Social Service Contracting-Out in Korea and Japan: Municipal Governments, Nonprofit Contractors, and Local Residents*

Focusing on the role of local residents’ participation in nonprofit social service contracting-out, this research has three aims. The first is to reveal the commonalities and differences in the relationships among municipal governments, contractors, and local residents in Korea and Japan through the use of survey data. We observed several common elements between the two countries regarding the relationship between municipal governments and nonprofit contractors. However, the relationships between nonprofit contractors and local residents were quite different in each country because of their different local selfgoverning environments. The second is to identify the current types of local residents’ participation in contracting-out, and to categorize them into inclusion of local residents as members of contractors, participation of local residents in governance mechanisms, open meetings, and involvement of local residents as volunteers. The final aim is to ascertain whether there are statistical differences between the respondents’ perceptions in the two countries regarding the effects of local residents’ participation on service responsiveness. Using an independent sample t-test analysis, we verified that Japanese municipal managers had more positive and statistically significant perceptions regarding the effects of open meetings, and Korean nonprofit managers had more positive and statistically significant perceptions regarding the effects of involvement as volunteers.