A comprehensive study of the influence of municipal amalgamation in Japan,promoted by the national policy in the Heisei era.

本研究阐述了平成时代市政合并所带来的影响。我们对市政合并进行了跨国比较，并建立了合并城市的行政(官员人数、行政机构、公共设施)、财政(普通账户和专用账户、公共企业)、政治(选举结果、民选官员属性)的数据库。我们还采访了负责合并的中央部委、地市政府的官员，虽然中央政府已经说出了合并的良好效果，但我们发现，与没有合并的地方政府相比，这些效果并没有显著体现出来。此外，为应对融合之恶而采取的措施(例如增加居民对地方政府的距离感)发挥的作用还不够。我们的结论是，平成时代的市政合并是为了使地方政府进行行政改革，即减少行政费用和官员数量。

This study elucidated the influence that the municipal amalgamation in the Heisei era brought. We made a cross country comparison about municipal amalgamation and built databases about administration (number of officials, administrative organization, public facilities), finance (general account and special accounts, public enterprises), politics (result of elections, attributes of elected officials) of amalgamated cities. We also did interviews with the officials of central ministries, prefectural and municipal governments who were in charge of amalgamation.Though the central government has spoken out the good effects of the amalgamation, we found that those effects did not significantly appear in the comparison with the local governments which did not amalgamate. In addition, the measures that were introduced to cope with an evil of amalgamation (e.g. an increase of a inhabitant’s sense of distance for the local government) did not function enough. We concluded that the municipal amalgamation in the Heisei era was promoted for making municipal governments carry out an administrative reform, that is, reduction in administrative expenses and the number of officials.