Humanitarian co-production in local government: the case of natural disaster volunteering in Japan

Given ongoing financial stringency, co-production in local government systems worldwide has attracted increasing attention in the literature. Disaster relief volunteering represents an important form of local co-production in which local authorities, community groups and volunteers work collaboratively at addressing the many humanitarian needs that arise following natural disasters. For disaster relief co-production to be successful, the comparative advantages of all participating groups must be harnessed so as to synchronise their contributions and thereby maximise their beneficial impact. Given the sheer scale of cooperative disaster relief operations in Japan involving local government, civic groups and disaster volunteers, much can be learned from the Japanese experience. In this paper, we examine co-production in Japanese disaster relief programs through the prism of the conceptual and empirical literature as well as through two recent illuminative case studies. Various policy implications are drawn from this analysis which are applicable beyond Japanese local government.