DOI: 10.18848/orgsbi/b14 ISSN:

Law, Governance, and Social Integration

Yukio Sakurai
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Public interest has long served as a foundation for law, governance, and social policy. Yet demographic aging, weakening family structures, widening social vulnerabilities, and the rapid expansion of digital governance are challenging traditional state-centered understandings of what constitutes the public good. Law, Governance, and Social Integration: Reconstructing Public Interest in Aging Societies reexamines this concept through an interdisciplinary analysis of contemporary Japan and its broader implications. Moving across such diverse fields as adult safeguarding, guardianship, charitable bequests, social vulnerability, intergenerational justice, democratic accountability, digital regulation, multicultural coexistence, and transnational cooperation, the book explores how public interest is shaped by the interaction of individuals, communities, institutions, markets, and the state.The book proposes a reconstruction of public interest as a dynamic and participatory framework grounded in human dignity, structural vulnerability, and relational autonomy. It highlights the growing importance of institutional pluralism and revisits the concept of Social Common Capital for an age in which natural, institutional, and informational resources increasingly require collective stewardship. Extending this perspective beyond national boundaries, the book also considers the potential of transnational academic networks as emerging actors in governance. Rather than treating public interest as a fixed objective defined exclusively by governmental authority, this volume presents it as an ongoing process of reconciling competing interests, protecting vulnerable persons, and sustaining shared social resources. It ultimately asks how law, institutions, and civil society can work together to build more inclusive, resilient, and human-centered societies.

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