2014 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Ideational Analysis of Decentralization in Developed Democracies
| Project/Area Number |
26885038
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| Research Institution | Kyoto University |
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Principal Investigator |
Hijino Ken 京都大学, 法学(政治学)研究科(研究院), 准教授 (90738311)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-08-29 – 2016-03-31
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| Keywords | Political Science / Discourse / Decentralization / Party Politics / Ideology / Regional inequality |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The research project sought to investigate the role of ideas on political decentralization and growing regional inequalities within Japan and other developed democracies.
Despite expectations that social democratic and communist parties would generally oppose, while conservative parties would favour the idea of decentralization and accept regional inequality, members of these party families in Japan and the UK have not necessarily been committed to such positions. Rather the research points to convergence in the discourse in recent years, particularly among the major parties on the left and right, over the goal and merits of decentralization. Emerging third-pole parties, including regional parties and extreme right parties, have departed from this mainstream discourse, at times succeeding in increasing the salience of territorial issues and altering the position of the larger parties on these matters. Neo-liberal and regionalist discourse in the party system have emphasized the idea of the inevitability and necessity of territorial inequality and promise of virtuous competition among regions.
The cases of Japan and UK suggest that despite institutional differences, the two ideas of neo-liberalism and regionalism appear to have a strong impact on the mainstream parties’ discursive and policy positions on both decentralization and regional inequality.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Research on Japan's case, particularly the historical analysis of party manifestos since the 1960s is progressing and with forthcoming publications (one confirmed, the other under review, and a third in working paper condition). Data collection has taken place generally as planned, although some difficulty in acquiring party policy pamphlets and media article data for Sweden and UK, which initially I thought could be accessed from Japan.I am slightly behind schedule for the comparative work, mainly having conducted visits to the case countries later then planned in August and October of 2015. Although initial plans tentatively included countries such as South Korea and Germany for comparison by finding a co-researcher, this did not happen as a suitable co-researcher was not found.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
For the 2015 funding year, the researcher will focus on continuing to collect and analyze party and government literature on decentralization and regional inequalities as well as conduct archival work on party literature, political speeches, Diet deliberations, policy pamphlets, mass media material (newspaper editorials) for the case countries. The research on Japan will be used to write two book chapters.The researcher will work with his coauthor (Chris Winkler, Hokkaido University) to share data (postwar manifesto data) and develop a working paper.
A research trip is planned in October 2015 to Sweden to attend the national political science conference to meet with country specialists on decentralization and regional politics. Archival work will be conducted in Stockholm University library to acquire media and academic literature. Data from UK and Sweden would be compared with Japan for a comparative chapter to be published in a forthcoming monogram.
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Research Products
(1 results)
