The NPOs engage in the various policy issues in the area, doing the advocacy for the policy proposal and the policy realization. The advocacy NPOs include five types : the theme-type, the union-type, the type which creates forums, the cooperation type among NPOs and the type to support the NPOs in the area. To strengthen an advocacy NPOs, the mechanism which accumulates " the policies, the staff, the funds " is necessary. For its purpose, I propose about the conception of " think tank consortium for the citizens policies ".

We study about the institutions and ideas of democracy which can contribute to good environmental governance. Our conclusion is as follows. Firstly we must find a revised version of democracy for including the interests of future generations. Secondly some kind of new institutions and ideas are needed for overcoming the gap between political boundary and natural boundary. Thirdly democracy for environmental governance needs the process of deliberation to utilize the knowledge and experience of expertise. Fourthly democracy, supported by appropriate citizen education, can make people conscious to natural environment and this is a critical element for good environmental governance.

This research aimed at an international comparison of next generation human resource development on welfare society and policy design. The research revealed among the surveyed countries increasing importance of professional social welfare workers who deal with global social issues on a community level, and the impressive demand of developing those workers.

This project has successfully achieved three goals which were aimed at in the research proposal. First, characteristics of the Japanese employment welfare regime have been clarified comparing to other types of regimes. Second, policy options for regime shift are scrutinized and policy proposals are made for several governmental committees and research institutes. Third, opinion researches on policy preferences among people are operated, and the results are developed into research evidences for considering the future of party politics in Japan.

The aims of this research are to investigate the impacts and reactions in European countries by the Globalization and Europeanization not from the institutional aspects but from the aspects of policy and strategy of social, civil and political actors. In particular, the relations to national governments, parties, civil societies and EU. We intend to analyze the link between internal politics and foreign politics. Specifically, first, to analyze the counter-compete relation among Globalization and Europeanization. Second, comparative study of reorganization of party system in European countries. Third, with respect to actions of civil societies in these countries.
By this research, at first, we could determine the meanings, of Europeanization realized after Maastricht Treaty, with multi-lateral dynamic adaptation between national politics in each country and EU, that caused identity politics. Second, we explained that this process brought about the innovation of social democracy and crisis of corporative politics in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy. Third, there are various attempts of civilization of internal politics and foreign politics, and the reinforcement of civil society, particularly in Germany. Fourth, the rise of new right parties is a very important and dangerous phenomenon. Fifth, European institutions function still as the bulwark against the wave of American neo-liberalization.
We reported these researches in the annual conference of Japan Association for Comparative Politics in 2005, and published the book "European Democracy in a new Century".

This research project has three aims : (1)to explore the differences and similarities regarding public policies and policy processes between Japan and Korea since the 1990s ; (2)to create a general and issue-specific models to account for the differences and similarities ; and (3)to publish research results.
As a product of this project, collaborators completed papers on the following policy areas : financial policy, macro economic policy, currency policy, trade policy, language policy, local government policy, and foreign and security policy. These papers either compared Japan and Korea, or focused on one country.
In addition to examining individual policy area, this research project's another notable achievement lies at conducting a comprehensive comparative analysis of social structure surrounding policy processes in Japan and Korea. During the same three-year period, by relying on additional research funds from other sources, we also conducted surveys in the United States, Germany, China, Russia, and Turkey to analyze the basic structure of groups in various civil societies. While policy network surveys often focus on the most important policy actors, our survey pays attention to all groups, unions, clubs, and associations that exist in civil society.
Through comparative analysis based on these surveys, we came to understand more at the basic group level about various organizations' structure, resources, behavior patterns, relationships with other actors, and the level of politicization. These can serve as an independent variable to explain policy processes and policy outcomes.
During the three-year collaborative research (and previous and consequent researches) with Korean scholars, we carried out the empirical survey to achieve the above stated research aims. The results were published in a book that has almost 500 pages. (Tsujinaka, Yutaka, and Jaeho Yoem, eds.2004. Gendai Kankoku no Shimin Shakai, Rieki Dnatai [Civil Society and Interest Groups in Modern Korea]. Tokyo : Bokutakusha.)
While we were conducting survey in Korea and analyzing the results, we have also conducted similar surveys in China and Russia by using the same framework. (Funding for these surveys came from other source). We then compared the Chinese and Russian data with the Japanese data, and produced a code book as a reference.

