We have convened the “Comparative Research into Changes in Governance in an Age of Globalization” project under the direction of Professor Jiro YAMAGUCHI of the Hokkaido University School of Law. Funded from fiscal year 2002 by a Creative Scientific Research Grant, the project will take place for five years until fiscal year 2007.

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　The following thirteen researchers comprise the core staff of the project. Adjunct or advisory researchers will join them at various stages.

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　The Globalization and Governance project will investigate the following cluster of issues: how international institutions, states, and local governments cope with the various policy problems that accompany globalization; how governments and civil societies attempt to solve them; and how the structure of self-government is being transformed across several policy fields. Methodologically we will engage in empirical social research, accumulating case studies of policy formation and its implementation, to form an empirical basis upon which we can construct models of decision-making processes. Another significant aspect of the Institute’s activities is the construction of an archive of relevant governmental publications and data. Through these research activities, our ultimate goal is to be able to formulate suggestions as to viable systems of democratic policy-formation and policy implementation corresponding to the global scale of contemporary challenges, and also to offer suggestions as to the appropriate relationships between government and civil society.

　A characteristic of our research is that it is truly interdisciplinary, involving the participation of experts in policy areas such as economics, environmental and medical sciences, government etc.

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　One of our major ojbectives is to investigate how both conventional actors such as states and more recent actors as new social movements and local governments are responding to the new policy challenges that globalization is bringing in its wake. Further, we wish to examine the design of policy decision-making and implementation systems in response to the changing nature of these challenges. We propose formulating a model of governance in which states, local governments, NGOs, regional umbrella organizations, international organizations and so forth attempt to solve common problems while simultaneously adjusting their conflicting opinions. We aim to analyze policy systems through the application of this model to concrete policy problems of a global nature. Because categories that are of fundamental importance to human existence such as life, ecology and socio-economic activities (workfare) including labor, are subject to increased risks in the era of globalization, we choose as our theme the dynamics of policy-making in these fields. The subjects of our research will primarily be Japan's local as well as central governments, where we shall emphasize linkages between domestic actors and international policy-making systems, comparisons between the central and local governments, and citizen activities in foreign countries grappling with similar problems.

　Specifically, we shall explore the political challenges cast by globalization on the following four levels:

Ａ　Changes in socio-economic structures wrought by globalization

Ａ１　The social and economic stresses caused by marketization and increased risk.

　Globalization appears as an expansion of the risks accompanying the pervasion of market competition and rapid exchange of information, capital and commodities. We aim to clarify the kind of stresses this causes to economic life as well as to the natural environment and social life worlds.

Ａ２　Netizenship and democratization

　Globalization accelerated with the destruction of Cold War structures during and after the late 1980s and subsequent advances in democratization around the world. We will examine how citizens’ understanding of policy problems and their motivation for social participation has changed along with the international standardization of information systems, especially at the intersection of the matrices of computerization, democratization, disclosure and accountability.

Ｂ　Analysis of Reactive Policy Formation

　Governments have taken various countermeasures in response to the stresses mentioned in section A1. Many of the policies or institutional reforms taken during the 1990s may be characterized as being reactively taken for the self-preservation of conventional regimes. We shall study the effects of these policies and clarify their limitations, and also take up unresolved policy problems and new problems created by the reforms themselves.

Ｃ　Inquiry into and evaluation of regime reform

　In various countries and regions, the growth of ideas of citizenship pointed out in A2 has led many international organizations, states and local governments have attempted to reformulate their decision-making and policy implementation systems and to develop collaborative systems between governments and civil societies in order to solve new problems. Pursuant to these attempts, using case studies we will evaluate the functions and significance of new regimes and establish a model of governance (the activities of self-government in civil society) in response to global policy issues.

Ｄ　We will apply the governance model established in section C to an analysis of the global policy challenges taken up in section B so as to formulate a new policy model.

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１　Research on these topics to date

　Among the descriptive studies of the Japanese political system that have been carried out to date, there have been many analyses of the destabilization and realignments of the Japanese political order brought about by the collapse of Cold War structures, and of the relationship between domestic institutional and administrative reforms and changes in the international political situation during the latter half of the 1990s. However, the scope of the majority of these studies is limited as they usually account only for changes in particular sub-systems such as Japanese political parties or the bureaucracy. A comprehensive model that can fully explain the relationship between globalization and domestic systems is yet to be developed.

　Further, many of the normative arguments arising from such studies are in themselves quite weak as for the most part they only suggest reforms for particular sub-systems within a conventional framework of governance. Although the concept of governance, or the self-government of civil society, has recently become prominent, it has generally been used as little more than a slogan for the idea of collaboration between the government and citizens. There has been little discussion as to whether democracy can provide a decision-making framework that can transcend narrow interest-group politics to solve issues such as the modification of lifestyle patterns in order to solve environmental problems, and raising participation levels in the volunteer activities needed to maintain a welfare society.

　In the discipline of economics, theories treating globalization as marketization manage to coexist in parallel with anti-globalization theories. Although scholars such as Masaru KANEKO have presented many important insights in the criticisms of globalization, they have not been able to offer concrete policy prescriptions for reforming the current wave of globalization, nor have they developed a discourse concerning the appropriate political and administrative systems to deliberate and implement the needed reforms.

２　The originality of our research

　Over the past decade, many members of our research team have been actively involved in analyzing the transfigurations of domestic political parties and the bureaucracy, as well as participating positively in the institutional reform of local government. From these activities, we have witnessed a deterioration of the central government’s problem solving competency, and have thus come to recognize the necessity of developing new normative models of political decision-making and policy implementation. We are keenly aware that an indispensable element of such analysis of the status quo and development of theoretical models must be collaboration with experts in particular policy spheres. With this in mind, the originality of our research may be summed up in the following four points:

(1) Paying attention to the attitudes of citizens towards processes of governance.

　In contemporary Japan, the concept of the citizen still remains controversial. It is true that citizens participated in resolving public issues that led to the reform of local government during the 1990s. However, there is a strong tendency for people who are conscious of being the objects of rule and the beneficiaries of the current system of interest distribution to desire the continuation of the existing political system. We will empirically clarify the level of citizen awareness by conducting extensive surveys of local governments in which reforms have successfully taken root. On this basis, we will lay down an objective foundation for developing realistic arguments about the possibilities of governance.

(2) Using case studies of the self-governance of civil society to inductively establish a theoretical model

　The development of self-governance is taking place at the level of local government in the civil societies of both Japan and the West. Utilizing the extensive networks with the heads of local governments and citizens’ movements that the researchers involved in this project have formed, we will prepare detailed case studies so as to inductively construct a model of governance.

(3) Pursuing the possibilities for civil society to control globalization

　In policy arguments so far, globalization is often regarded as a given that causes stress to domestic social and economic environments and at the same time produces complicated policy problems. As opposed to this, our research will first suggest three fundamental principles appropriate to the regulation of globalization: protection of human values against the pressures of marketization; decrease of and control over magnified risks; and the solution of regional issues. By comparing international civil societies, we will pursue the possibilities of the formation of lateral alignments of cross-border systems of governance and of counter-globalization movements rooted in civil society, thus pursuing the potentiality for civil societies to regulate globalization.

(4) To develop a policy model for concrete policy issues through the interdisciplinary discussion with experts from the natural sciences

　(2) and (3) should not be confined to procedural debates on all-purpose models in political science. The most significant feature of this research is that we aim to link substantial policy models with proposals for institutional political and administrative reform by means of interdisciplinary debates and collaboration with a wide variety of specialists in economics, medicine, environmental science etc.