Characteristics and changes in Japanese public administration research: statistical content analyses of article titles in Public Administration Review Quarterly (1978–2019)

Abstract

The objective of this study is to understand features of Japan’s public administration research and the changes it has undergone, by using content analyses. To this end, this study quantitatively explains research trends in postwar administrative studies in Japan by statistically analyzing article titles from the Public Administration Review Quarterly over the course of nearly 40 years. Co-occurrence network and correspondence analyses revealed the changes in research interests. There was substantially more research on administrative reforms through the postwar Showa and Heisei eras. The configuration of the correspondence analysis indicates that the first dimension is concerned with administrative reforms, the second with historical events or administrative systems, and the third with evaluations and kaizen. The co-occurrence network analysis show that two extracted compound words—the United States and the United Kingdom—were very common in studies during the Showa era (1978–1988). This suggests that Japan’s public administration was influenced by the West during this period. Japan’s policies and institutions became a feature of these studies during the Heisei era (1989–2018). The results of this analysis is partially similar to the author’s previous studies on another Japanese administrative studies journal. One commonality of the results of the analysis is that the dimension related to administrative reform was found in the correspondence analysis. In this study, the first principal component was administrative reform, and Moteki’s (Hiroshima Law J 43:205–235, 2020) correspondence analysis also found “reform,” “policy evaluation” and “governance” as characteristic extracted terms in the 2000s.