I investigated the government policy of die Schroeder coalition government in Germany from the viewpoint of the comparative politics. Prime Minister Schroeder (Social Democratic Party, SPD) and Foreign Minister Fisher (Alliance 90/Green Party) were barely reelected in federal elections in 2002. The reason for the narrow victory is in being not able the accomplishment of the reduction in the number of unemployed. The voter in Germany gave "the second chance" to the red-green coalition government. The reelection of this government and continuance of me center-left government in Sweden immediately before are the one that put the breaks on the decline of the center-left government at the European Union.
The Schroeder government is taking the tight financing policy. The problem of the reform of the social security system is also large. The government is executing the reform project "Agenda 2010" now. The reform of the government accompanies the load. Therefore, it is difficult to acquire the voter's support, and SPD loses the people's support in the public opinion poll. On the other hand, the area where "Renovation of Policy" was done by the red-green coalition is the policies on the "Multi-cultural society", withdraw from the nuclear power plants and new energy policy, eco-tax reform, and "Mainstreaming of gender", In addition, the politics of the consensus building is valued as "New governing style" of the government. Moreover, "Strategy of the sustainability " that aims at making of the economic policy, the environment policy, and the social policy synthesize it is paid to attention.
SPD is continuing the discussion of a new founding charter. One of the important points under discussion is modern understanding of "Social Justice". The Schroeder government needs the government policy with a mid/long-term forecast, and the political stratagem that acquires voter's majority.

The within study, also known as the GEPON (Global Environmental Policy Network) Study is conducted on the complex policy field using a network approach to undertake comparative and transnational surveys and analyses. This study aims to reveal the structural differences and features in each country's policy formation process for major nations in Europe and Asia, as well as the United States. For that reason, interviews targeting 75 (at least over 50) organizations were conducted in each country in Japan, the United States, Germany, South Korea, as well as other advanced nations, and involved international organizations as actors in the global environmental policy movement. In fact, over 100 associations, organizations, and institutes from each of Japan, South Korea, Germany, and the United States could be surveyed. The survey items can be divided into four main sections : Section 1 concerning information exchange relationship (network) and resource exchange relationship (network) among target organizations ; Section 2 concerning the main events in environmental policy from the 1980s until the time of conducting the survey (between the and of 1997 and 2000) and the position of the target organization in regards to these issues ; Section 3 concerning information about the internal structure of the target organizations ; and Section 4, concerning a survey of the network relationships among international organizations. Through this survey and analysis, mainly aimed at all actor groups, the study inquires as to how each country's global environmental policy is formed by identifying the domestic and international information and resource exchange processes. Each actor group can be distinguished in terms of whether there is policy recognition incorporating all features and can be located in terms of comparative politics. Through this analysis, the differences in global environmental policy for each country as well as each international organization can be structurally explained or the significance of structural factors can be specified. This research is a full-scale "comparative" and "network analysis" approach to "global environmental policy," and in regards to these three points, is a particularly valuable empirical analysis. Not only does this investigation identify structural differences among each country in this field, but even from the standpoint of political science, it is an ambitious study that reveals the structural interpenetration of international and domestic politics encompassing NGOs to international organizations within large-scale global network structures. Related case studies were also included in the report concerning this research.

During the research period, we tried to conduct two kinds of surveys (Global Environmental Policy Network Surveys, for short GEPON surveys and Cross-national Surveys on Civil Society Organizations and Interest Groups, for short JIGS surveys) for respective four countries, Japan, Korea, the U.S.and Germany. We actually did them in former three countries and regarding German survey we finally completed them in the year of 2000.
As for the preparation of analysis, first we cleaned the data and published all codebooks in Japanese for total eight surveys : in 1999 for Korea and Japan, and 2001 for the U.S.and Germany.
Regarding the GEPON data, we compare Japan and Korea as for 1) the size of policy networks, concretely the numbers of major actors, 2) the composition of variety of different category organizations, or the proportion of their share in the networks, 3) the influence-evaluation ranking of respective actors. While both countries share the similar composition of actor categories, Japan, interestingly, has relatively small network size with bureaucracy and business bias (relative supremacy of them) rather than those of Korea that shows relatively media and NGOs bias in reverse. In addition, we conducted a network analysis to know the structure of policy networks in Japan in order to draw a structural relational map among actor-clusters.
Concerning the JIGS data, we compared three countries (Japan, Korea and the U.S.), and then wrote a series of articles that is now under preparation for publication as a book. Major findings are related to similarities and differences among three. One example is that in Japan there has been a steady growth of civil society organizations in general but it still has a tendency of developmentalism (producer and business sector bias) in comparison to other two. However even in Japan, in 1990 there is a wave-like surge of NGOs and NPOs that succeeded in institutionalization as NPO law.

