Hiroko Kudo

Between the ‘Governance’ Model and the Policy Evaluation Act: New Public Management in Japan

This article tries to describe Japanese npm (New Public Management) from two opposite poles: from the national legislative framework and from an experimental example in local government. Since the late 1990s, although npm was developed from Anglo-Saxon experiences, it has been implemented in Japan at the national level in a unique manner. The crisis in public finance, the urgent need for public sector reform and political instability led to two extreme options: self-reform by the bureaucracy itself; and citizen empowerment resulting inpressure on the bureaucracy. While the second one has been struggling to obtain public consensus, expertise for its practice and institutionalization, the first has resulted, to a certain extent, in the reorganization and restructuring of administrative institutions andin the establishment of both a legal framework and an operational system for measuring performance and evaluating policy.

E-Governance as Strategy of Public Sector Reform: Peculiarity of Japanese it Policy and its Institutional Origin

As the cases of public sector reform and e-governance projects have shown, e-governance can play a role in public sector reform. This paper describes Japanese e-governance policy and its status, focusing on the issues affecting the government and the public. Japan has implemented a series of political and administrative reforms in order to improve accountability. NPM reforms utilize various strategies to manage public policies, and e-governance is a public policy that directly affects other policies and brings about change. Its characteristics as public policy are different from those of other policies, especially in relation to public accountability.

Co-design, Co-creation, and Co-production of Smart Mobility System

Smart Cities with their mobility system are assumed to be based on smart technology, smart people or smart collaboration, assigning citizens significant roles. While some argue that ICT will enhance democratic debate and empower citizens, others concern about the development of Smart Cities “without critical discussions and politics”. Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) launched its Smart City project in 2010, setting specific criteria to ensure the “participation of all the stakeholders”; however, drawing on analysis of official documents as well as on interviews with each of the four Smart Communities’ stakeholders, the paper explains that very little input is expected from Japanese citizens. Instead, ICTs are used by municipalities and electric utilities to steer project participants and to change their behaviour. The objective of these experiments would not be to involve citizens in city governance, but rather to make them participate in the co-production of public services.

Bridging Big Data and Policy Making: A case study of failure

This paper investigates into a question through a failure case. The research question is; why we often fail to use the existing information and knowledge, including big data to design and/or implement public policies? The case is; the ticketing data, which was collected during the London Olympic Games and its so far under usage to design public policy related to health, well-being, and physical activities of the citizens. The research adopts qualitative analysis, including analysis of primary documents and semi-directive interviews. There is a limitation of single case study: however the case well represents the research question to provide preliminary investigation and to generate hypotheses for further studies.

Europeanization or New Public Governance? – Reinventing Italian intermediate institutions under pressure

The Italian local government system has developed uniquely, mainly because of a series of domestic policies as well as European fiscal constraints. After many years of discussion without any concrete reforms, the Italian government decided to abolish the intermediate level of local governments or the provinces in 2014, forced by the requirements of Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union. The decision shows the first centralisation efforts, after decades of decentralisation policies, following the European Charter of Local-Self Government and managerial reforms typical to New Public Management (NPM).

Values and Virtues in the Japanese Public Sector

Values in the public sector are perceived in various ways. The experiences of the author, who was involved in the wide-ranged AsiaBarometer project, indicate in fact that there are many values that determine public life; however, their dimensions, combinations, and perceptions could vary from country to country, resulting in a rich variation of country profiles. The survey also suggested that religion determines the people’s preferences for political system (Carlson, 2008). When it comes to the relationship between values closed to individual life and those closed to institutional settings, there are certain correlations, but there are big differences among countries (Manabe, 2008).