"New Public Commons" a concept embraced by the Democratic Party's Hatoyama Government, has attracted attention since 2010 when the "New Public Commons Round-table" was held and the "New Public Commons' Declaration" was published. The concept of "New Public Commons" emphasizing "self-reliant individuals" was introduced by the Liberal Democratic Party around 2000. While some observers have understood "New Public Commons" to be an idea derived from neo-liberalism, driving forward the outsourcing of welfare services, others have regarded it as reflecting the idea that NPOs play an important role in formulating government policy and providing welfare services. In these years some structural changes in society and economy have taken place, producing new social risks and greater social needs in developed countries. In Japan, these social changes have yielded the idea of "New Public Commons" in which public services are not supplied only by the government but also by NPOs and private companies. In reality, enterprises and NPOs have played very important roles in providing welfare services. The current welfare system could not have been maintained in Japan without private companies and the non-profit sector. However, it has been pointed out that welfare services have deteriorated and the working conditions of welfare service staff have been poor under the current welfare system. We should discuss the schemes, providers, resources, and so on related to welfare services to resolve these problems. This will be a discussion about the governance of welfare. Although social policy has traditionally been regarded as the study of policies implemented by government it has actually been carried out not only by the government but also by the non-profit sector. We should reconsider the conception of social policy and regard the non-profit sector as an important social policy player.

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The provision system of social services in Japan has been moving toward reorganization since the mid-1990s. This article takes particular note of the provision system of elderly care services, which are called "Long-term Care Insurance". First, I analyze the characteristics of changes in these services and their challenges from the perspective of Quasi-market theory. Second, using marketized care services not only requires an intimate contract between provider and purchaser but coterminously has the earmarks of publicity. Therefore, I point out the characteristics of publicity through discussion of the Democratic Party of Japan's term in office. As a result, we can recognize that the provision system of elderly care services has problems such as low prices for services, questioning of the legitimization of the burden between cost and benefit, and debate over the extension of the right to choice in using services. In conclusion, the idea of "New Public Commons" of the Democratic Party is very compatible with neo-liberalism ideology, which emphasizes self-help and mutual assistance. To counter such ideas, we should pursue the concept of "social welfare as social science" advocated by Kyuichi Yoshida.

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Discussing the issues of 'new public commons' from the aspect of providing social services, we need to analyze new types of welfare service operators, such as nonprofit organizations, community businesses, or social enterprises. We also need to consider business forms under the policy of 'new public commons.' In order to think about these issues, we should explain the reason why new types of enterprises have received a great deal of attention in social policymaking. It is essential to reconsider both the features of new types of enterprises, and the differences between the new types of enterprise and traditional providers. This paper reviews the studies of nonprofits in Japan. It is intended to provide answers to the following questions: What are the main features or principles of management in non-profit organizations ? What is 'new' in nonprofit organizations ? What is the 'new public commons' ?

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The social economy (cooperative/not-for-profit organizations) of Italy shows expansion of employment as well as business activities, and it is considered an important "collaborative" partner by local governments when they evaluate innovative social policies of recent years. Although these "collaborative" relations have an affinitive relationship to neo-liberalism on the one hand, their relevance, on the other hand, to the theory of commons or endogenous development theory of the community is also strong. I will discuss these two aspects of collaborative relations through the "subsidiarity principle". In this report, after surveying how the subsidiarity principle has been received in Japan, firstly I will try to show how in Italy the subsidiarity principle is accepted and reconstructed, referring to "horizontal subsidiarity", which carries out the strategic positioning in the relation with the local government. Secondly I will refer to "collaboration" and "strain" between cooperative/not-for-profit and local governments, taking the example of a local city in Italy. Thirdly, in the summary, I will discuss how the Italian case study contributes to on-going debates in Japanese society.

