日本의 地方分權改革과 條例制定權에 관한 考察

The Local Autonomy, the basis of grassroots democracy, has been an important task in managing a state throughout the entire history of human beings. However, the practical decentralization which enables the local administration is recently one of the difficult issues of each state. Reformation for decentralization has been actively implemented in Japan as well as Korea. As the institutional mandatory affairs were closed with respect to the ordinance legislation by local authorities for the reformation of decentralization in Japan, a remarkable change is expected. This paper investigated the relationship between the acts and ordinances on the aspect of the expansion of ordinance legislation by local authorities and the decentralization in Japan. Local authorities deal with the affairs in accordance with the national laws in reality. The payment affairs as well as regulatory affairs are determined by laws and the implementation processes of such affairs are specified by laws in detail. The discretion of local authorities is restricted because the local affairs are subject to the laws. This is why it is so difficult to implement the administrative operation depending on local conditions. Accordingly, the problem of supplementation and conflict between national laws and independent legislation by local authorities is generated. Japan accepts various forms of ordinances through respect to the relationship with the laws and independent legistration by the local authorities. Moreover, Japan enables the extensive approaches for legislation of diverse independent ordinances by the creative efforts of local authorities through decentralization reformation. In addition, local authorities can implement independent local administration suitable for local conditions through independent interpretation of laws. The expansion of the ordinance legislation demonstrated by the local authorities in Japan is significant on the aspects that laws are properly interpreted and implemented suitable for local conditions for unique solutions against challenges and policy implementation in each region and unique, independent and creative local autonomy is realized by unique ordinance legislation suitable for each region and its features. The discussion on decentralization and ordinance legislation in Japan explained above is meaningful to Korea with respect to the decentralization reformation of local authorities as well as the independent legislation by the local authorities in Korea.