2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Changing Nature of Local Politics and Local Councilors
| Project/Area Number |
11620069
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Politics
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| Research Institution | TOHOKU UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
ABE Shiro Tohoku University. Graduate School of Information Sciences, Professor, 大学院・情報科学研究科, 教授 (20000664)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1999 – 2000
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| Keywords | local autonomy / local councilors / local politics / decentralization / administrative reform / inter-governmental relation / territorial relation / central-local relation |
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| Research Abstract |
One of the main reasons of this survey research program was a recognition that the local authorities has been increasingly forced to account for their actions in public as well as subject to economic, social and institutional restructuring. Those new politics of local government stressed changing nature of political leadership, but has provoked considerable discussion that public men, especially local councilors, on whom this survey research has focused, seemed to be still cast adrift in a sea of changes without overcoming the inertia of previous way of thinking and removing existing institutional constraints.
The surveys concerning career and political attitudes of local councilors (both of six prefectures and eighty city-town-villages in Tohoku region) have been conducted four times since 1981, and time-series data sets (numbers of respondents are 1000 or so each) have been accumulated.
As viewed through the eyes of local councilors, it is observed that local government and politics in Japan is now in a fuddled state due to the impact of globalization on the local economy, human ecological imbalance of local society, financial trouble of local government, confusion of party line and instability of the government at the national level, and effects of recent decentralization reform so on.
Concerning political attitudes of local councilors themselves, the most salient shifts are detected in such items as their evaluation of important recent trends occurring in national politics as well as local one, their opinions about the central-local relations and self-images about the role of a councilor, although there are many differences in detail by parties and by local communities.
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