Neighborhood Associations And Closed Co-governance

This paper aims at providing a brief introduction of Japanese community governance in the early 21 st century through the case of Edogawa City in Tokyo,exploring the dilemma and solutions of its community governance.By collecting data and materials in Japan from October,2018 to July,2019,and modifying Fung's Democracy Cube,the author attempts to reflect problems and choices in community governance transformation from more specific and multi-dimensional perspectives.This paper found out that due to Japanese Neighborhood Associations,the community governance faced dilemmas of participants selection,local initiatives,initiative acceptance and community implementation in community governance,and closed co-governance might be the available solution of these problems.First,participants selection expanded from Neighborhood Associations to fixed local associations,which reflected the transformation of legitimacy behind.Traditional Neighborhood Associations lowed the representativeness,resulting in emergency of closed co-governance.More stakeholders are involved in community governance,while more open cogovernance is needed in the future.Second,local initiatives changed from active participation to passive problem-solving.The dominance of Neighborhood Associations decreased participation sense of other residents.In consequence,other actors in local communities had to take responsibility for it.This responsibility sharing is contemporary,the duty of building local community should share among all players.Third,initiative acceptance was changed by closed co-governance,resulting in the break of path dependence.In this dimension,more acceptance for local initiatives are required.Finally,implementation capacity gained more available resources from closed co-governance.Traditional Neighborhood Associations limited local communities to absorb resources,and cogovernance can introduce new actors' resources and build broader networks to overcome it.