Backstage in a Bureaucracy: Politics and Public Service (A Latitude 20 Book)

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As a result of the general tendency towards change, there is no robust comparative theory to explain the degree of fiscal decentralization across countries, and constructing one seems a daunting challenge. After reviewing several analyses that focus on geography and other non-institutional variables, Gibson and Batley are led to conclude that "there is a large variation between countries unexplained by and French Pragmatism: Centre-Local Policymaking in the Welfare State.

The quote is from Percy Allen, op. Arnold Heidenheimer et al. The goal here is not to construct a rigorous comparative theory, because the institutional context can affect the interpretation of even seemingly unambiguous indices of measurement. To take what should be a rather straightforward case, Dutch municipal and regional governments collect only about 10 percent of what they spend and hence would seem enmmeshed in a centralized system.

However, some analysts suggest the Dutch system of intergovernmental relations confers abundant local autonomy. Their arguments centre on the representative function played by the Vereniging van Nederlands Gemeenten VNG , the Dutch association of local governments. Through this institution, local governments negotiate their levels of aid from the central state, which has "little direct leverage on policies in direct localities.

Jan Simonis, an expert on Dutch intergovernmental affairs, interprets the same institution in a completely different way. Moreover, the administrative style is supported by established institutional practices in the Netherlands, which tend to discourage the expansion of differences among the local authorities through "increased revenue from local taxes.

In fact, not all the local authorities were fully in support of the proposal: I deliberately belabour this point because the desire to find simple explanations for, or measures of, complex phenomena is both the genius of good social science and the source of appalling reductionism by even brilliant social scientists. Simonis,"Decentralization in the Netherlands: Volume 21, Number 1, spring , p. Lijphardt concludes that because Japanese local authorities collect over 30 percent of their own revenues, they are highly autonomous actors.

I will show below that Lijphardt's approach is only the most glaring case that neglects the institutional context of MOHA's tax controls. But fiscal sociology wields a razor worthy of William of Ockham in its focus on control over finances. In this respect, the most fractious intergovernmental fiscal politics centre on subnational governments' autonomous access to fiscal resources. Indeed, the fiscal history of many, if not most, states is notable for the centre's efforts to restrict the local authorities' range of independent action in the sphere of revenues and expenditures.

What has varied is the institutional context in which these efforts occurred, permitting greater or lesser degrees of central control. Yale University P ress , Indeed, even where multiple variables are used to a s s e s s relative levels of centralization, the results tend to be quite ambiguous; see Michael Peillon, "Welfare and State Centralization," West European Politics. Basi l Blackwell, Ashford 51 Hence, it does to a large extent matter whether subnational governments collect their own revenues and set their own tax rates.

Peters, for example, notes in his impressive comparative work on tax politics that "local governments with more independent revenue sources can, everything else being equal, do more of what they choose rather than what the central government wants them to do. These points have not adequately been understood in analyses of Japan because many scholars, like Liphardt, rely on misleading statistical data without researching the institutional relationship behind the figures. Others have been keen to overturn the old orthodoxy by showing that specific subsidies do not afford close, top-down control, but they too have neglected to analyze the institutions and incentives of intergovernmental tax politics.

By contrast, progressive Japanese public finance scholars often do better comparative work on intergovernmental relations than their counterparts in d iscusses the institutional background to the apparent paradox of stronger centralized control in the UK than in France.

Guy Peters, The Politics of Taxation: Public Finance and Local Autonomy in Japan In Japanese, and especially among progressive public finance scholars, there is an extensive literature that calls for fiscal decentralization. This work is part of a critical tradition that stretches back at least to the Taisho democracy period, when pressures for fiscal decentralization were frequently asserted.

And in contemporary Japan, the local community and its needs are an increasingly potent source of decentralist pressures. Pre-war editions of journals such as Toshi Mondai carry numerous articles showing how salient these pressures were, especially during discussions of major tax reforms in the s and s. Kurt Steiner, Local Government in Japan. Stanford University Press , , pp. Hence largely autonomous, de jure as well as de facto, urban centres such as developed in the West were absent.

However, his claim that the relations between the feudal state and local areas were "diffuse" and characterized by a "vacuum of government" rather than the "concept of the right to local self-government" does not logically preclude the existence of a large sphere of relatively autonomous local affairs, especially activities governed by custom rather than explicit law. In any case, the power of decentralization as a rhetorical device is undeniable.

