Humanitarian co-production in local government: the case of natural disaster volunteering in Japan

ABSTRACT

Given ongoing financial stringency, co-production in local government systems worldwide has attracted increasing attention in the literature. Disaster relief volunteering represents an important form of local co-production in which local authorities, community groups and volunteers work collaboratively at addressing the many humanitarian needs that arise following natural disasters. For disaster relief co-production to be successful, the comparative advantages of all participating groups must be harnessed so as to synchronise their contributions and thereby maximise their beneficial impact. Given the sheer scale of cooperative disaster relief operations in Japan involving local government, civic groups and disaster volunteers, much can be learned from the Japanese experience. In this paper, we examine co-production in Japanese disaster relief programs through the prism of the conceptual and empirical literature as well as through two recent illuminative case studies. Various policy implications are drawn from this analysis which are applicable beyond Japanese local government.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-production
• Japan
• local government
• natural disasters
• volunteering

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Brian Dollery

Brian Dollery is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Local Government at the University of New England. He has written extensively on local government, especially on local government structure, finance and reform. Recent books include: with Harry Kitching, Mel McMillan and Anwar Shah, Local Public, Fiscal and Financial Governance: An International Perspective (2020, Palgrave Macmillan) and, with Ian Tiley (eds) Perspectives on Australian Local Government Reform (2015, Federation Press).

Yukio Kinoshita

Yukio Kinoshita is an associate professor of farm management and agricultural economics at the Faculty of Agriculture of the Iwate University, Japan. His studies centre on agricultural economics, environmental policy, farm management and regional development in Japan and other developed countries. He has published articles and book chapters, as well as textbooks on farm management, and his most recent publication, with Nobuo Kimura, is ‘Are farming companies emerging from non-agricultural sector better managed than conventional farms in Japan?’ in the International Journal of Agricultural Management 8 (1): 12–21.

Keiichi Yamazaki

Keiichi Yamazaki is a professor in the Department of Economics at the Faculty of International Social Sciences at Yokohama National University, Japan, where he lectures on developing economies. His interests include regional development, local public finance and community development, and he focuses on Latin America as well as Japan. He has published textbooks, book chapters and articles, mostly in Japanese, and has recently been one of the editors of the Japanese edition of Enciclopédia do Brasil Contemprâneo, published in 2016.