<Special Articles> Local Politics and the Public Interest in Japan
スポンサーリンク
概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
This article consists of two distinctive parts. The first discusses the present state of Japanese local communities and local politics on the basis of information derived from a series of personal interviews with local politicians. The discussion highlights the sense of relative deprivation that pervades the periphery of the contemporary Japanese economy, the continuing dependence of local economies on funds provided by the national government, and the role of local politicians and Diet members as the agents of local communities in the perennial scramble for shares of the centrally controlled funds. The first part of the article thus discusses Japanese-style pork barrel politics, its main causes, and its common pattern and style. The second part then attempts to interpret the state of local politics and political economy described in the first part in terms of a theory of the public interest and democratic politics. After briefly reviewing the historical evolution of the idea of public and public politics in the West and in Japan, the discussion focuses on the fragility of the idea and the resulting tendency for public goods and services to be "privatized, " the public interest thus short-changed, and deliberative democracy to fail to take a firm hold of public consciousness in contemporary Japan.
- 関西学院大学の論文