Basic Report

  
  
   It is likely that, since the first and second phase of decentralisation in 1991 and 1995, the Korean local governments benefit from the German-French principle of local “self-administration”(Selfbstverwaltung). But local governments in Korea are, on the one hand, regulated by a framework law, the Local Autonomy Act, not by Constitution through which the status of local and regional governments in mostly Western developed countries is guaranteed. Korean local government responsibilities are in fact almost defined in a more detail by Government’s statutory instruments (or by delegated legislation which provides discretionary powers in the hands of President or ministers), rather than by legislation made by National Assembly. Normally, the responsibilities of subnational governments have to be framed by making provisions of National Acts, so that the municipal functions could be clearly denoted enough to distinguish from the provincial functions. As a result, the scope of responsibilities among the levels of local government is extremely blurred and complex in Korea local government system a large number of tasks are shared and two-thirds are exercised jointly by the upper-level local government and lower-level of local government. According to the official statistics of 2002 (the result of the statistics conducted in 2002 by the Korea Research Institute for Local Administration), the functions for which central Government took the final decision power are 73% of the whole governmental functions, whereas local governments take charge of only 24% of functions together with 3% of delegated functions assigned to local authorities by the central government.   On the other, another characteristic of Korean local government system is that, though local administrations are not “creatures” of the intermediate level, as is in the federal system such as in the United States and Canada, the provinces and metropolitan city governments enjoy great supervisory authority over the municipal-level local governments, altogether both based on the uniformity of the management structure. Or, in a unitary state like Korea, subnational governments seem more likely act on behalf of the central government and policy development and standards of service and performance are determined at the national level, implementation oversight is carried out at the state or provincial level. In fact, the Korean constitution does not clearly guarantee the existence of the provinces and municipalities nor provides for a distribution of responsibilities, while the province and the municipalities perform both their local tasks and delegated tasks. Or, these delegated functions from central government tend to provoke, to a certain degree, conflict between central-local relationships by giving the limitation to the autonomy of local government. And, to further promote decentralisation in Korea, from the request of almost all the scholars and public servants in the field, it is often recommended to solve, above all, the problem caused by the existence of the delegated responsibilities imposing on local government by governmental regulations without any possible financial supports. But, since a few years ago, a small part of the national deputies from both the governmental and opposition parties continue to promote the reformist rhetoric of the amalgamation of the 246 upper-level and lower-level local governments into the number of 60 to 70 metropolitan city governments, mainly arguing the fact that the Korea’s provincial boundaries remained unchanged since the late-nineteenth-century and that the rapid economic growth and rapid transportation together with subsequent urbanization require boundary reform. So, merger and amalgamation have been these days the primary means used for advancing the decentralisation in Korea and altering administrative jurisdiction for continually expanding metropolitan cities. The fusion proposals from the local governments are now numbered in 18 covering the 64 areas throughout the country.But the decentralisation trend in advanced countries seems go differently, facing the increasing globalisation and open economic competition. In recent years, many of the Member States of the European Union have experienced dramatic changes in the organisation of their intermediate level governments, while new ways and channels have been established to enhance the interaction between the intermediate level of local government and central government. Especially, European countries have undergone an overall movement of regionalisation, in the sense of the reinforcement of intermediary levels and above all, an increasing interdependence between different levels, though we witnessed that recent developments in various countries remain remarkably differentiated.   It means also that Korea may need a situation in which new ways of organising the intermediate level of government have to be introduced with the aim of improving efficiency and democracy. Since new government began in 2008 has been promoting three spatial regional development policies - Daily Living Sphere, 5+2 Economic Regions, and Supra-economic Region - to maximize regional growth potential. To make them realize effective outcomes and to map out the relatively dynamic balanced strategies, it is absolutely necessary to strengthen, in particular, regional governments’ autonomous capacity-building in regional policy. The intermediate level is becoming increasingly important.Until now, there is not yet a significant body of research, empirical or conceptual, into the issues raised by the development of Korean upper-level of local government. The existing domestic reviews of intermediary government have not generally sought to explore the nature or implications of the various forms of that provincial or regional government.This paper want explore the implications of its development in some advanced Western countries, especially kept in mind that the development of the notion of region is often associated with the strengthening of democracy, for example in Spain, Italy, France and Scotland of the United Kingdom. And the focus of this paper will be put on the future form and remit of the intermediate level of government within Korean local government system. This study, based on international experience and analysis of the foreign countries context, presents the main arguments and findings that emerge from those observations and develops what the strategic role and status of the Provincial and Metropolitan City governments can be defined in Korea, in considering the plausible steps of reshaping the intermediate level of local government into ‘Regional Government’ in Korea. For example, for coping with regional development policies recommended by the Presidential Committee of Regional Development (PCRD), few of scholars and practitioners scarcely mention about the role of upper-level of local governments in Korea. So, this researchfocuses on what types of intermediate level of government we can rebuild in the futureorder to maximize the regional factors of growth capacity and regional diversity.The content of the study is as follows. The second section explores some arguments about the existence and typology of regional governmentin local government structure, and extracts main characteristics for understanding of the role of regional government as a intermediate level of local government. And the examples of decentralised processes in the UK and Korea will be explained, compared a bit of some cases extracting from OECD Member countries such as Spain, Italy and France. The final section considers some significances and lesions, in order to realise the implications for developing regional government in Korea.The regionalisation of the UK shows distinct forms of autonomy from central government, it is the asymmetrical process of devolving powers. In England anyway influenced by the political devolution of Scotland, there were significant changes in the policy context for English Regional Assemblies over the study period. The new planning system introduced in 2004, enhanced Assemblies’ spatial planning role, and this role was strengthened further when the functions of Regional Housing Boards were transferred to Assemblies. There has been increased recognition in national policy of the importance of city regions as drivers for economic growth (UK Department for Communities and Local Government; Final Report; 2007).The institutionalisation of the regions does not depend solely on their constitutional status whereby the regions of Spain, Italy and France are guaranteed. Except France, the two countries enacted the regional government’s competences in the articles of the constitution, in contrast to the French case distributing them on the basis of the laws. On that point, the French regions, though they have elected governments, have not enough access to the status of political spaces but relays of partisan national system or federations of local units. Furthermore, where municipal government is strong, it tends to represent an institutional rival to the regions. Thus in France the regions compete with the departments and the large cities, who have benefited the most from decentralization. But, finally, the French regions became the local-self government after the long-run process of regionalisation through which Economic regions (Régions économiques) created in 1955 had been once central government’s regional administration (Etablissements publics régionaux).International evidence illustrates the experiences of regional government being implemented in stages. Changes in Scotland as well as Italy and Spain have involved a significant array of powers being available to all regions (albeit not devolved uniformly). France has also made exceptional provisions in the case of Corsica and New Caledonia. Within a national framework of regionalisation, decentralisation in these countries has, therefore, not required all regions to move at the same pace or need to be involved in every stage of change. Decentralisation takes always time and requires implementation in evolutionary and incremental phases, so the process need not be a uniform one across the whole country. In Korea, the solution of amalgamation of local governments proposed by some legislators, for the sake of efficiency and economy and at the expense of democracy and local autonomy mind, it is first and utmost necessary to tackle the problems inherent in the division of responsibilities between central and local and regional governments. And the long-run, habitual practices of delegating the mandatory duties to local and regional governments through regulations by central government must be stopped. The best way is that appropriate functions are to be devolved to the discretion of localand regional governments with properly financial assistance, and the Constitution guarantees the local autonomy with the amendment of the division of legislative powers.