Local Government in Japan

Abstract

To understand the complex dynamics and role of local government in Japan’s democracy, three related questions need to be addressed. First, how much capacity and autonomy do local governments have to act? Second, what impact does local government have on national-level elections and policies? And finally, how responsive and accountable are local governments to residents? This chapter will seek to address these questions by first laying out the institutional framework of Japan’s local government system, including its recent decentralization reforms. In the second section, it illustrates how these institutional features combine with underlying socioeconomic conditions to shape local representation and intergovernmental relations. In the third section, it briefly considers two interlinked and key challenges facing local government: combatting depopulation and improving representation. The chapter finds that Japanese local government is significant in scale and indispensable to the administration of the Japanese state; decentralization reforms have further expanded local responsibilities while minimizing interventions from the central government; local governments continue to have a significant impact on the national arena, both electorally and policy-wise; local policy innovations in a wide range of areas have been co-opted nationally, while local lobbying and opposition pressures have induced central governments to respond to local interests; aside from some exceptional periods and limited regions, local government representation has not been driven by partisan or programmatic competition; and, more recently, local voters are demanding more of their representatives who have lost their clientelist role as communities face increasingly competitive environments, fiscal constraints, and pressures to innovate.