Assessing Promoting Factors of Partnerships among Local Governments: Inter-Municipal Collaboration for Sustainable Service Delivery in Japan

Masao Kikuchi (Meiji University)

Inter-municipal collaboration is an important public service delivery reform. Instead of focusing on amalgamating governments, it facilitates functional consolidation of individual services across jurisdictions. Inter municipal collaboration helps small rural municipalities confronting limited resources and capacities. In a metropolitan region, it also helps counteract fragmentation and promote cohesive service delivery within area. With the increase of inter municipal collaboration in the practice, scholars are giving increasing attention to its causes, aspects, and implications of collaboration. Most of the research exploring factors promote inter municipal collaboration are confined in the case of selective states/counties in the U.S. Although the promoting factors are well explored in the these countries, factors of inter municipal cooperation where most of welfare service are provided through local government and the rapid aging society is underway such as in Japan or in Asia is not yet well explained.
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The paper tries to analyze the promoting factors of inter municipal collaboration in Japan at each policy area. While Japanese economy have experienced stagnation for decades and population is rapidly aging, inter municipal collaboration is one of the strategies for local government to sustain the services. While the findings are most relevant in Japan, the discussion could be applied anywhere, especially in Asian context, and it could contribute the future discussion how to sustain the services where demands are on increase and resources are scarce.

Powerpoint Presentation