Political Analysis For Fiscal Framework Of Japan’s43Counties

In this paper, we studied the political elements of the Local Government of the43counties in Japan and how it affected the financial policy of the Local Government. We triedto adopt the quantitative methods to analyze and study the relationship of the systems of theChief Executive and the systems of Parliamentarianism. From the policy preferences of thepublic services provided by the regional government of Japan, we can see that they areusually reflected from the democratic political process. However, the effective provision ofpublic services needs fiscal spending as the material basis. Therefore, the regional politicalcharacteristics of local financial operations can be reflected from political channels. So that itcan be considered that the process of interaction among the internal political elements canimpact on the operational status of the local finance.The Chief Executive of the Local Government of the counties in Japan was appointed bythe National Central Government before the Second World War. The current system of localautonomy was formed after the Second World War. Thus, the history and tradition of thepolitics of the Japanese County Government has not been long. Furthermore, theadministrative affairs of the county Governments in Japan were mainly appointed andauthorized by the National Central Government in the1980’s and1990’s. So, there wasrelatively small room for Local Governments to play to its own advantages. We could thinkthat the political functions of the local government were not perfect in1980’s and1990’s.In1980’s and1990’s, the greater part of the affairs authorized by the CentralGovernment and financial subsidies was transferred to the local Governments. Albeit, withinthe areas of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, commerce, industry, and higher education andso forth. Local Governments still had discretionary power. The study of these affairs couldanalyze the determination factors of a county Government’s financial operations.Therefore, this paper has tried to study the political properties of the Local Government’sfinancial operations in Japan from the point from that of the seat constitution of the Local Parliament, Chief Executive’s party property and value preference had certain impacts on itsfinancial policy.The conclusion of this study was that counties, acting as the Local AdministrativeGovernment in Japan, directly faced the members of society. The study also found that therewas a clear value preference between the right-wing Parties such as the Liberal DemocraticParty and The left-wing parties. Furthermore, changes observed in Parliament and the ChiefExecutive system was in accordance with Party characteristics. Thus, we could think thatLocal Governments may not be able to take their own advantages under the system of centralpower. During the Bubble economy period and the post period of the Bubble economiccollapse, the financial operations of the Local Governments in Japan was mainlycharacterized by three political properties, i.e. Party property, Central power property andAdministrative property.