Negotiation and Policy Change - Administrative Structure of Japan after the Environmental Wave

Japanese Administration is structured in a very singular way.
Since the shogunate era Japan has forged its structure on the idea of ‘national centralization’ in a way that it is still reflected at the present time. The participation in administrative decisions took always place both at national and prefectural level. This would not be a surprise since dual administration is adopted in other countries; but the fact that interconnection between national and local authorities have led the way to the ‘Economic Miracle’ has been widely argued (Jacobs, 2003).

Japanese administration is not exclusively carried on by the state, but also by local bodies endowed with certain powers of independent local action. Not only do these bodies exercise administrative functions directly for state concern, but they have also a sphere of action in purely local matters where they act in a large measure free from interference by national authorities.
These local bodies are in general public corporations and their jurisdiction has as a rule been granted in comprehensive terms assigning all matters of local concern to their care, unless otherwise specified. Some obligations are imposed by law, but aside from that, such bodies determine by themselves the measure of their activity within the limits of local jurisdiction. These traits have been utilized during the economic boom to increment local autonomy in development programs along with the ‘principle of territoriality’.

To insure a measure of self-government local ordinances have been granted with special administrative ordinances, this is known as the Administrative Ordinance Power. During the economic boom of 1950, prefectures used these ordinances to perform prodevelopment action-planning such as the identification of sunrise industries on local area and the self-governing management of national funds. Before the environmental wave, the political and economic factors previously discussed resulted in the absence of environment -control agencies at prefectural levels and the arbitrary assignment of national budgets.
Funds were allocated periodically to the municipalities of the coastal area due to the key role played by largest cities in economic matters13. With the establishment of the Environmental Agency in 1960, the principle of territoriality was adopted to local authorities to conduct R&D programs, establish green organizations and set anti -pollution restrictions according to local legislations.