal-Wallis test proved that while many differences on HP menus exist among the major _parties, the homogeneity of campaign pledges is conspicuous. These results highlight that while local members can use new information communication technologies (ICTs) as a cyber-poster or a communication tool at least; the content does not always achieve clarity in terms of political accountability. The high homogeneity of policies requests members objectively to explain us their activity and the contribution of whole prefecture profits. It is also clear that new ICTs are used to provide new political information and offer new possibilities for the study of local Japanese politics. Members can more easily explain their political behavior and the cooperative or confrontational interests among members from urban and rural districts, among the Governing and Opposition parties, and inside their parties. This is why new ICTs have become a useful communication tool not only for assemblymen but also local residents. Assemblyman need to keep in mind that their HP will play a significant new role in the evaluation of their activities. Thus, this research shows us characters of local assemblymen in their web sites, and provides one clue on a good understanding of Japanese local politics.