Basic Report

Under the check-and-balance system, the local council has the status of institution that makes the final decisions of the local government. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the role of local councils so far is not positive. Accordingly, as one of the measures to improve the role of local councils, a plan to improve policy capabilities was sought here.
   Chapter 2 analyzes the concept of local council’s policy capabilities, the government’s policy progress and existing research. Chapter 3 analyzes the operation status of the existing system on local council policy capabilities, Chapter 4 analyzes the existing perception survey on local council policy capabilities. In Chapter 5, case analysis was conducted on the policy capabilities of local councils, focusing on Japan.
   Chapter 6 presents policy alternatives to enhance local council’s policy capabilities based on the aforementioned analysis. As for the design method of policy alternatives, the validity of the legal content was verified for the contents included in the all revised laws of the recent ｢Local Autonomy Act｣, and alternatives were suggested for the contents that were not. An alternative to the basic elements for enhancing the policy capacity of local council was presented as follows. The organization composition positively evaluates the validity of the revised contents, the legislative scope not included in the revised law expands, the supplement method reexamines party nomination, and the authorization is balanced reinforcement of the authority of a local government head.
   In terms of organizational elements, a positive evaluation of the validity of the revised contents for support organizations and support personnel included in the revised law and a establishment of (tentative name) ‘a local council legislative center’ at a regional level are presented as a policy alternative.