Certainly there are dissenting voices, from individuals who point to fiscal discipline and other presumed benefits of centralization, but they are clearly the minority. The rise of decentralization as a somewhat ambiguous new orthodoxy is reflected in other central state ministries' concern about MOHA's ability to use the concept as a slogan, in a campaign in which the prize is more likely to be a recirculation of power among the central ministries than its actual devolution to the local authorities.

Few of their accounts examine the central state as the disaggregated entity it actually is, nor are they particularly concerned with the policymaking milieu that reproduces the centralized fiscal state. They focus instead on the means of fiscal control, and to this end many of them provide excellent accounts of the workings of the Japanese intergovernmental fiscal system. Many also examine the system in a comparative light, and this dissertation has benefited from having them to draw on. Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton University Press, , pp.

Kengen ijou gutaisaku naku" [The road to decentralization: What is needed, though, is to take the insights from such studies and invest them with the greater political understanding that can be achieved through an historical institutionalist analysis. Political Science and Local Autonomy in Japan Political science accounts of Japan's intergovernmental relations have come largely to emphasize the autonomy of local governments, asserting that fiscal constraints are much exaggerated.

This signal change in perceptions engendered major works that depicted a large scope for local activism and effectiveness Much of this work followed the growth of ci t izens' movements and the election of local progressive politicians in the s, which appeared to herald a new era of intense local act ivism in Japanese democracy; see, for example, Ronald Aqua, "Politics and Performance in Japanese Municipalities" Unpublished PhD. Stephen Reed, Japanese Prefectures and Policymaking.

Princeton University Press , They do not reject the fact of f iscal centralization, but they do argue that there is more local autonomy than was previously thought. A more recent analysis concedes that local f iscal autonomy made little headway in the s, but it employs a public choice framework of analysis that fails to disaggregate Japan 's central government into separate bureaucratic institutions.

The Case of Japan. The pluralist approach favoured by the new orthodoxy causes it to neglect the larger institutional environment, or fiscal regime. Moreover, in asserting the importance of local activism against the centre, it has not paid adequate attention to the divergent and at times manipulable interests among the local authorities nor the emphasis in tax control on promoting uniformity as equity.

This last item is especially important, I argue, because the crisis-ridden history of Japan's intergovernmental relations has left deep imprints on the shape of the fiscal regime and the purpose of its associated institutions. The earlier work also centres for the most part on the fiscally expansive years before the oil shocks of the s. The shock heralded the secular decline in the Japanese economy's rate of growth; and the shock in , the rise of a protracted austerity campaign under the slogan of "administrative reform.

This was especially notable in the case of Tokyo Governor Minobe.

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The experience of Japan's largest subnational government surely has significance for the debate on the degree of decentralization and the relevance of the centre's 3 9 A notable example is Douglas Ashford, British Dogmatism and French Pragmatism: Centre-Local 56 fiscal controls. Hence this aspect needs to be incorporated into discussions of local autonomy in Japan. This is because the local authorities do the majority of programme spending and receive a large transfer of general grants from the centre. Moreover, he emphasizes cases where the local authorities have mounted legal challenges to specific tax provisions and where they have ignored MOHA directives, such as on the need to reduce local salaries due to Japan's mounting fiscal problems in the wake of the oil shock.

But Aqua overlooks the fact that locally collected revenues are not based on autonomous taxes. There is some scope for choice at the local level, to be sure, but MOHA is able to enforce the rates through the operation of the transfers it manages, including the Local Allocation Tax and the Consumption Transfer Tax. Allen and Unwin, MOHA's calculations assume, unless the ministry has given explicit approval to an exception, that a given local authority is imposing a specific tax at the standard rate. If such is not the case, the local body will forfeit some portion of the transfers it would otherwise be entitled to.

Moreover, Aqua comments approvingly on the shift to general grants mainly via the Allocation Tax and away from the specific subsidies favoured by line ministries such as Construction, Education, and Health and Welfare. He sees this trend as indicative of a reduction in fiscal centralization, as local governments may use the general revenues "to meet any legal financial commitments.

The context in which the level of grant increases has to be examined before such a verdict can be rendered, yet this was not done in Aqua's work nor in subsequent studies that cited his argument as evidence of fiscal decentralization. Many public finance analysts in Japan point out, by contrast, that the role of the Local Allocation Tax has shifted from one of simple fiscal equalization to one of paying down accumulations of debt.

