Public Finance and Budgeting in Korea under Democracy: A Critical Appraisal

The Republic of Korea has been widely acknowledged as one of the few success stories of economic development in the second half of the twentieth century. The state has had a large role in guiding the economic development through policies and subsidization. However, with political democratization and economic liberalization, the politico-economic context of Korea's public finance policy began to change dramatically. The purpose of this article is to analyze how Korea's public finance policy has changed under the newly installed democracy. It specifically discusses the public finance and budgeting policies during the Roh Tae Woo administration (1988–1992) and the Kim Young Sam administration (1993 to the present).     

Reining in the Bureaucrats: Democratic Transition and Administrative Procedural Reform in Korea

How do civilian presidents control their bureaucracies after taking over from an authoritarian regime? To answer this question, I develop a “reining in” theory of delegation. I argue that presidents who faces intrabranch conflict over policy issues and cannot appoint—and dismiss—freely will solve their delegation problems through administrative procedure acts (APAs) and related laws. While some scholars argue that APAs are tools for preserving the status quo, I find that APAs help presidents change policy. Building on the delegation literature from economics, my theory represents a more general argument than prior theories for why presidents support APAs. I test the theory through a case study of South Korea's first civilian government (post‐1961), under President Kim Young Sam. Kim initiated an APA to rein in a professionalized civil service that opposed his policy preferences. Strict procedural requirements designed to keep tabs on bureaucratic activities enhanced Kim's control over his bureaucracy.     

Political space in Vietnam: a view from the ‘rice-roots'

Abstract

Single-party, authoritarian states such as Vietnam are frequently characterised as having ‘closed’ political opportunity structures and ‘un-free’ socio-political systems. The validity of this observation depends, however, on the viewer's frame of reference. Seen from the perspective of active citizens, Vietnamese political structures offer increasingly greater space for collective action than a state-centred institutional analysis would predict. Episodes of contentious politics surrounding land disputes and public parks during 2007 provide evidence of the changing dynamics of participation in politics. Actors involved in these and similar campaigns are broadly optimistic about the future prospects for an opening of political space within the existing system. These findings are contrasted with international reports of violations of political rights and with the Vietnamese government's own efforts at legal reform. Although signals remain mixed, to some extent Vietnam might be becoming a ‘rice-roots democracy’ in practice, while remaining a single-party state. The voices and experiences of civil society actors will continue to shape opportunities and risks in the expansion of political space.     

Civil Society after Democracy: The Evolution of Civic Activism in South Africa and Korea

The phase of democratic consolidation can significantly impact the motives, dynamics and objectives of civil society. Its internal roles, dynamics and power balances are significantly altered by the advent of democracy, due to shifting resources, political opportunities and a general reframing of goals and objectives. By adopting a definition of civil society as an ‘arena’ (which highlights the continuously evolving composition and leadership of civil society) and borrowing a number of theoretical dimensions from social movement theory (which underline the importance of resource mobilization, political opportunities and conceptual framing processes), the article shows that the advent of democracy has posed a number of challenges to civil society organizations in Korea and South Africa. Moreover, the consolidation of democracy has inevitably changed the nature of government–civil society relations. While in South Africa institutional politics reasserted itself in the first years of democracy, thereby sidelining organizations and movements concerned with public accountability and good governance (which have only recently resurfaced through the action of new social movements), in Korea corruption and lack of transparency immediately marred the dawn of democracy, providing civic movements with a fertile terrain to galvanize civic mobilizations vis-à-vis the lack of responsiveness of the political class.     

Defection of North Korea's ideologist a sign of regime crisis

Abstract

The defection of Hwang Jang‐yop, one of North Korea's major ideological authorities and a senior member of the leadership, is a clear indication of regime crisis in Pyongyang. Hwang's assessment of the nature of the Kim Jong‐il regime, which he regards as incapable of reform and committed to war with South Korea, will strengthen those in Seoul who argue for a tough approach to be taken in negotiations on security issues with North Korea. At the same time, his remarks on the extent of communist influence in South Korean politics may influence the outcome of the 1997 presidential elections.     

Following in China's footsteps? The political economy of North Korean reform

Since the coming to power of Kim Jong Un in 2012, the North Korean government has recently announced, and to some degree has implemented, a new set of economic management policies known as the June 28th measures in 2012 and the May 30th measures in 2014. Both of these sets of measures seek to build upon the abandoned reforms of the early 2000s through restructuring North Korea's highly inefficient collective farm and state-owned enterprise management system. In addition, the government has intensified ongoing efforts at building special economic zones for the purpose of attracting foreign investment. As such, the country is attempting to emulate the reforms adopted by China in the late 1970s. Although the success of these efforts is by no means guaranteed, they do serve to question mainstream analyses that suggest that Juche Self-Reliance or S?n'gun Military First Politics ideologies will inhibit any genuine attempt at economic reform in North Korea. We argue, in contrast, that ongoing changes to North Korean state and society mean that, a cyclical stop and start rhythm to the reforms notwithstanding, such attempts at economic reform are likely to continue. However, we also argue that while the contemporary reform drive resembles and may indeed reproduce some of the successes of the Chinese experience, North Korea faces significantly greater challenges, including the greater decline of North Korean industry, local resistance to reform, and the dangers of inflation. Furthermore, North Korea faces a highly challenging external security environment that undermines the ability of the regime to attract investment and by extension the political standing of reformist elements within the country. Given this contrast with the international environment surrounding China's own reform experience, our analysis emphasises the importance of geopolitical context in shaping experiences of economic reform and of development more broadly.     

