National Integration and Local Power in Japan

National Integration and Local Power in Japan PDF Author: Yasuo Takao
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429820062
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
First published in 1999, this book offers a new study of local government in Japan. There is an enormous amount of information about Japanese local government that has not yet appeared in English. With the author’s local familiarity, elected local officials and local residents have been extraordinarily open and forthcoming. This allows a rethinking of the topic by mobilising a multitude of solid factual material. Japan has dealt with the dramatically increased public sector, but has done so in a setting of institutional centralisation. How has central authority sought to find ways of managing the continuous expansion of state activities? How have local authorities responded to central government’s initiative in integrating state administration? The answers the book gives to these questions present an alternative understanding of Japanese local government.

National Integration and Local Power in Japan

National Integration and Local Power in Japan PDF Author: Yasuo Takao
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429820062
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
First published in 1999, this book offers a new study of local government in Japan. There is an enormous amount of information about Japanese local government that has not yet appeared in English. With the author’s local familiarity, elected local officials and local residents have been extraordinarily open and forthcoming. This allows a rethinking of the topic by mobilising a multitude of solid factual material. Japan has dealt with the dramatically increased public sector, but has done so in a setting of institutional centralisation. How has central authority sought to find ways of managing the continuous expansion of state activities? How have local authorities responded to central government’s initiative in integrating state administration? The answers the book gives to these questions present an alternative understanding of Japanese local government.

Local Power in the Japanese State

Local Power in the Japanese State PDF Author: Michio Muramatsu
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520315782
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.

Local Politics and National Policy

Local Politics and National Policy PDF Author: Ken Victor Leonard Hijino
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317265629
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This book is about why and how central and local governments clash over important national policy decisions. Its empirical focus is on the local politics of Japan which has significantly shaped, and been shaped by, larger developments in national politics. The book argues that since the 1990s, changes in the national political arena, fiscal and administrative decentralization, as well as broader socio-economic developments have led to a decoupling of once closely integrated national and local party systems in Japan. Such decoupling has led to a breakdown of symbiotic relations between the centre and regions. In its place are increasing strains between national and local governments leading to greater intra-party conflict, inter-governmental conflicts, and more chief executives with agendas and resources increasingly autonomous of the national ruling party. Although being a book primarily focused on the Japanese case, the study seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how local partisans shape national policy-making. The book theorizes and investigates how the degree of state centralization, vertical integration for party organizations, and partisan congruence in different levels of government affect inter-governmental relations. Japan’s experience is compared with Germany, Canada, and the UK to explore sources of multi-level policy conflict.

Reinventing Japan

Reinventing Japan PDF Author: Yasuo Takao
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781403984142
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The merchant nation of Japan's fall from grace in recent years has lead to a major realignment of state - society power relations with welcomed democratizing effects. This book is about the emerging civic face of twenty-first century Japan. It illustrates how new and emerging relationships between civil society groups and local government are becoming key elements of Japan's changing structures of governance. It closely examines such issue areas as e-democracy, decentralization, foreign workers, NGOs and the role of women, which have converged to open the way for reinventing Japan. It demonstrates how the expansion of associational life in Japan is surely heading for a more autonomous civil society.

Chapter 1 Theories of Local Power and Multi-level Conflict

Chapter 1 Theories of Local Power and Multi-level Conflict PDF Author: Ken Victor Leonard Hijino
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
This book is about why and how central and local governments clash over important national policy decisions. Its empirical focus is on the local politics of Japan which has significantly shaped, and been shaped by, larger developments in national politics. The book argues that since the 1990s, changes in the national political arena, fiscal and administrative decentralization, as well as broader socio-economic developments have led to a decoupling of once closely integrated national and local party systems in Japan. Such decoupling has led to a breakdown of symbiotic relations between the centre and regions. In its place are increasing strains between national and local governments leading to greater intra-party conflict, inter-governmental conflicts, and more chief executives with agendas and resources increasingly autonomous of the national ruling party. Although being a book primarily focused on the Japanese case, the study seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how local partisans shape national policy-making. The book theorizes and investigates how the degree of state centralization, vertical integration for party organizations, and partisan congruence in different levels of government affect inter-governmental relations. Japan's experience is compared with Germany, Canada, and the UK to explore sources of multi-level policy conflict.

