09/28/2009

Strengthening Local Autonomy through Voluntary Cooperation

Amid ever-increasing government push for reorganizing local administrative territorial system, concerns that it might seriously undermine principles of local autonomy prescribed in the Korean Constitution have also kept growing. A recent joint statement made by 145 experts in local autonomy is just one of common efforts made by academia to draw more public attention on the problems of the current initiative. 

In the same streamline, together with its local partners, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty Korea office organized a seminar at Chonnam National University on September 25, under the title of “Structural Layers and Scale of Local Governments - Principles and Alternatives”. This event was a second in series of FNF seminars dealing with administrative territorial reform, which aims to identify problems of the government initiative and eventually to propose alternative solutions to enhance administrative efficiency, while still promoting local autonomy.

The message conveyed during the seminar was very clear: administrative efficiency can not be enhanced by making 60 to 70 bigger territorial entities through mergers among cities and municipalities across the country as the government claims. On the contrary, these enlarged administrative entities would cause counter-productivity: administrative inefficiency without realizing any cost-saving effects, and also they would offer degraded public service. This would eventually lead to the deepening of centralization and seriously tainting the very democratic aspect of local autonomy, which was empirically proven in other countries. The international trend in these days is going toward more political decentralization and the new Japanese administration intents to go regional as well, creating a nation based on devolved regional power.

Instead, the administrative efficiency and local competitiveness could be enhanced not by mergers but by the cooperation among local governments. Also, by clearly defining responsibilities between central and local governments, a high administrative cost caused by over-lapped functions between them would be drastically reduced. When the territorial reorganization is necessary, it is important to bear in mind what Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker and historian said: decentralization has not only an administrative value but also a civic dimension, since it increases the opportunities for citizens to take interest in public affairs; it makes them get accustomed to using freedom.

The seminar was attended by about 150 participants and its co-organizers include Center for Local Autonomy of Hanyang University, Institute for Local Government and Center for Electorate Politics of Chonnam National University, with the sponsorship of Kwangju Metropolitan City government.