Political Economy of Municipal Amalgamation

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My research focused on the amalgamation efforts of the 1950s, because this seems to have laid the foundation for economic growth and political democracy in postwar Japan. Two questions will be addressed. First, why could municipal amalgamation be carried out promptly? Second, what was brought about by municipal amalgamation?As for the first question, national and prefectual governments seemed to follow a strategy of opening an attack on municipalities with less resistance against amalgamation. The national government elaborated and implemented devices to advance-or at least not to break-chain reactions of amalgamation that started spontaneously in urban areas. The point was to exploit circumstances that made municipalities reluctant to fall behind in the march of municipal amalgamation.As for the second question, while the positive effect of amalgamation on administrative efficiency is widely accepted, it is also generally believed that there is a negative effect on democracy. I examined the relationship between amalgamation and democracy from three different angles, . They show that amalgamation has a rather positive impact on the democratization of municipal politics, or at least it is democracy-neutral. lt is a mistake to think that amalgamation always weakens democratic control of the residents over public affairs.I made research on a case of Sasayama City. In this case, members of municipal assemblies initiated the amalgamation of their towns. My research question was why they initiated it in spite of its negative effect on their political positions. My conclusion is a probability of losing their seats in the assemblies, therefor their attitude toward municipal amalgamation depends upon distribution of populations of towns. This suggests that members of municipal assemblies are deeply effected by patterns of amalgamation.