著者

荒井 英治郎

出版者

日本教育行政学会

雑誌

日本教育行政学会年報 (ISSN:09198393)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.32, pp.76-93, 2006-10-13 (Released:2018-01-09)

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the political process surrounding the enactment of the Private School Promotion Subsidy Law ofl975. The Private School Promotion Subsidy Law aims to expand the financial aid program targeted at the current expenditure of private educational institutions including private upper and lower secondary schools, elementary schools and kindergartens as well as private universities. The legislation was initiated by a Diet member belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This paper examines the behavior of the LDP "Bunkyo-zoku" during the legislative process. The term "Bunkyo-zoku" refers to an unofficial clique composed of Diet members sharing an interest in educational matters. Despite the epoch-making nature of this enactment, which set out stipulations concerned with governmental financial aid aimed at alleviating the burden of current expenditure incurred by private educational institutions, most previous research has focused on an analysis, by means of legal interpretation or normative analysis. It has not identified how this law was enacted, what kinds of actors were involved, and what sort of influence they brought to bear on the legislative process. But there can be no doubt that a very important task in research in educational administration is to explain what factors determine the policy-making process in respect of specific policies. It is against this background that this paper has focused on the political process, including in its perspective consideration of the various arguments concerned with giving financial aid to private schools to ease their current expenditure, as well as the political climate at the time concerned. As a result of this analysis, the paper offers the following clarification of the political dynamics and mechanism of the legislative process. The first point is that members of the LDP Bunkyo-zoku gave consideration of the enactment of a bill concerned with financial aid to private schools over a period of many years. The second point concerns the reluctance of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture to enact provisions regarding governmental financial aid to private educational institutions in respect of their current expenditure at the period of time concerned, and associated with this, the strenuous opposition to enactment by the Ministry of Finance because of their wish to prevent a growing fiscal burden. As a result of the attitude of these government agencies, submission to the Diet was delayed. Thirdly, the factor in the political climate that impacted on enactment was the "balanced strength of conservative and progressive factions". Fourthly, although the legislative bill represented a considerable retreat from the original concept, the law cleared the Diet because of the strong leadership shown by the LDP Bunkyo-zoku, strenuous negotiation with government agencies, political horse-trading with Opposition parties and cooperation with private school-affiliated pressure groups. The aim of this paper was to examine the political factors contributing to enactment of financial aid to private educational institutions. The hypothesis put forward in this paper is the following. The LDP has come to play a leading role in educational policy in general as the predominant political party of Japan. In particular, Bunkyo-zoku, a unique actor, has a major effect on policy-making in respect of private schools. Future tasks comprise an examination of other educational policies concerned with private schools so as to verify the validity of this hypothesis.