Political Economy of Municipal Amalgamation

我的研究集中在20世纪50年代的合并努力，因为这似乎为战后日本的经济增长和政治民主奠定了基础。将讨论两个问题。第一，为什么市政合并可以迅速进行？第二，市政合并带来了什么？至于第一个问题，国家和地方政府似乎采取了对合并阻力较小的市政当局发起攻击的策略。中央政府精心设计并实施了一些措施，以促进--或者至少不破坏--城市地区自发产生的融合连锁反应。关于第二个问题，人们普遍认为，合并对行政效率有积极的影响，但对民主也有消极的影响。笔者从三个不同的角度考察了合并与民主的关系。结果表明，合并对市政政治民主化有相当积极的影响，至少是民主中性的。认为合并会削弱市民对公共事务的民主控制是错误的。我以佐山市为例进行了研究。在这种情况下，市议会议员提出了合并其城镇的建议。我的研究问题是，尽管它对他们的政治立场产生了负面影响，他们为什么要发起它。我的结论是，他们有可能失去在议会中的席位，因此他们对市政合并的态度取决于城镇人口的分布。这表明，市议会成员深受合并模式的影响。

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.