Legitimacy or Legitimation?

After years of Great East Japan Earthquake, day and day, disparities in restoration among the condition similar regions are seen as social problem.  In this study, we explore the limitation of this schematic way of making problem, through the process-oriented research of local governments’ decision-making concerning their restorations.  Certainly, restoration disparities among regions are verified statistically, for instance, numerical difference of population recovery rate.  Furthermore, the popularly supported national policies have been made to target restoration disparities among regions.  However, each of region or its local government has been permitted to decide distinctive plan or style of restoration.  After the Second World War, Japanese local government is not just bound by national law but also become to be allowed to pursued its autonomy.  Additionally, this degree of allowance of local autonomy has increased with successive fiscal crisis of national government.  In fact, through our follow-up survey of the decision-making process of several similar damaged regions, we reveal the restoration disparities among regions could be seen as the result of distinctive determination of each local government.  As we attempt to identify the “distinctiveness” of determination of local government, in this research we pay attention to the different ways of restoration financing between condition similar local governments.  The results show differentiation of financing: from dependence just on local tax revenue and national subsidy to but also on donation from residents, corporations and foundations and financial assistance of international NGOs and so on.  In accordance with pluralization of sources of fund for restoration, local governments have been required the plural logics of persuasion or conviction of several stakeholders with varying interests.  Based on this research, we could call the restoration difference among regions not as disparities subject to given single “legitimacy” but divergence arisen from “legitimations” of distinctive local governments.