Uncovering the aspirations to be a leading local government: a content analysis approach

ABSTRACT

Some local governments lead by doing something new or doing it earlier than others, and they gain a reputation as pioneers, but to what extent do their policy makers have leadership aspirations – the desire to make their local governments achieve or maintain a leadership position? To address this question, this study makes the first unique attempt to systematically investigate and measure leadership aspirations at the level of local government by conducting a content analysis of the verbatim assembly minutes of Japanese prefectures. Leadership aspirations remained much lower in most, but not all, of the non-capital prefectures than in Tokyo. Policy makers across prefectures aspired to lead in different areas of action and within different bounds of the social system. These findings prompt future investigators to study the antecedents and determinants of leadership aspirations at the local level and suggest the best areas and social systems for local governments to target.

KEYWORDS:

• Leading local governments
• leadership aspirations
• Japan
• content analysis
• innovation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The full list of flagged words is available from the author on request.

2. This validation process was used to check the coding of statements containing words thought to be related to both chronological leadership and leadership in performance ranking. This list was developed for multiple studies, of which this study is one.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Lee Kuan Yew School Academic Research Fund FY2015 [R-603-000-163-720].

Notes on contributors

Naomi Aoki

Naomi Aoki is an assistant professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. She researches on topics related to public administration and public management, from both interdisciplinary and international perspectives. Her recent publications have appeared in the International Journal of Public Sector Management, Risk Analysis, Cities, Public Management Review, and Public Administration and Development, among other journals.