Study on the social structure and political culture of local communities

本研究的目的是探讨十年后当地社区的社会结构和政治文化的变化。1989年，我们对地方政治家及其组成人员进行了问卷调查。是次研究增加了一项以本地公务员为对象的调查，调查结果如下：1。地级政治人物与小城市政治人物在社会经济、教育背景等方面仍存在差距。被称为“Chiku-suisen”的选举方法，即一个选区只允许一名候选人，几乎已经消失。在各级选举中，没有自己强烈支持的政党的人越来越多。在决策能力方面缺乏知识和专门知识的情况，在低级别官员中比在高级别官员中更为明显，特别是在大型地方政府机构中。几乎每个地方政府官员都对非营利组织抱有兴趣和期望。

The objective of this research is to probe changes in the social structure and political culture of local communities after ten years. In 1989 we did survey researches on local politicians and its constituent using questionnaires. This time a newly-tried survey on local public servants is added.Some of the findings from the research are as follows:1. There still exists a disparity between prefecture level politicians and small city level politicians in terms of their socio-economic and educational background.2. The electoral method referred to as "Chiku-suisen", which means only one candidate is allowed in one electoral district, has almost disappeared.3. In every level of elections there is a growing number of the people who do not have political parties they strongly support.4. The lack of knowledge and expertise regarding policy-making ability can be seen more among lower level officials than higher level ones, particularly in large local governmental bodies. There can be seen interests and expectations toward NPO in almost every local government officials.