日本の地方自治及び自治制度の現状と課題

Abstract

Turning to the outstanding long-term debt of the Japanese central government and local governments, the combined debt currently amounts to 1,070 trillion yen, more than 200% of GDP. Under these circumstances, Japanese local governments have been undertaking administrative and fiscal reforms since the 1980s. A concrete example is the large decline in the number of local public employees from 3.28 million in 1994 to 2.74 million in 2015. Taking such factors as the national burden ratio and the number of public employees, when Japanese governments are compared to Euro-American governments, it cannot be said that Japan is a country of big governments. The urgent necessity now is not only a reduction of expenditures by central government and local governments, but also radical reforms aimed at increasing financial resources such as tax revenues. It is estimated that the population of Japan, which amounted to 128 million in 2010, will decrease significantly to 107 million in 2040, and to 87 million in 2060. Maintaining the vitality of regions has become a great challenge for local governments. Under circumstances in which many public facilities are showing signs of deterioration, every local government is developing a ‘Comprehensive management plan for public facilities’. In this situation, giving due consideration to the imminent population decrease and to the ongoing severe financial conditions, it is necessary, on the basis of obtaining the understanding of residents, to draw up a prioritized list of the measures to which local governments should devote their limited financial resources,. To enable them to deal with the emergence of new, large-scale problems, it is more than ever essential for local governments to determine the future of reforms on the basis of the people’s choice, and to recognize the increasing importance of the growth of democratic control by residents.