Research trends in local autonomy studies in Japan: text analyses of article titles in the Journal of Urban Management and Local Government Research

Research trends in studies of local governments in Japan have been analysed quantitatively using text-mining methods on approximately 35 years of article titles from the Journal of Urban Management and Local Government Research, from its first issue (1985) to the vol. 35, no. 1 (2020). Co-occurrence network analysis and correspondence analysis were conducted to determine the changes in research interests during the target period. Substantially more research on accounting, finance, management, and reform was seen in the target journal after 1980. The extracted words prefecture, city, case, evaluation, and analysis show the features of local government studies in Japan after the enactment of decentralization reforms in March 2000.
The author interprets the first dimension of the configuration figures of correspondence analysis as an axis of accounting and time; the second dimension concerns financial accountability; and the third dimension concerns public enterprise. The publisher association of the journal has a large number of members who specialise in accounting and local finance, including certified public accountants and tax accountants, and the characteristics of such a membership structure are reflected in these results.