Municipal Amalgamation in Japan

This paper describes the causes and consequences of post-war municipal amalgamations in Japan. It shows that recent amalgamations have been inspired in part by the desire to ensure that municipalities thus formed had sufficient capacity to deliver important public services in such areas as education, sanitation and welfare. It notes that there may be cost-efficiency gains associated with amalgamation in that the costs of delivering public services in Japan appear to be lower for larger municipalities (up to a point). Furthermore, case studies of some prefectures show that voter turnout in elections is not significantly affected by amalgamations