2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Municipal Finance and Citizen Participation after Merger:Comparative Analysis of Japan and USA
| Project/Area Number |
18530233
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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 |
Public finance/Monetary economics
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| Research Institution | Shizuoka University |
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Principal Investigator |
KAWASE Noriko Shizuoka University, Faculty of Humanity and Social Science, Professor (40224779)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2006 – 2007
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| Keywords | Municipal Merger / Local Autonomy / Local Public Finance / City Planning / Citizen Participation / Revenue Sharing System / Neighborhood / NPO |
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| Research Abstract |
The Subject of this research is to examine how the municipal merger influences the local public finance and the municipal services for citizen in Japan. Since 1995 central government has continued the decentralization retain and in 1999 fiscal yea ; the act on the Municipal Merger that ended in March 2005 was changed to promote the municipal consolidation and merger Therefore about 1,400 municipalities have been consolidated in Japan from April 1999 to March 2006. Total number of municipalities was about 1,800 flora about 3,200 in 2007
For Example in Prefecture of, Shizuoka,City of Shizuoka where population was 410,000 consolidated City of Shimizu where population was about 240,000. in April 2003. The City of Hamamatsu consolidated 11 municipalities in July 2005. As result the population of city of Hamamatsu became 800,000 and sale of region became the second position in Japan.
One of the problems is that the autonomy and citizen participation become weaker and municipal services that people live especially in distant region from central city can be enjoyable are decreased because total expenditure was reduced, some public halls and other public facilities have been consolidated rather than services for citizen increase. Because revenue sharing and other grant from central government is reduced after municipal merger in financial reform of central government.
In U.S. municipal unit which number is about 36,000 is smaller than that of Japan. Citizen participation system have developed especially big cities and suburb in U.S. In New York City the community hoard system made in 1977 and the smaller municipalities in its suburb have some citizen participation system and its citizen can check municipal finance. This research conclude that the policy of large-male municipal merger should not perform moreover to realize decentralization policy.
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