부산대학교 도서관

This paper examines the policy agenda setting process and the goals and means of the Japanese government’s overcoming population decline and vitalizing local economy policy and provides practical implications with Korean government. Japanese government has devised the counteractive policy against the publics’ widely spread awareness on the demise of local economy in Japan. It has taken 204 days, which the government reacted promptly on the social issue, to legislate an act on overcoming population and vitalizing local economy since an exemplary incident of the death of local economy occurred. There were two rationale on the government prompt reaction. First, when the social issues such as low birth rate, aging society, and population concentration trend in metropolitan area are very severely recognized, the possibility that the policy issue can be adopted is increased. Second, the proactive attitude of Shinzo Abe government who has a strong political background has affected deeply. Abe’s government has established a policy on local economy revitalization as a national strategy while created a new terminology of overcoming population decline and vitalizing local economy. When an initiating group has a strong political background, a policy agenda can be easily formed as a government policy. The policy is still in the early stages and hard to evaluate its results, but it has great implications for Korean society which experiences similar social problems. It needs to recognize a local economy revitalization policy as a national vision and to devise a policy on reforming social, governmental, and economic systems by both central and local governments together.