Debates in the comparative literature also recognize the need to inquire into the institutional circumstances of the particular country's intergovernmental relations before concluding whether increased general transfers actually mean greater local fiscal autonomy. One authoritative source notes, for example, that unrestricted grants do not necessarily mean that the recipient local governments are free to spend the money as they see fit.

The reason is that the centre may impose "specified services at specified levels. Once this occurs, local governments become far more dependent on national transfers, not simply to support peripheral projects, but also to support the very heart of the local operating budget. In this sense the shift to unrestricted grants increases local dependency. This constraint can be quite a severe one at times, as former Tokyo Governor Minobe discovered in the mids.

One would think the new wave of literature stressing the growing scope for local policymaking --especially under the progressive leadership of Kyoto and Tokyo a generation ago -- would discuss the role MOHA's fiscal controls played in derailing the Minobe regime's plans for expanding Tokyo's expenditures and tax base. Kurt See Arnold Heidenheimer et al. Minobe Ryoukichi, along with Kyoto Governor Ninagawa Torazou, was a major symbol of progressive control of local government in the s and s.

See Ellis Krauss, "Opposition in Power: See "Progressive Local Administrations: But this is only half the story: Steven Reed also makes note of the case. But he does so only in passing and as an example of a renegade among the local authorities, most of whom "accept [MOHA's] definition of sound financial management. A recent and well-documented work by Jinno Naohiko finds much more significance in Minobe's defeat in the fiscal war. Jinno notes that Minobe's strategy after was to fight for control over revenues at the local level and thereby expand authority over expenditures as well.

This plan required that the central authorities back down in the face of his challenge, but the effort ended in humiliation for Minobe rather than the acquiescence of MOHA. The fiscal bind for Tokyo's government in the early s was that it ran out of ways to shift funds around in order to cover personnel expenses. Tokyo's 20 percent annual increases in spending were, prior to , paid for through equivalent increases in revenues.

But the economic effects of the oil shock slashed corporate tax receipts, upon which the city is highly dependent. Moreover, as an anti-inflation measure fees for public services were not to be raised. Though cuts were made in capital investment and the funds transferred to cover salaries, the limit had been reached with that strategy.

This move, and the refusal to yield to Tokyo's pressure for more tax room, shoved Minobe onto the path of fiscal reconstruction. In other words, the spur to austerity was the centre's control of the fiscal system through MOHA's administrative authority. Minobe's welfarist spending priorities had a significant base of popular support, but one inadequately organized for the task of bringing overwhelming pressure on the postwar fiscal regime.

Many health and welfare measure adopted by the central government in the s were in fact originated late in the previous decade by progressive local 4 7 J inno Naohiko, "Toshi Keiei no Hatan kara Saiken e" [From Failure to Reconstruction in Urban Management] Toshi o Keieisuru [Urban Management]. Toshi Shuppan, , pp. So with greater fiscal autonomy, local authorities might well have had the fiscal stamina to maintain policy leadership and push harder against the boundaries of conservative policymaking.

But the centralized fiscal regime and its tax and debt controls held against Minobe's challenge to the constraints on the local tax base. This challenge can, in retrospect, be seen as effectively centring on whether progressives or conservatives would lead the expansion of Japan's welfare state. Certainly even had Minobe triumphed at this stage, he may in the end have failed to maintain Tokyo taxpayers' support with a programme of providing enhanced services for increased local levies.

But on the other hand, the fiscal scale of Tokyo in the Japanese system is such that if the Minobe administration had triumphed against MOHA and the conservative hierarchy, he would have profoundly shifted the base of Japan's intergovernmental fiscal regime. This in turn might have helped erode in part the Japanese public's pronounced and institutionalized aversion to even moderate levels of taxation. The rout of Minobe in the fiscal war therefore opened the door to the "administrative reform" fiscal conservatism of the s, which implemented cutbacks to an already small fiscal state.

Refuting the "Vertical Control Model" Other political science work, as I mentioned above, tends to follow Aqua's lead 63 in downplaying the significance of financial controls from the central state. Muramatsu Michio, for example, rejects the "vertical control model," which he characterizes as one that centres on financial and administrative dominance of the local authorities by the central bureaucracy. The advocates of the model, Muramatsu notes, point to the early postwar proliferation of delegated functions that ministries had written into the Local Autonomy Law in order to maintain control over the authorities.

The functions allow central ministries to compel local governments to undertake specific duties under the former's tutelage, and as noted in the introduction generally involve the extension of financing through specific subsidies.

