| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
TAKAHASHI SUSUMU Faculty of Law, Hiroshima University, 法学部, 助教授 (30136577)
SONE Yasunori Faculty of Law, Keio University, 法学部, 教授 (10051905)
BANNO Junji Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, 社会科学研究所, 教授 (80011302)
HANZAWA Takamaro Faculty of Law, Tokyo Metroplitan University, 法学部, 教授 (80086967)
SASAKI Takeshi Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo, 法学部, 教授 (90009803)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥9,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥9,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1987: ¥4,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1986: ¥5,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥5,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The project aims to analyze the functions of national assemblies from various perspectives as political theory, political philosophy, political history, and modern political analyses. Studies of national assemblies, confined to legal-institutional analyses up to this day, require, by their own nature, such combinations of methods and theories in political science.
Conventional wisdom has it that the roles of the legislature have declined in the 20th century, due to the emergence of the welfare state and the role expansion of the public administration. In contrast to such wide-spread myths, our findings are as follows. First, the actual activities of legislatures cover such wide range of functions as 1. political integration; 2. law-making; 3. interest representation; 4. forming the government (in parliamentary states); 5. issue presentation; 6. control over the administration; and finally, making up for the left-over arenas in "politics". If the function of assemblies has actually declined, it must have declined in all of these functions; our findings show that the reverse is the case. True, policy-and decision-making functions have become diversified to the administration, political parties, media and movements; but all of these functions must be represented into the political arena, which can only be carried out by legislatures.
Second, former studies have exclusively forcused their attention to the British and the American cases; we examined the German, Italian, Dutch and the Japanese cases as well, thus broadening the scope of inquiries. The Japanese case study merits special attention, for it dealt with both the pre-war and post-war diets, examining various data, setting alternative hypotheses. Few, if any,studies are as encompassing as ours.
We believe this project has provided a paramount basis for future studies on legislatures, parliaments, congresses and diets.
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