Decentralisation : How Should Important Figures in a Local Government be Chosen?

In the post-WWII government system of Japan, representative democracy was widely used as a result of the reform after the end of the war.Decentralisation was strongly advocated at the same time.During this period, in the structure of local government system in Japan, two tendencies are observable, although these tendencies have both showed very gradual moves.One is the tendency in the degree of the use of election in choosing chief executive officers, local assembly members, members of independent administrative boards which are responsible for a certain part of local administration and other officials.The number of occasions where election system is used for selecting these important figures is definitely on the decline.The second tendency is the fact that the possibility of the application of Residents Initiative systems including Recall systems, peoples initiative to dismiss a local government official, has been widened.While there seems no consistent intention of the central government to decrease the use of election systems, which is the mainstay of the representative democracy some modifications are made to expand the possibility of Residents Initiatives, a way to urge increased responsiveness of a local government.Both these phenomena occurred while there has been no change in the basic systems of the central government.This paper shows each aspects of these tendencies.