Political development, or progress in the achievement of fundamental political
values such as liberty (personal rights) and equality (broad participation in public affairs),
is an important measure of improvement in societal welfare, as important perhaps as the
more commonly tracked measures of income growth and human development. The
Japanese local government system has engendered, or at least accommodated, a significant
amount of political development in the above-noted sense of the word (see Macdougall,
2001)