2015 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 seeks to investigate the role of ideas on political decentralization and responses to growing regional inequalities among political parties within developed democracies, including Japan. UK and Sweden.
Despite the expectations that social democratic and communist parties would generally oppose, while conservative parties favour the idea of decentralization and accept regional inequality, members of these party families in the three countries investigated have not necessarily been committed to such positions over time. Rather we have seen convergence in the discourse, particularly among the major parties on the left and right, over the goal and merits of decentralization in recent years. Mainstream parties have also largely been hostile to growing regional inequality; albeit with differing rationalizations and salience depending on the party system. Third or minority parties, including regional, agrarian, 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.Across all three cases, neo-liberal and regionalist discourse in the party system tended to emphasize the inevitability of territorial inequality and necessity for virtuous competition among regions.
The cases suggest that across different institutional and contexts, the 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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| Research Progress Status |
27年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
27年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。
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