In the process of the survey, it has become clear that responses from the local governments differ widely depending on how they perceive the World Cup. The most conspicuous gaps were observed in the degree of significance they attach to the, "meaning of hosting the World Cup." In conclusion, Oita Prefecture stood out in its strategic approach. From the viewpoint of the continuity of administration, the prefecture demonstrated outstanding coherence in its strategic intention prior to the event, actual policy measures implemented, and the utilization of the performance results after the event. A series of happenings involving Nakatsue Village - the delayed arrival of the Cameroon team for which the village served as a base camp, subsequent warm exchanges between the team members and locals, and unusual, favorable media attention all along - were a windfall fortune. But I was tempted to think that these happenings might have been a witty gift from the god as a reward to the prefecture for its carefully worked-out preparations for the event. To be sure, all the developments up to this point concern the stage of policy implementation or matters on the "operation" level, and it takes several years to make final evaluations on the "performance" level.
Generally speaking, government-designated major cities - those with fiscal and administrative authorities comparable to those of a prefecture - seem to have treated the World Cup just as one of many major events they handle. Kobe was the only city to have dissolved the whole section in charge of the World Cup by November 2002, when preparation for this survey began. In all other major cities, the equivalent departments had been reduced in size.
The implication is that the expectation host local governments placed on the World Cup differed depending on the environment and conditions surrounding each government. When a local government has more soft assets, it tends to attach less value to each of the assets. Also, when they need to organize a number of events there are less administrative resources that they are able to allocate to each event. The football fans' point of view would be to hope for a special treatment for the World Cup, which they think is the "event of the century." But their desire would not be necessarily reflected by government responses. Naturally, there is a certain discrepancy.
Some of the local governments expressed displeasure at the survey, demanding what authority we had to conduct it. Had this reaction come from those that have properly carried out ex-post evaluation on their own, such a response could have been interpreted as meaning, "Leave it to us and mind your own business." But unfortunately this was not the case as they were simply closing their eyes to their own negligence (none of these governments expressed gratitude to us for substituting the role they have failed to play). In an extreme case, a local government official definitely stated that an ex-post examination such as this should not be conducted. Many of the local government officials contacted showed little sense of mission as a public servant, and the sense of responsibility to taxpayers was hardly felt from their responses. As such, it was not at all surprising when a certain local government official demanded that the word "accountability" be omitted from questions in an interview with the governor, calling the word, "defiant," in tone. In relation to this point, please take a look at the responses to question no.1 on the inquiry sheet. The results are quite interesting. The question was to find out whether and how each of the local governments recognizes the necessity of ex post evaluation. To the question as to whether they have evaluated the results of the World Cup, only 3 local governments said they had conducted ex-post evaluation on its own. I had expected that many of the local governments would say that they,�@"do not plan to conduct an ex-post evaluation for now." As it turned out, however, some local governments said they, "have no intention to conduct an ex-post evaluation," a kind of response I had not expected. For more details, please check the survey results.