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The more deeply the current welfare state regimes go into crisis, the more strongly does welfare service provision in rich democracies depend on private corporations. This article addresses this issue of the "New Public Commons" from the perspective of the changing welfare state regime. First, the theory of the non-profit regime developed by Salamon and Anheier is reviewed and its relationship to the welfare state regime is examined. Second, convergent tendencies in new systems of welfare service provision which depend on the growing role of social enterprises are presented. Third, the possibility of new divergences into different types of provisional systems is discussed, which will be caused by political relations in rich democracies.

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There are many discussions about what is new for the 'new public', and what is the difference between the 'old public' and the 'new public'. This issue can be examined through historical study on local organizations and their relations with the government. Here the transition of the local organizations is discussed from a historical perspective, including comparison with Germany. This article argues that neighborhood associations based in everyday needs developed in the early 20th century in Japan, and were also authorized by local governments. These various neighborhood associations are what are now referred to as 'old public'. These societies have maintained strong relations in local communities, but nowadays they are getting weaker because their members are aging and younger generations have left local communities. This trend has brought about a crisis consciousness and made necessary a reaction from the government, which has led to the concept of 'new public'. NPOs were expected to bear the burdens of the 'new public', but they were not part of the old neighborhood associations, and thus could not win the trust of local people or attain a stable financial basis. They looked like new, untrustworthy organizations of strangers, with little authority. In spite of these limitations, the new organizations will be more urgently needed as the 'old' organizations will lose their basic functions in the near future. This could be a big historical challenge for Japan, which lacks experience of the development of local voluntary societies, in comparison with, for example, Germany, where voluntary society (Verein) movements from the early 20th century have continued to function actively in contemporary NPO activities.

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In 2011 and 2012, the project for the 'new public' by the Japanese government has advanced in every Japanese prefecture. Nagano Prefecture has established a committee, 'Shinshu Round Table for Citizen Cooperation', which includes NPO representatives, representatives from industry and labor organizations, scholars, and administrators. They developed the project called Support and Promotion of the New Public in Nagano. The New Public would be realized by cooperation between various private sector associations and the public administration. The expansion of cooperation to enhance the rich public space in Nagano is the most important outcome of the two-year project. Here the project for cooperation in Nagano is introduced, and the background and basic concept of this project are explained.

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I've been working in the NPO platform group, Clarinet, in Nagano Prefecture, providing advice and operating a communication network in support of NPOs. During the past two years, I have participated in the Shinshu Round Table for Citizen Cooperation. Here I would like to convey frankly what I felt there, and explain the real relationship between the 'New Public' project policies and local level NPOs. NPOs are relatively easy to establish, but it is very hard for them to continue their organization and provide services in a sustainable manner. I'd like to explain the reasons for this difficulty. After the 'New Public' project in Nagano, emphasis was placed on cooperation between NPOs and the administration. I would also like to report on how cooperation is actually proceeding.

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As a means of support for disabled people, counseling has become increasingly important. From 2012, it has become mandatory to provide a service plan for every disabled person who receives welfare services. There is now a three-year temporary transition period, but this system is not good enough to be extended to the national level. This service plan for each person is something for which disabled people have long waited. In reality, however, there are not enough organizations capable of providing all disabled persons with the necessary counseling, and then devising adequate service plans for them. Social Welfare Organizations (Syakai Fukushi Hojin), which belong primarily to the 'Old Public', could play a greater role in this area because they have the experience, competence, financial resources, and willingness to respond to user orientations.

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Reducing high unemployment is a high priority for the Swedish government. It has become increasingly difficult for persons with lower levels of education, i. e., primary education, to participate in the labor market. Education policy, particularly for vocational education, plays an important role in supporting both the economic independence of the individual and economic development of the society as a whole. Vocational education depends greatly on the labor market and welfare regimes. Swedish vocational education is characterized by the strong responsibility of the state. It is school-based, as opposed to the so-called corporatist model based on the responsibility of labor market organizations. The purpose of the 1994 high school education reform was to reduce class inequalities - the proportion of general topics in vocational education was increased in order to enable access to higher education. The reform has reduced class inequality but has also led to creation of the so-called "underclass of the education society", consisting of those who could not finish their high school studies. To reduce the unemployment rate of youth and to ensure their participation in the labor market, new reforms to improve the vocational education were needed in the 2000s. In order to increase functional flexibility in the labor market and reduce the mismatch between vocational education and labor market needs, the government was forced to change the traditional Swedish working-line. The change was from strong state responsibility to the new, so-called third working-line, based on close collaboration between state, labor organizations, and local governments. An example is the introduction of apprenticeship training. The influence of labor market organization has increased the supply and implementation of training. The aim of this paper is to systematically describe the political starting points and the contents of these reforms.