Japan's Environmental Politics and Governance

Japan's Environmental Politics and Governance PDF Author: Yasuo Takao
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138855908
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Environmental issues stretch across scales of geographic space and require action at multiple levels of jurisdiction, including the individual level, community level, national level, and global level. Much of the scholarly work surrounding new approaches to environmental governance tends to overlook the role of sub-national governments, but this study examines the potential of sub-national participation to make policy choices which are congruent with global strategies and national mandates. This book investigates the emerging actors and new channels of Japan's environmental governance which has been taking shape within an increasingly globalized international system. By analysing this important new phenomenon, it sheds light on the changing nature of Japan's environmental policy and politics, and shows how the links between global strategies, national mandates and local action serve as an influential factor in Japan's changing structures of environmental governance. Further, it demonstrates that decision-making competencies are shared between actors operating at different levels and in new spheres of authority, resulting from collaboration between state and non-state actors. It highlights a number of the problems, challenges, and critiques of the actors in environmental governance, as well as raising new empirical and theoretical puzzles for the future study of governance over environmental and global issues. Finally, it concludes that changes in the tiers and new spheres of authority are leading the nation towards an environmentally stable future positioned within socio-economic and political constraints. Demonstrating that bridging policy gaps between local action, national policy and global strategies is potentially a way of reinventing environmental policy, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Environmental Studies, Environmental Politics and Japanese Politics.

Reinventing Japan

Reinventing Japan PDF Author: Y. Takao
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230609317
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
The book is about new dynamic forces that are driving change in Japan. It is developed around two key concepts of civil society and social capital. The focus is on pathways to Japan's social renewal that promotes stronger communities and more participatory citizenship beyond the reach of economic growth.

A History of Japan

A History of Japan PDF Author: Conrad Totman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119022339
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 722

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Book Description
This is an updated edition of Conrad Totman's authoritative history of Japan from c.8000 BC to the present day. The first edition was widely praised for combining sophistication and accessibility. Covers a wide range of subjects, including geology, climate, agriculture, government and politics, culture, literature, media, foreign relations, imperialism, and industrialism. Updated to include an epilogue on Japan today and tomorrow. Now includes more on women in history and more on international relations. Bibliographical listings have been updated and enlarged. Part of The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.

Base Towns

Base Towns PDF Author: Claudia Junghyun Kim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197665292
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
When do we see social movements mobilize against the American military overseas, and what explains their varying intensity? Despite increasing interest in the vast network of U.S. military bases on foreign soil, it is still not well understood why some host communities resist the bases in their backyards, while others remain compliant. In Base Towns, Claudia Junghyun Kim addresses this puzzle by investigating the contentious politics surrounding twenty U.S. military bases across Korea and Japan. In particular, she looks at municipalities hosting these bases and differing levels of community acceptance and resistance over time. Drawing on fieldwork interviews, participant observation, and protest event data from 2000-2015, Kim shows that activists occasionally manage to join hands with the otherwise politically inactive local populations when they deliberately subordinate their radical movement goals to more immediate, mundane demands that form the basis of everyday local grievances. Specifically, the activists in base towns successfully build broad anti-base movements when they take advantage of quotidian disruption, adopt culturally resonant movement frames, and ally with local political elites. These activist strategies, however, sometimes end up reinforcing the widely presumed inevitability of the American presence. In examining activist actions, strategies, and dilemmas, this book sheds light on marginalized actors in domestic and international politics--far removed from elite decision-making processes that shape interstate base politics and yet living with their consequences--who sometimes manage to complicate the operations of America's military behemoth.

Japan's Development Aid to China

Japan's Development Aid to China PDF Author: Tsukasa Takamine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134263651
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Paradoxically, Japan provides massive amounts of development aid to China, despite Japan's clear perception of China as a prime competitor in the Asia-Pacific region. This clearly written and comprehensive volume provides an overview of the way Japan's aid to China has developed since 1979. It explains the shifts that have taken place in Japan's China policy in the 1990s against the background of international changes and domestic changes in both countries, and offers new insights into the way Japanese aid policy making functions, thereby providing an alternative view of Japanese policy making that might be applied to other areas. Through a series of case studies, it shows Japan’s increasing willingness to use development aid to China for strategic goals and explains a significant shift of priority project areas of Japan’s China aid in the 1990s, from industrial infrastructure to socio-environmental infrastructure. The book argues that, contrary to the widely held view that Japan's aid to China is given for reasons of commercial self-interest, the objectives are much more complex and dynamic. Using original material, Takamine shows how policy making power within the Japanese government has shifted in recent years away from officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to politicians in the Liberal Democratic Party.