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ABSTRACT
This paper explains the reason why the hitherto statist country, Korea, has carried out significant decentralization since the 2000s. In explaining the motivation for decentralization, extant literature has focused on the role of parties, bureaucratic politics, democratization, or territorial interests. Yet there is still limited explanation of how the decentralization laws in Korea could be successfully passed in the 2000s, while cental stakeholders still persisted. By tracing the process of decentralization reform in the 2000s, this article demonstrates how structural factors created favourable circumstances and discursive background for institutional change, and how the idea of decentralization, through the idea diffusion mechanism, gave directions for central decision makers to produce a specific path of reform strategies. It also pays attention to the formation of ‘practical authority’ for reform politicians that made it possible to overcome obdurate resistance from central bureaucrats and politicians.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Jefferey Sellers, Ann Florini, John Donaldson, Apichai Shipper, and Toshiya Kitayama for invaluable comments and suggestions on the earlier versions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Yooil Bae is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University. His research focuses on state–society relations, urban and regional political economy, and public policy in East Asia.
Notes
1. Under the divided government of 1988 for the first time in Korean history, President Roh Tae Woo exercised his veto on the revised Local Autonomy Act (1989) and delayed the full-fledged elections of local governments (Lee, Citation1996: 6).
2. Interview with a senior bureaucrat at MOGAHA on 12 October 2005.
3. Since the mainstream ideational studies primarily emphasize the importance of ideas in times of structural crises, recent theoretical development has paid attention to ideational analysis of incremental and transformative changes (Cartensen, Citation2011).
4. For example, as a key politician and democratic activist from the opposition party, the former President Kim Dae Jung's discourse mainly emphasized democratic benefits, but after he returned to politics from his hiatus in 1995, he put greater emphasis upon the idea of ‘equality’ among different regions (Lee, 2011, http://www.pressian.com/news/article_print.html?no=3797).
5. These kinds of programmes initiated in the early 1970s included the removal of some governmental agencies and manufacturers to newly developed regions and restrictions on new industries in the capital city area (OECD, Citation2001: 96–97).
6. For example, the Kim administration enacted reform measures such as an anti-corruption law, a real-name banking system, and a fair competition law (Lee, Citation2000: 104–112). Many powerful ministries were merged or displaced and there were many layoffs among central bureaucrats on 3 December 1994 (Kim, Citation1999: 169).
7. Interview with former member of PCGID on 25 February 2015.
8. This goal, combining national competitiveness and liberalization policies including decentralization, was outlined in several presidential addresses (PCNBD, Citation2004: 28–29).
9. Roh Moo-Hyun's address at the Forum on Five-Year Innovative Development of Incheon Region, on 8 July 2004 (quoted from PCNBD, Citation2004: 28–29).
10. Roh personally confessed that his reform idea was influenced by a scholarly book, the Vision and Strategy of Government Innovation. The author, Sung-sig Yoon, was appointed chairman of PCGID in 2003 (Dong-A Ilbo, Citation2004a).
11. Interview with a civic activist at the Civic Movement for Decentralization on 10 October 2005.
12. The purpose of this centre was educating local officials and elite groups about the value of local democracy and autonomy (Interview with the former policy advisor to the President Roh on 23 July 2009).
13. Ibid.
14. For example, when three central ministries’ turf war over local allocation tax reform reached its peak, President Roh himself settled the conflicts directly. Interview with the former chairman of PCGID on 19 October 2005.
15. The Kim Dae-Jung administration created the MOGAHA in 1998 (28 February) and the ministry had managed local affairs mainly through two subdivisions, the Division of Local Administration and the Division of Local Finance and Taxation.
16. Forty-two assemblymen actually proposed the revision of the Local Autonomy Act (1994) to abolish the basic-level local elections in 2000 (29 November), though the proposal was defeated (Ahn, Citation2001).
17. Interview with the former leader of the Employee Association at MOGAHA on 18 October 2005.
18. Interview with a senior bureaucrat at MOGAHA on 12 October 2005.
19. Ibid.
20. One of the notable facts about CMD is, unlike other types of civil society movements, it was organized exclusively by local actors who took up the promotion of decentralization and self-governance by organizing a mass meeting called ‘National Intellectuals’ Declaration for Decentralization' in September 2001 or announcing a local charter in March of 2001 (B. Park, Citation2008).
21. Interview with a civic activist at the Citizen's Coalition for Better Government on 28 October 2005.
22. Local government associations refused the central government's incremental strategy, because this approach resulted in slowed or unbalanced decentralization in the previous administrations. Interview with a senior specialist at National Association of Mayors on 21 October 2005.
23. Some argue that decentralization under the Lee administration can be seen as less progressive because major devolutions were already implemented under the previous administration (Interview with a former minister on 23 February 2015). Yet many indicators such as appointment of non-decentralists, decreasing fiscal independent ratio and a worsening local economy reaffirm that the administration was less interested in decentralization (Interview with a bureaucrat at a provincial government on 15 February 2015).