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Local governments, depending on the issue at hand, can play central bureaucracies off one against the other in Japan's fragmented system of centralized government. Muramatsu thus correctly argues that the vertical control thesis has been content to assume that formal lines of authority are actual lines of authority, unmediated by the politics of local policymaking and 4 8 The best description in English of how the sys tem works is in Richard Samuels, The Politics of Regional Policy in Japan: It refers to the fact that ministries and agencies of the central government have formal administrative authority over their functionally similar counterpart local agencies; e.

In place of vertical control, Muramatsu advances a "lateral political competition model. Muramatsu argues that "three-fourths of total government expenditures are made by local governments. Sensitive to people's needs and demands, local governments have created a series of new programs. Local expenditures, as a proportion of total government spending, declined from a peak of But that only returned them to about the level 65 they had been in , when they were In fact, Japan's fiscal regime has always been marked by a great degree of deconcentration in expenditures versus concentration in revenues.

Tracking statistical movements in the relative scale of local expenditures does not really "prove" much, except that the share of local government in overall spending has declined since the peak in Whether that means there was increased fiscal centralization is unclear. The type of expenditures and the influences on them need a deeper analysis before it can be concluded that a sea change occurred.

What is clear from the s, though, is that the central state used tax and debt controls to rein in the policymaking autonomy of the most powerful of the local authorities, Tokyo. Here, then, is another case where MOHA's fiscal controls and its two-faced role vis-a-vis local governments are not adequately incorporated into the analyses.

While it is correct to question the assumptions of the vertical control model, it is also important to recall that its adherents did not construct it out of thin air. Certainly those who depicted specific grants as unambiguous means 5 0 The data are in Jinshichiro Yonehara, "Relations Between the National and Local Governments," 66 of central control were exaggerating the effectiveness of formal controls and underestimating political variables.

Reed notes that the s saw a surprising spurt of policymaking at the local level in Japan. Though he also points out how dependent the activism was on ample local finances, he fails to note the effectiveness of MOHA's debt controls in curtailing local innovation p. The specific mechanisms of control in the Japanese or any other case is important. That is, it makes a significant institutional difference if the limits on local fiscal autonomy are, as in the United States, imposed through the bond markets and groups of electors or, as in Japan, a bureaucratic agency and the conservative political hierarchy in the central state.

Institutionalizing the Local System A more recent contribution from Akizuki Kengo, part of a larger study of the role of Japan's bureaucracy in economic development, adopts a clearly meso-level institutionalist perspective on the intergovernmental system and the role Japan's Public Sector, op.

Similar authors to follow

Akizuki depicts MOHA as the pivotal agency in intergovernmental relations and stresses that it and the intergovernmental fiscal system present Japan's local authorities with a "financial safeguard" and provide "a set of stable rules for actors involved in intergovernmental processes, which enhance their willingness to participate. He points out that the ministry is very small and hence well able to inculcate its members with agency goals.

Moreover, the unusually extensive practice of sending member bureaucrats for service in the local areas creates a strong network of contacts between MOHA and its clients, the local governments. Thus MOHA intercedes between the local authorities and the other central-state agencies both in order to protect local interests as well as its own organizational turf. In effect, Akizuki takes a step back from the revisionist perspective that has come to shape most political science commentary on Japan's intergovernmental relations.

Instead of downplaying the significance of fiscal controls, he concedes that the controls tend to hem in subnational governments even though they do enjoy more policymaking autonomy than 5 1 Cited in Samuels, The Politics of Regional Policy in Japan: Yet Akizuki neglects the historical dimension, a problem that is most notable when he sets out to explain MOHA's near-fetish for fiscal stability among local governments.

Akizuki suggests the source of this policy orientation can be found in MOHA's structural position in the central state: It must negotiate with MOF over financial matters and must compete with the line ministries for policy initiatives and jurisdiction.

These central rivals will jump on [MOHA] as soon as local governments show any signs of disarray. In order to cope with the pressures from these ministries, [MOHA] must keep local governments in order. Ironically, [MOHA], which is perhaps the most liberal, understanding, and supportive agency for local governments, is also the most strictly institutionalized for central control over them. MOHA's powers stem from fiscal history and deliberate choices by postwar bureaucratics to avoid the chaos of decentralization.

