Characterristics of Government-NPO Relationships in Japan and the Conditions for Transparent, Equal and Effective Collaboration

日本政府与NPO关系的主要特征是政府经常将公共政策的执行过程外包给NPO，这与美国的情况非常相似。但在日本，非营利组织对政府的依赖性很强，往往被认为是准政府组织。政府与非营利组织的关系不透明、不平等、不有效，导致公共服务成本高、反应迟钝。日本的这些传统关系现在正面临着根本性改变的压力，以使日本的非营利组织能够作为解决新的社会问题的主要代理人之一发挥预期的重要作用。根据本研究项目的结果，我们可以指出政府与非营利组织透明、平等和有效合作的必要条件如下。第一个条件是政治家对公共行政的领导，这是政府变革机制的必要有效功能。非营利组织可以利用政治家来制衡公共行政部门的权力。第二种情况是NPO部门的分层结构，包含了从倡导组织到商业型NPO的各种类型的NPO。战略能力对于个体和整个非营利组织都是不可或缺的。幸运的是，我们可以在这几年里在日本找到这些情况出现的迹象。政府换届机制在中央政府特别是地方政府中开始发挥作用。日本的非营利组织正试图与政府就政府与非营利组织关系中各方的行为准则达成一致。2004年爱知合作规则手册就是其中一个例子。

The main characteristic of the government-NPO relationships in Japan is that the government often contracts out the implementation process of public policy to NPO, which is very similar to American case. But in Japanese case NPOs are strongly dependent on the government and Japanese NPOs are often considered as quasi governmental organizations. As a consequence the government-NPO relationships are not transparent, not equal and not effective and make public services costly and unresponsive.These Japanese traditional relationships are now under pressure to change themselves fundamentally so that the Japanese NPOs can play a now expected important role as one of the main agents in solving new social problemsAs a result of this research project we can point out as necessary conditions for the transparent, equal and effective collaboration between the government and NPOs as follows. The first condition is the leadership of politicians to the public administration, for which is necessary effective function of government change mechanism. NPOs could use politicians to counterbalance the power of public administration.The second condition is the miltitiered structure of NPO sector, which contains various types of NPO from advocacy organization to business type NPO. And the strategic ability is indispensable both for individual NPO and NPO sector as a whole.Fortunately we can find out signs of appearance of these conditions in Japan in these several years. The government change mechanism are beginning to function in national government and especially in local governments. And Japanese NPOs are trying to agree with governments about codes of conduct for each party in government-NPO relationship. Aichi rulebook 2004 for collaboration is one of these examples.