著者
川上 泰彦 橋野 晶寛
出版者
日本教育社会学会
雑誌
教育社会学研究 (ISSN:03873145)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.78, pp.235-255, 2006-05-31 (Released:2011-08-04)
参考文献数
25

The recent tendency toward diversification of the educational policy among local governments makes research about the policymaking process important. In particular, Special Zones for Structural Reform (Kozo Kaikaku Tokku) stimulate municipal governments through deregulation. This paper analyzes the factors that lead to differences in educational policy output via Special Zones for Structural Reform.The authors focus on two respects that have not been sufficiently analyzed in prior studies on the educational policymaking process. The first is the relationship among actors. All prior research has reduced the unit of analysis to individual actors, but it has not reached conclusions on the puzzle of “who is the most influential.” The authors of the current study strategically avoid this problem by looking not at the behavior and attributes of individual actors, but at the relationships among actors such as school principals, mayors and local assemblies. The second is the institutional context. Municipal organizations (governments and educational boards) are nested in the institutions of prefectures, and this study explicitly assumes that the differences between the exogenous institutions of educational administration set up by prefectural governments lead to the diversification of the municipal policymaking process and policy output.The study examines the above two factors quantitatively. Bayesian methodsare used to analyze the population data of municipalities. The dependent variables are the introduction of new educational policies via the admission of Special Zones, and proposals for new educational policies. The following results are obtained by fitting the Bayesian hierarchical heteroskedastic binary probit model.As the size of the network among principals grows, communication among them becomes diluted, so it becomes more difficult to suggest and adopt new educational policies.The relationship between the mayor and members of the local assembly has a major impact at the stage where new educational policies are suggested. The larger the distance between the preferences of the mayor and the assembly members is, the smaller the likelihood that new educational policies will be suggested. In other words, the educational board-the agent of political actorshas autonomy when educational policy does not change at the mercy of political actors, and greater distance between the mayor and assembly members brings about a loss in the consistency of agenda setting by political actors.The institutional factors-rules governing personnel changes and the allocation of educational administration staff-are influential in proposals for new educational policies. Major personnel changes amplify the effect of the network size among principals, and end up diluting the density of communication and preserving the status quo in municipalities.