The Korea Local Administration Review

As a part of policies for improving residents’ convenience in a daily life andreinforcing national competitiveness, administrative territorial consolidation hasbeen promoted steadily and successively. Although a multitude of urban-ruralcomplex-type cities, initiated forcefully by the Korean government have beenlaunched in 1994, the administrative territorial self-consolidation of local
authorities has been accepted as a new basic strategy and underpinning foradministrative territorial consolidation ever since then. However, theadministrative territorial self-consolidation policy seems to be evaluated not toobtain its effects to the extent that the Korean government anticipated from thestart. This study is, therefore, designed to illuminate the reasons why theadministrative territorial self-consolidation policy turned out to fail quitedifferent from the original expectations. With the application of general policyanalysis framework, the analysis of the administrative territorialself-consolidation process is performed and, on the basis of the analyticalresults, the main causes of such policy failure are provided for future policyimplications.
□ Keywords: Administrative territorial consolidation, Self-consolidation, Policyanalysis