The international exchange and cooperation play a vital role in the local level internationalization. The Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR) was established in July 1988 in response to increasing concerns about the local level internationalization in Japan. The Council of Local Authorities supports current trends in the internationalization and strives for promoting further developments in this area. Since its establishment, the Council of Local Authorities fulfills a wide array of significant roles, aimed at the international cooperation, education and integration.

With its headquarters in Tokyo, the CLAIR has a network of domestic branch offices in each prefecture and a designated city in Japan. The Council of Local Authorities has also established a network of overseas offices in major cities around the world: New York and London (est. 1988), Paris and Singapore (1990), Seoul (1993), Sydney (1994), and Beijing (1997).

The CLAIR implements the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program through which Coordinators for International Relations (CIR), Assistance Language Teachers (ALT) and Sports Exchange Advisors (SEA) are recruited overseas and committed to local public bodies throughout Japan.

The CLAIR is supporting international cooperation activities of local governments via a diversity of programs. For instance, the Council of Local Authorities maintains a program that draws foreign local government officials to Japan for training at local government bodies in such areas as general administration, agriculture and environmental protection. There is also a program through which Japanese local government officials with an experience in the international cooperation are sent abroad as experts in various fields.

These international exchange programs and the experience of living and working abroad are of a great value for the development of human resources in Japan, necessary to promote the local level internationalization. The programs, implemented by the Council of Local Authorities, provide the Japanese government personnel with excellent opportunities to gain a hands-on experience with international exchange projects as well as put this experience into practice upon their return home.

The Council of Local Authorities supports the overseas research and study activities of the Japanese local government personnel by providing them with sites to visit, making appointments with appropriate local contacts, holding of explanatory meetings and acquiring reference materials.

The growing need for local public bodies to collect and analyze information regarding foreign systems and policies has resulted in the CLAIR's research projects on themes of the most interest to Japanese local public bodies in conjunction with CLAIR's overseas offices. The organization gathers and presents information in response to individual requests from Japanese local authorities. Two major projects, implemented by the CLAIR, are the "Multilingual Guide to Living in Japan" and "International Living Q & A".