We have conducted research on the bilateral relations between Japan and the member-states of the EU (France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, and North European Countries) from 1997-1999. During this period, all the members and associate members of our research group visited the member-states every year in order to interview the officials or specialists of European Commission, collect research materials concerning their own issues and exchange views.
We held the meetings to make a report and discuss on each subject almost every month. In addition, we invited one or two foreign members of our group every year.
On the first year, we paid much attention to establish research framework on our subject. How can we connect global Japan-EU relations to bilateral relations between Japan and each EU member-state? For instance, in terms of economic and commercial topics, bilateral relations between Japan-EU member-states have often been characterized by global Japan-EU relations. On the political level, concerned member-states could arrive to harmonious compromise in favor of bilateral relations. In the second year, we held almost every month the research meeting for exchange of opinions and presentation of document.
In the third year, we endeavored ourselves to achieve general estimation on Japan-EU member-state bilateral relations, but we did not dare to achieve definitive common point of view. For the time being, we present our temporary conclusion on each subject.

This research has aimed to investigate and to analyze the current state of an environmental policy of Japan from the aspect of the comparison with an integrated environmental policy in EU and Germany. The target is to restructure an industrial society with the ecology aspect. In the investigation, I focused environmental policy at the cities level.
As for an environmental policy at the cities in Germany, it is materialized by executing Local agenda 21, and the cooperation and the participation of various actors in the region are valued.
In Japan, the integrated environmental policy is attempted at the country, the prefectures, and the cities level. The cooperation system of various actors such as the administration, the enterprises, and the citizens, the environmental basic plans and the progress control are given as problems of the integrated environmental policy in the municipality. Moreover, making an environmental group and the civic group a network is tried as indicated in the Tama region. In the municipality, the attestation acquisition of ISO 14001, which is an international standard of environmental management, from 1998 is advanced.
The realities of an integrated environmental policy at the Tokyo Metropolis (Tama area etc.) and Kanagawa Pref (Kawasaki City etc.), where material was collected by this investigation, are scheduled for the case to be analyzed continuously.

The main findings of the Global Environmental Policy Network surveys conducted between Korea and Japan over the past 3 years are shown as follows (we have 2 other ongoing projects concerning the US and Germany which apply the same research framework) ;
(i) Prior to the selection of most influential actors in the global atmospheric policy-making, we requested both around 10 outside referees and all the related actors themselves to evaluate within the group on the other. The selection process was seen to be appropriate based on the calculation that the correlation between the 2-group evaluations was more than 0.7.
(ii) The patterns of the constitution of actors in Korea and Japan were quite similar. The following list is the constitution of those actors in order by share : 1. NGOs, Government-related actors, 2. Business associations, governmental think tanks, and big enterprises, 3. Mass media, Business peak associations, Advisory councils.
(iii) The peer-evaluation among fairly relevant actors shows a slight difference in the perceived influence between Japan and Korea. In Korea, the influence of mass media and politicians as well as international organizations and NGOs are relatively stronger than in Japan.
(iv) To clarify the role of the information network, we examined how the points of the evaluation correlate to the network-related variables such as the "indegree (the number of being referred to by others)" and how the variables show particular emergent property in such a network, notably "cantrality". The high degree of correlation indicates that the assumption of the information network in this area so far is robust.
(v) As for macro-level structure of information exchange and support networks, the tangible result based on the analysis will be reported shortly.

1) EC integration began to assume a new aspect in February 1992, when the epoch-making Maastricht Treaty was signed. In order to grasp the whole current state of European integration, this study offer a general understanding of three aspects of this integration, namely the issues of "completion" (market integration), "deepening" (economic and political integration), and "enlargement" (for example, the creation of the EEA between the coutries of EFTA and the EC member atates, or the association agreements with various coutries of the former USSR and eastern Europe).
2) In order to understand the process of EC integratin enough, we researched the medium-sized and smaller member states as well as the larger member states (Germany, France, United Kingdom). And we also took those non-member states who wish to join the Union, and other neighboring countries in consideration. The integration process is examined in relation to each country's internal political changes, as well as to the mutual interaction between the two levels.Our analysis shows that European-wide environmental problems, national or ethnic problems and government-level disputes regarding the reorganization of the welface atate have resulted in the appearance of new political parties (such as the Green Party, or nationalist or regional parties) or in the struggle for existing parties to redifine their principles. These examples show that the effects of individual countries' characteristics upon integration process must be studies alongside the common influence of EC integration upon political changes within various coutries.
3) EC as political organization has taken the character of a kind of supranational political organization. So the status of the modern nation-atate is being undermined. This study conciders the challenge to the nation-satate (including from subnational units such as ethnic groups and an increasing number of social movements), and examines the future possibilities for the nation-state.