The Administrative Reform in Japan

Abstract

Why is administrative reform necessary? In every country the administrative reform is always an important problem for the government to solve. A large-scale organization like government has usually a tendency to expand, because of the irrational mentality of those who belong to it. Maybe it is not necessary to refer to the famous Parkinson’s law to verify this tendency. But the operation of the government is financed by taxes. Therefore, the unlimited expansion is impossible and so the administrative reform becomes inevitable. Moreover, the oil-crisis in the year of 1973 made the financial conditions of the developed countries extremely worse, and also from this aspect the reform became necessary. And yet, not only a retrenchment of the organization was put into practice, but also, and it was quite natural, the sphere of the governmental action was cut. The intention towards ”cheap government” under the Thatcher government of Great Britain is one of the typical examples.