The Korea Local Administration Review

This study aims at finding trends of research and policy studies in the fieldof local autonomy and administration with analyzing all the papers published inthe Korea Local Administration Review (KLAR) during 1986-2014, from thefirst to the 99th issues of the journal. The authors first refer to review andtrend-analysis papers published in some of academic journals domestically orinternationally authoritative in the fields of study so as to explain macroscopictrends of research in local autonomy and administration as well as to developthe framework of the analyses of this study. The authors moreover categorizeall the 902 papers published in the KLAR by time period, authorship, articletypes, main topics, and keywords to explain key features and dynamics of theresearch trends in the field of local autonomy and administration in Korea. Theresults imply that the KLAR has contributed and played in a leading role in thefield of policy study evidently since the beginning of 2000’s when the localautonomy institutionalized again in Korea and the policy studies and relevantcoworking papers drastically increased, and also that the KLAR currently needsto endeavor to encourage more wide and specialized area of research so as toavoid narrow focuses of current research papers and to maintain the currentlead and contributions in the field of local autonomy and administration study.
□ Keywords: Korea Local Administration Review, local autonomy, localadministration, research trends, areas of policy studies, keywordanalysis