As women’s participation in the workforce expands, many countries seek to reform child care support by changing the gender division of labor. Japan also attempted universalistic child care support reforms, though these were not always successful. The electoral reforms of the 1990s prompted the major political parties to make universalistic reforms, and the major party leaders advocated similar ideas. Still, they failed to extend benefits to all children. Agreement on the expansion of funding was particularly challenging. By analyzing coalition formation within and among political parties, I show that the electoral reform led to stiff competition, which made it difficult for parties to agree. The change to a majoritarian electoral system not only intensified inter-party rivalry but also made it difficult to persuade intra-party groups that perceived a threat to their electoral success.

As for the relationship between Diet members and local assembly members in Japan, previous empirical researches mainly focus on their clientelistic relations among them and upward political career move from local assembly to the Diet. In this article, the author presents a different perspective from these previous researches, and elaborates the tendency that Diet members try to change their career to local politicians, especially governors and mayors of local governments. Two political reforms in the 1990s affected the ambition of Diet members; the electoral reform changed patterns of political competition in electoral districts, and the decentralization reform enhanced the attractiveness of the position of mayors.
  In this article, the author investigates the cases that Diet members / former Diet members, who stood as a candidate in the five elections before and after the electoral reform, challenge governor / mayor / local assembly elections. The results show that more Liberal Democratic Party members challenge to local elections after the electoral reform, and the more leading opposition members, who were affiliated with Japan Socialist Party or New Frontier Party or Democratic Party, challenge to local elections than LDP members. Besides, this article reveals that by measuring the effective numbers of candidate the patterns of political competitions in governor / mayor elections are different before and after the electoral reform.

本稿では，地方政府における産業廃棄物税と森林税という2つの新税導入の意思決定要因について，都道府県レベルの地方政府における知事・地方議会という政治的アクターの選好と両者を選出する選挙制度を結びつけたうえで，その選好が新税の導入にどのような影響をもたらすかについて議論する。 本稿の分析からは，産業廃棄物税・森林税という2つの税が持つ性質が，首長または地方議会という選挙に直面する地方政治のアクターの選好と対応し，各地方政府における首長の再選可能性や地方議会自民党の優位性などの特徴が新税導入の意思決定に影響を与えていることが示される。このような新税導入の実証分析からは，地方分権改革によって地方政府の自律性が向上することで，同時に地方政府における政治的アクターにとっても，自らの利益につながる戦略的行動をとる余地が広がりつつあることが示唆される。

本稿では，都道府県を対象として，地方政府における知事－議会関係と中央政府と地方政府の制度的な関係に注目しながら，地方政府が政策をどのような政治的要因によって決定しているかについて，その影響を計量的な手法で分析することを試みた。具体的な政策として開発政策（インフラ整備・農林水産）と再分配政策（教育・福祉）に焦点を当て，その支出水準に対して議会における保守・革新といった党派性，知事の支持基盤・経歴，知事の再選動機という3つの政治的要因がどのような効果をもたらしているかを検証する。本稿の分析から得られた主要な結論として，特に冷戦期を中心に政党の党派性が地方政府の政策決定に一定の影響を与えており，地方政府が自らの議会の選好に応じてある程度自律的な意思決定を行うことが可能であったこと，知事のような人的ルートを通じて中央政府の意向が地方政府の政策に反映される経路がありうることが示された。

In this article, the authors try to understand the factors affecting government consumption, government fixed investment, and total disbursements among 19 OECD countries. Many empirical analyses have ever tried to explain the reason why welfare states expanded after the WW II, by focusing on industrialization factor and/or political factors. In the 1990s, great advance of econometric method allow to test several theories by using Time-Series Cross-Section data, and this trend stimulate the effort to quantify the political and institutional character traits of the countries.
Our analysis, using TSCS data for 19 countries over the period from 1975 to 1999, is distinctive at least two ways. First, in, contrast to former studies, we focus on the period when most OECD countries do not necessarily expand after oil shock. Second, we can use many important political and fiscal variables, which former studies could not use. The estimation result with two-way fixed effects model shows that those countries in the bad fiscal situation might rein in government consumption and total disbursement. It suggests that not only fiscal demand increase expenditure, but government fiscal constraint might hold down expenditures. Also, we confirm that increase in total trade have been associated with less government expenditures. This result supports "efficiency hypothesis" which claims globalization trend put pressure on governments to cut back expenditures. In addition, our estimation shows different result which is expected from traditional "Wagner's Law", which claims increase in GDP per capita would expand gov-ernment expenditure.

読売新聞論壇時評（9/25）久米郁男氏
朝日新聞論壇時評（9/28）中北浩爾氏
日本経済新聞論壇時評（9/30）土居丈朗氏