In other words, it is necessary to examine history in order to understand institutional structure and how the latter helps shape choices in the present. The next chapter turns to examine in detail the fiscal history and politics that gave rise to Japan's system. But in operation, it has revealed numerous major faults, especially the worsening inequities in local tax burdens Miyoshi Shigeo Home Ministry Bureaucrat cited in Here we have with the clarity of a textbook example what we mean by the crisis of a fiscal system: The local authorities relied heavily on a myriad of local taxes and contributions as well as surtaxes imposed on the national taxes, at flat rates set according to central-state approval.

Transfers from the central government, as was the case in most countries, were negligible in the prewar era. The period's fiscal system has in consequence been characterized as one that was "decentralized and 71 deconcentrated" bunkenteki bunsan shisutemu , because central-state authority over the local tax regime emphasized tax denial rather than outright control hence, "decentralization" and the public services that did exist were mostly provided at the local level hence, "deconcentration".

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Through tax denial the central authorities sought to keep their local counterparts from expanding and encroaching on tax fields that the central state was using to fund national defence and industrial development. From the fiscal sociology perspective, subnational government was virtually a separate sphere of fiscal activity, one whose scale was restricted by the emphasis on benefit taxation and extremely limited redistribution.

As was the case in many other countries, however, the growth of local needs and differences in local fiscal capacity began to pose a fundamental crisis for the prewar system. The crisis in Japan was essentially the same as elsewhere, though of course viewed from the meso-level of analysis it manifested itself and was resolved in a very different institutional context. Note also that prewar public services were quite rudimentary and local taxation often involved customary exact ions, for local projects and facilities such as shrines, imposed roughly according to ability to pay. This does not mean they completely ignored this area of administrative activity, because even in the prewar years there were grounds for fiscal competition between the two.

In fact, the Home Ministry's founding in January of was soon accompanied by a struggle with MOF over local tax reform. MOF had been solely in control of local affairs prior to the institution of the Home Ministry,2 and was working on a tax reform at the time. Tax reform had become an issue because of unfairness in the tax system, but local bureaucrats used the opportunity to press for the separation of local from national taxes.

Their goal was to secure a measure of autonomous local taxation. The effectiveness of this lobbying for local fiscal autonomy greatly increased with the institution of the Home Ministry, and in September of MOF was compelled to draw up a law that recognized taxation at the prefectural level as distinct from that of the national level. Local public finance, and especially transfers from the central state, was too small-scale to excite much central bureaucratic attention and internecine conflict.

The University of Arizona Press, The prefectural level was the fulcrum of the overall system, as the Home Ministry appointed the prefect and he oversaw administration at the lower levels. Certainly the ministry had to contend with other central agencies' efforts to use local government as a tool for implementing national policies. But the Home Ministry contained within itself an enormous range of functions; so many in fact that in postwar Japan they were parcelled out to the new ministries of Construction, Home Affairs, Labour, Health and Welfare, and Justice.

Hence the Home Ministry fairly enveloped local government, and could impose its ends directly via ordinances and the power of appointment. MOHA's contemporary leverage through control of much of the local fiscal system is a poor substitute for its predecessor's far larger sphere of administrative preeminence. The search for answers to the problem led to various studies, especially through the Special Fiscal Economy Advisory Commission Rinji Zaisei Keizai Chousakai , a shingikai set up in in order to investigate Japan's political economy for areas in need of reform.

Of particular concern was stagnation and decline in " S e e , e. Alleviating rural distress made the adoption of a redistributive system and comprehensive income taxation appear necessary to social-policy bureaucrats, especially those in MOF and the Home Ministry. The decline of Japan's rural economy relative to the modernized, industrial sector therefore impelled large-scale reform of the tax system. The s saw the bureaucracy mount an effort towards comprehensive tax reform; but strong opposition from business interests stymied this effort to adjust the structure of public finance to 5 Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan, Berkeley: University of California P ress , , pp.

The phenomenon was also evident in fiscal affairs. The problems the farmers suffered are evident in the frequency of uprisings and other disturbances, along with the rapid increase of tenanted landholdings. He also observes that "[t]he fact that the percentage share of the consolidated tax receipts contributed by the land tax fell sharply from about 60 percent in to 15 percent in did not necessari ly lessen the tax burden.

In fact it might have increased the burden since a substantial portion of the indirect taxes fell on the peasants as purchasers of the taxed products. Princeton University Press , , pp. According to comparative research done by H. Hinrichs, general fiscal evolution shows a movement from land taxes and poll taxes to "customs duties and modern forms of direct taxation such as income tax and corporation tax. It was introduced in and raised considerably in the s and again in Economic development was heavily subsidized via the agricultural surplus, but development drew labour away from the rural areas and into the cities.

