The implementation of a new central-local partnership is the latest development in the ongoing effort to decentralize Japan. The ‘Central-Local Partnership Forum’ (in Japanese, “Kuni to Chihou no Kyougi no Ba”) is a statutory mechanism, introduced in 2011, which drastically changes the political power relationship between central and local government in Japan. It is a forum where delegates of both central and local government discuss how to formulate locality-related policies, and agreements reached there will be reported to the Diet for its deliberations.
Before this system was implemented, central government had monopolized powers of policy formulation. Even though local authorities are responsible for almost 70% of public services, especially social welfare services, they had only very limited input into the policy planning process, mostly through some public hearings. This centralized policy planning process sometimes caused confusion in the execution of public service functions by local authorities because those policies were decided without taking into account how administrative systems in local authorities worked and what customers really needed.
The National Governors’ Association (NGA) had recognized such a centralized system as a problem, and had been trying to enshrine participation of local government in the policy planning process in law from 2006. At the 2009 general election, the NGA organized a conference for discussing public pledges of major political parties – the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito. The NGA urged them to implement a more decentralized policy planning system, and succeeded in making those parties include an implementation of this new system in their public pledges. After the election, the DPJ formed the government, and as promised, a new system was legislated for and implemented in May 2011.
The statutory Central-Local Partnership Forum demonstrated its political power just after its introduction. In June 2011, the central government announced its preliminary draft of social welfare reform and tax reform. After this, the Forum was held seven times including three session meetings, and central and local government agreed on the final draft of the social welfare reform and the tax reform. The final draft settled that tax revenue from the hike of the consumption tax (+5%) would be allocated in proportion to the scale of social welfare services which both central and local government provide, and local government will receive an allocation of ¥4tr per year. As of 2013, we can perhaps come to the view that there are some significant accomplishments in local administration, finance and taxation achieved through the Forum.:
• Local government succeeded in making central government recognize its role in social welfare services in the final draft of the social welfare reform and the tax reform. As a result, they achieved a share of 1.54% of the 5% hike of consumption tax (¥4tr per year) in the form of local consumption tax (1.2%) and local allocation tax (0.34%).
• The financial burden of the child benefit assigned to local government was reduced ¥1tr of the first proposal of the Ministry of Social Welfare to ¥0.6tr of the final settlement).
• Under an intensive central-local partnership, a framework for reconstruction after the Tohoku earthquake was quickly drawn up, and whole localities started to enhance their ability to reduce damage caused by natural disasters.
For more detailed information contact JLGC London at mailbox@jlgc.org.uk
Picture: Joint session of The Diet, Japan’s Parliament.
