The Korea Local Administration Review

The purpose of this study is to find out the set of factors influencing the levelof consolidation among municipalities, which have proceeded to integrate witheach other, including forty-six local governments in eighteen regions. This studyis focused on these forty-six local governments, in order to explore therelationship between the dependent variable (consolidation level) and independentvariables including citizens desire, actors (politicians, local government heads,public officials), and regional environment (economic, social, and historicalconditions).This study indicates that citizens' desire for municipal consolidation exertsthe greatest influence on the level of integration. In addition, the larger thefinancial capacity and economy scale, the more positive the impact on the levelof consolidation. However, this analysis indicates that social factors (the ratioof worker’s number and migration of population) and the factors of actors arenot related to consolidation level. At this stage of this study, there is no strongevidence that political factors are related to the level of consolidation. It isassumed that citizens are not very concerned with the behavior of politicians.Depending upon the history of fragmentation-consolidation and the experienceof local government consolidation and how they are measured, historical factorsmay be more important than actor's factors and socioeconomic factors or viceversa. The most that can be claimed is that citizens' desire and historicalfactors are closely associated with the degree of integration and that thesevariables account for much of the positive consolidation level.This study is now in a better position to consider some of the localgovernments as objects of consolidation with each other, suggesting one ofmeaningful criterion. It is expected that this study will be helpful in reducingbeforehand any unnecessary conflicts that arise due to integration policieswhich go against the intentions of citizens on a large scale.
□ Keywords: the level of consolidation, political homogeneity, will of localgovernment head, the history of fragmentation-consolidation,experience of consolidation process