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The re-design of work and work organization in Sweden by the Karmar and Uddevalla plants has been recognized throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning of Swedish efforts at developing new production concepts and background of the efforts' trajectories. These challenges were started by Swedish labour and management, LO and SAF, respectively, from the 1960s to the 1980s. The paper emphasizes that the purpose of these challenges was not only to strive for employee participation in the company, but also to re-design work away from Taylor and Ford production systems. The paper considers the theoretical contents of the cases, and the relationship between them from a socio-technical point of view. The paper proposes a tentative hypothesis that the Uddevalla plant, which became the most radical case of plant innovation away from Taylorism and Fordism through the introduction of the Reflecting Production System (RPS), shows a development similar to Japanese ways through the transformation of the engineer's work position from production engineer to manufacturing engineer. Through this transformation of the engineer's tasks, the plant broke away from traditional control theory, so that the Uddevalla plant could open the path for a new technical and work control theory for RPS.

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Since the 1980's, industrial relations in advanced countries have moved toward decentralization and individualization. In this article, I examine important changes in the wage determination of individual workers under these conditions through the perspective of Dunlop's substantive rules. The main findings in this article are as follows. Firstly, although on the surface Swedish industrial relations have shifted from a centralized nature to industry-level decentralization, industrial relations at the company level have not changed drastically. In the past, workplace unions got wage increases higher than those specified in central agreement by "faking" the efficiency of piecework through negotiations with bosses. At present, the wage system has changed to a merit-based pay system. Under this system, workplace unions maintain strong bargaining power and raise member's wages collectively by negotiating evaluations and the distribution of merit-based pay. Secondly, collective agreements at industry level lead to restraints on bargaining power of company-level union, especially those in large companies. Finally, I suggest that the unions' strong bargaining power in workplaces may be the key driving force in maintaining a two-tier industrial relations system in Sweden.

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In this paper, based on three sources, we explore ways towards establishing a society in which both men and women are able to continue to work throughout their careers while maintaining a work-life balance. The persistence of the economic gender gap in Japan is due to the way in which businesses, households, and social institutions interact, hindering women from pursuing continuous employment. Given this problem, we introduce two pieces of research, the first of which is a comparison of changes in women's working models and gendered divisions of household labour across countries, and the second an analysis of Japanese social institutions from the perspective of the 'male breadwinner model'. Based on these two sources, we assess the social issues that are caused by hindering women from pursuing continuous work. We then take consider a proposal for establishing a system of equal pay for equal work as a gender-neutral model of employment. We discuss whether a move to a system of employment using 'job-based pay' would contribute to reducing the gender wage gap and facilitating the continued employment of women, and consider how this system might be implemented.

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The word "social exclusion" has been used for many years. Levitas [2005] has set forth three statements classifying the types of policies utilized to resolve social exclusion. The actual social inclusion strategy makes unifying those excluded from "work" its foundation. It is typified by workfare strategies in Europe. Taro Miyamoto [2006 ; 2009] distinguishes workfare and activation, and argues for the superiority of the latter. Surely it should be prioritized in an actual social inclusion strategy. However, this paper examines the limits of activation, taking a more critical view. I seek the possibility of introducing "not social inclusion but the social participation", a concept introduced by Lister [2004]. Further, I discuss the "participation income" which A. B. Atkinson [1995 ; 1998] proposes as a new approach, pointing out that this may not be a compromise of basic income but a positive alternative to a social inclusion strategy.

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