Volume 48 Number 6, November The Economic Development of Japan: A Quantitative Study, 2nd Edition. Martin's Press, , pp. In this milieu, the Showa Panic arrived like a typhoon to wreak even more havoc, and compelled the Home Ministry to undertake intensive research on a programme for fiscal redistribution. In August of , The Home Ministry in fact wrote up a bill, the "Chihou Zaisei Chousei Seido Youkouan" [Outline for a System of Local Fiscal Adjustment], which sought to redistribute according to population and the fiscal resources of local authorities. MOF's Tax Bureau, too, was driven to examine the means available for a system of fiscal redistribution, as organized rural protest manifested itself in politics.

However, differences emerged in the two bureaucracies' plans for funding the structure of redistribution. The Home Ministry programme for fiscal redistribution was aimed solely at funding reductions in local tax burdens, through increases in national income, capital-interest, and inheritance taxes as well as the institution of a luxury tax. By contrast, the MOF proposal was for the transfer of the local Household Tax to the national level, after which the funds would be used for fiscal equalization.

In other words, MOF was seeking to centralize taxation -- a programme that would have eroded local fiscal autonomy. Nor were these the only proposals on the agenda, as in the wake of the Showa Panic, the Seiyukai 's Tanaka Cabinet came to power and instituted a Tax Advisory Commission Zeisei Chousakai.

The Commission reported in 77 December of , and advocated that the land tax be shifted to the local authorities. This recommendation constituted a reversal from the previous reliance on surtaxes, the hallmark of the Kenseikai governments' approach to local fiscal reform. Reflecting local pressures for devolution of major national taxes, 9 the proposal was drawn up in a bill that included a transfer of the Business Tax to the local authorities, and was then presented to the Imperial Diet in However, the bill came to naught in the legislative proceedings because of opposition from the aristocratic clique.

Afterwards, simply delegating taxes to the local level was not to re-emerge as a serious policy option. The highest political hurdle confronting the reallocation of taxes was the concern that such would undermine the fiscal resources of the central state. Opposition in the Imperial Diet focused on the possible need for greater central revenues in order to fund industrial development and equip the country's military. In addition, however, some actors recognized that the uneven growth of the local economies made such a tax shift unwise. The reason was that the fiscal imbalance among the local authorities would have worsened in the absence of a redistributive mechanism.

Toyo Keizai Shinposha, , pp. Gradually, the policy options narrowed in the direction of fiscal redistribution based on centralized taxation, and especially the lucrative income tax. Ratio of Local to National Direct Taxes. Gyousei , , pp. The scale of the fiscal problem in the prewar period is indicated in table 3.

This table presents the ratios of the amount of local taxes to national direct taxes 1 1 for selected prefectures and major cities. As the data show, the spread of relative tax burdens was very great in prewar Japan, due to uneven economic development and the attendant wide variations in fiscal capacity. Hence the plans for fiscal redistribution.

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The Home Ministry had a particularly strong interest in these fiscal problems, and not only because of its extensive networks of personnel in local governments. An even more powerful motivating force was the ministry's de facto loss of authority to dictate local tax rates. That the Home Ministry was not able to enforce its jurisdiction over local tax rates ie, the surtaxes on national taxes is an important and, for some perhaps, a surprising point. The ministry is the archetype of Japan's prewar bureaucratic authoritarianism, and dominated local governments through the appointment of key personnel and a vast array of directives.

But the prewar 80 depression caused such a divergence in local fiscal capacities that the ministry could not credibly demand that tax rates be balanced among the local authorities. Uniform tax rates on grossly unequal tax bases produce commensurately disproportionate streams of revenue per capita. This simple fact made it necessary to increase tax rates in fiscally weaker areas, with the ministry's resigned acknowledgement of the unavoidable. Restoration of effective control over, and balance among, local taxes required redistribution to bolster the fiscal position of weaker administrative entities.

But a sufficiently redistributive scheme would require increased taxes to fund it; and increasing taxes, under the prewar fiscal system, meant essentially to impose an even greater burden on the rural interests who were already being heavily taxed relative to urban interests. Shifting more of the tax burden, via income taxes, onto urban business interests had not been accomplished in the s, due to the political coalitions of the Taisho Democracy era