Seminar Abstracts AY2013

October 15, 2013
Local Governance and Care-needs Certification in Long-term Care Insurance: A case in Fukui Prefecture
Reiko ARAMI (Institute of Social Science)

Abstract
In implementing a long-term care insurance program (LTCI), how do local governments determine service eligibility? The processes of needs certification embody the question of "Who gets what, when, how?", which leads to determining how limited resources are distributed through social security services. This mechanism is a classic question in the study of public policy.

LTCI qualification deals with the difficult problem of reconciling fair treatment and individual needs. Compared with institutional designs for the qualification of eligibility in other types of social security programs, LTCI qualification is unique in that the decision-making authority is shared by investigators, committees, and local officials. As the government delegates their authority to society, the boundaries of welfare states are being transformed. These decisions are embedded in the society, and in turn change the shape of the welfare state. This qualification process is two-fold: various applicant information is finalized and fixed; the information is then discussed by professional committees. Little is known about how actors divide and/or delegate the authority, how they cooperate with each other, and what role local governments play in coordinating the actors through these processes.

In this report, I focus on the roles of local governments that integrate the two processes for LTCI qualification. Using 2011-2012 interviews and surveys of local officials, investigators, and examiners from Fukui Prefecture, Japan, I conduct comparative case studies of local governments. This study will examine how local governments deal with the dilemma of balancing fair treatment and individual needs and what factors enable them to deal with the dilemma effectively.

September 17, 2013
Women's Need for Equal Division of Household Labor: Their Perception and Expression
Makiko FUWA (Tokyo Metropolitan University)

Abstract
While women's employment has increased in various countries, women still shoulder the majority of the responsibility of domestic labor. In dual-earner households, women's gross working hours (in the labor market and the household) are longer than those of men. Nevertheless, because official economic indicators do not account for women's domestic labor, their longer working hours tend to be invisible (Elson, 1999). Although "satisfying individual needs" is one of the most important issues in governance research, previous mainstream studies have used the "household" or the "family" as a unit of analysis. Enough attention has not been paid to individual needs--particularly women's needs--within the household. Thus, the mechanisms by which gender inequality in employment systems and social policies affect individual needs or the division of household labor have been put in a black box in the research. However, how women perceive or express their needs in the household production or division of household labor directly affects policy goals and measures. Thus, this study, utilizing the concept of "adaptive preferences," examines the association between macro-level factors such as gender inequality (normalization of long working hours and the gender gap in wage and promotion) and women's perceptions of and conflict over the division of housework with their partners (Sen, 1985). For this, I employ the International Social Survey Programme (2002) and include thirty-four countries.

July 16, 2013
Reconsidering Governance: Based on the Insights Obtained from the International Symposium
Mari OSAWA (Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo)

Abstract
An international symposium on "Reconsidering Governance" was held by the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), Japan on May 21, 2013, with the purpose of re-examining the concept of governance from theoretical and empirical viewpoints as well as deriving some ideas that would help to organize the insights accumulated so far through various research activities in our institute-wide research project "reconsidering governance". All the three guest speakers, who are experts in the theory of governance, of governance and gender and diversity, and of corporate governance, emphasized that governance is highly local in its nature. The meaning of governance differs from society to society, from time to time, and from person to person. It is a concept that is diverse and contingent.

One of the speakers, Dr. Bevir, also made an important point about the simultaneous rise of governance theories in various fields of social science since the late 1970s. He stressed the need to distinguish the specific "new governance" movement and the more general concept of "governance", and to locate "new governance" into the historical development of modernist social sciences.

Based on the insights obtained from the international symposium, in this presentation, I will start with a common definition of the concept of governance, its operationalization, and discuss its process, especially with relation to social security, and disaster governance. Further, in order to examine the effectiveness of the concept of governance, I will review the findings of the previous institute-wide research projects of the ISS, namely, "Welfare State", "Contemporary Japanese Society", "The Lost Decade?" and "Social Science of Hope".

June 18, 2013
Publicly-held Joint Stock Companies: Its Genius and Paradox
Wataru TANAKA (Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo)

Abstract
The modern corporate law and the social and economic institutions surrounding it have created a distinctive mechanism, “publicly-held joint stock companies.” This mechanism rests on the prohibition against repayment of the invested fund and the free transferability of shares. It is a truly innovative mechanism that enables companies to accumulate many small units of capital with short-term commitment and to convert them into a large amount of investment with permanent commitment. However, this system also creates a paradoxical situation. The shareholders in publicly-held joint stock companies provide the longest commitment as a group than any other corporate stakeholders, and their right to control the management of company is accordingly assured. However, each individual shareholder who exercises the right to control the company has only very short-term commitment to the management of the company. This situation leads to the collective action problem of the shareholders and worsen the agency problem of the management. On the other hand, this situation also generates tension between shareholders and corporate stakeholders. What is unfortunate here is the fact that actions taken by shareholders or solutions provided by the stock market to address the first problem of collective action often worsens the relationship between shareholders and other stakeholders – or, at least, encourages the political and societal pressure to limit shareholders’ actions, based on the belief that such actions worsen the relationship.

In this presentation, I will briefly state the significance of the concept of corporate governance and overview how the concept had been used. Then I will discuss the genius of the publicly-held joint stock companies and examine how the Japanese legal system and economic and social institutions have addressed its paradox. I will conclude with future prospects.