Suchergebnisse

The Annotated Constitution of Japan: A Handbook for the first time makes the entirety of Japan's constitution accessible in English. The book consists of a historical and contextual overview of how the constitution came into being, followed by descriptions of each of its 103 articles; the meaning of the text, interpretive disputes, academic theories and leading cases arising under them. The book also points out the many subtle distinctions between the English version and the Japanese, some of which arose from the charter's unique provenance. With contributors representing a broad range of expertise in various areas of Japanese law, the book is written to appeal to academics, students and general readers alike. It is intended to be the first port of call for anyone needing to understand the fundamentals of Japanese constitutional law, whether from the perspective of Japanese studies, comparative law, or political science, but unable to access the text and related literature available in Japanese. Key reference documents in English and Japanese are included as appendices for ease of reference

This article examines whether mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Putnam suggests that politicians' social networks with residents may deteriorate political transparency and thus decrease performance. However, no direct relationships have been clarified. So, we focus on the Philippines as a case and conduct a survey on national representative 300 cities and municipalities in 2011. We find that (1) by distributions, among three indexes of performance as dependent variables, valuing fundamentals of governance have the highest scores. Social governance and administrative governance follow. Among mayors' networks as independent variables, mayors meet residents most, and local politicians, provincial politicians, and the central government officers follow. (2) By regression analyses, meeting residents promotes social governance, while meeting central government officers increases administrative governance. Multi-level analyses support these results. Therefore, mayors' social capital increases local governments' performance. Yet different social capital promotes different performance.

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is probably one of the most oftreferred books today in the United States. It is widely seen as the best book ever written on this country, its words endlessly quoted by different political camps which claim the book as their own. This article examines the ways in which the American have read this magnum opus of the Frenchman, especially during the last few decades, on the assumption that their reading is reflecting their perceptions on contemporary American society and its future. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it tries to show that Democracy has long been read in America as an (or, in not a few cases, the) important source to reflect on a remedy for an increasingly "individualistic" and thus "despotic" American society. What the American have commonly found a solution to this problem out of reading the book is the restoration of the tradition of self-government, which is highly hailed by Tocqueville as an admirable feature of American society. Second, this article aims at showing that, although the different political views between conservatives and liberals (one of the most visible political divisions in this society today) are surely affecting the American reading of Democracy, this is only one aspect of the story. Many Americans, whatever their political tendencies are, end up calling for the revival of a self-governed American society as a consequence of studying the book. This common 'conclusion' derived from their reading could be interpreted as a proof that the image that America is the country built on citizens' active participation in public affairs is widely shared among the American themselves. In this considerably diverse society that could fragment at any time potentially, the image has thus been contributing to keeping it in unity, probably to not a small extent.

Introduction -- Earthquakes and urban reconstruction -- Kobe and the Hanshin earthquake -- The planning and reconstruction response -- Protest, participation, and the Phoenix Plan -- Neighbourhood case studies -- Symbolic projects and the local economy -- Conclusion -- Appendices. Chronology of the ten-year reconstruction period in Kobe (1995-2005) ; National government relief and recovery measures ; Major reconstruction actions taken by local government in 1995.