Reforming the Spanish Senate: Mission Impossible?

Attempts in recent years to reform the Spanish Senate have proven futile. Using an institutionalist approach, this article highlights some of the weaknesses of the Spanish Senate in terms of its constitutional design and institutional development. The article explains how attempts at reforming political institutions are influenced by the historical context in which the institution was originally designed and the political context in which it has subsequently developed. The debate over Senate reform is analysed by examining the Senate's institutional setting and its relationships to broader political settings such as the legacy of the transition to democracy, political party discourse, and a competitive culture in Spain's system of intergovernmental relations.     

North Korea: a year into the reign of Kim Jong-un

A year after the death of Kim Jong-il and the ascension of his son Kim Jong-un, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea appears to be more stable than many had predicted. The new leader has consolidated his authority and rebalanced power among key institutions, but his reforms have not gone nearly far enough if North Korea is to escape its poverty trap.     

Civil Society and Political Action in Democratized Korea: Revamping Democratic Consolidation from a Participatory Perspective*

This essay aims to re-evaluate the quality of democratic consolidation in South Korea from a participatory democracy perspective. In order to do so, I, drawing on Barber's theory of strong democracy, redefine democratic consolidation in terms of the active citizenship and political dynamism that it breeds rather than in terms of stability, which overly prefers a liberal-pluralist, yet inherently conservative, civil society to a more vibrant and sometimes intractable form of civil society. Understanding democratic consolidation as an open-ended, non-teleological, and perennial struggle for citizenship, I then focus on the Koreans' collective response to the deaths of two teenage girls struck by a US military vehicle in 2002 to explore how Koreans critically re-evaluate their collective identity and actively repossess citizenship in civil society through the inculcation and practice of ch?ng, the Koreans' familial affectionate sentiment. I conclude by presenting “affectionate citizenship” as the most practicable model for Korean democracy.     

China's engagement-oriented strategy towards North Korea: achievements and limitations

In response to the challenge of unstable North Korea (weak economy, weapons of mass destruction [WMD] development), China has followed an engagement-oriented strategy based on diplomatic persuasion, economic interaction and moderate economic sanctions. Intensified engagement (2009–2012) facilitated North Korean convergence with China in respect of economic reform but divergence has persisted over WMD development. Despite the widening of divergence since 2013, China has refrained from applying crippling sanctions. This article seeks to explain these diverging results and their implications for China's strategy towards North Korea. Reviewing recent literature and data, it will argue that Chinese economic input reinforced the trend of economic reform that formed the basis of political consolidation under the new hereditary regime. On the other hand, the prospect of stable dependence on China ran counter to that regime's pursuit of WMDs as the basis of security and diplomatic diversification. These mixed results reveal the limits of China's strategy: its economic input involuntarily reinforces North Korea's WMD potential but it is not prepared to accept the risks of enforcing WMD restraint by crippling sanctions either. With limited room for manoeuvre, the attainment of China's strategic objectives ultimately depends upon policy change from the US or South Korea.     

协商民主视野下的人民政协制度建设

以协商民主理论为参照,分析中国人民政治协商制度框架中已有制度的特点和应有制度之建设,从中可获得若干启发:即协商民主所追求的价值理念与人民政协制度建设的理念相契合;协商民主所期望的实践成果在人民政协制度建设中有具体体现;协商民主所引发的广泛讨论为中国人民政治协商制度建设改革提供了民意基础。     

Best Laid Plans … The Institutionalisation of Public Deliberation in Scotland

Despite increasing support for participatory and deliberative principles amongst academics, practitioners and parliamentarians alike, efforts to infuse political systems with more inclusive and consensual forms of debate often founder. This article explores this conundrum by examining institutional reforms through the lens of deliberative democracy. More specifically, we scrutinise attempts to institutionalise forms of civic deliberation within the Scottish political system via the Scottish Civic Forum and the Scottish Parliament's committee system. Our analysis tells the story of how these two types of institutional reform, both designed to facilitate the move towards a more participatory and deliberative model of democracy in Scotland, have fared over a ten‐year period. In turn, this analysis allows us to comment on the ways in which deliberative and parliamentary democracy may be integrated.     

Does Democratization Foster State Consolidation? Democratic Rule,Political Order,and Administrative Capacity

The established view in political science is that a sound and functioning state has to be in place before democracy can be introduced. State first, and then democracy. While acknowledging the existence of a basic state infrastructure as a necessary starting point, we examine the possibility that democratization itself may play an important role in the subsequent development and consolidation of the state. We do this by addressing the major conceptual and methodological shortcomings of existing research on this topic. The results of our panel analysis, covering a population of 122 countries, show that both a country's level of democracy and the interaction between degree and duration of democracy positively and significantly affect the consolidation of the state and of its two key individual dimensions, namely, political order and administrative capacity.     

A ‘Talent for Bureaucracy’: A.F. Davies and the Analysis of Government in Australia*

In an address in 2003, Senator Kim Carr cited A.F. Davies' much‐quoted observation that Australians have ‘a characteristic talent for bureaucracy’ (Carr 2003: 3). He referred to the achievements of bureaucrats like Nugget Coombs, then went on to discuss questions of accountability, values and political control in the Australian public service. How could the public service be responsive and responsible, and contribute to the maintenance of a democratic society, in today's world? Certainly, these were core concerns of Davies, as Walter argues in an insightful article (1999). Davies, Walter argues, ‘was concerned, throughout his career, with the links between bureaucracy and democracy’ (1999, 25), fearful that the life‐world is increasingly being structured by expertise, and in the domain of the experts, there is little room for individual voice, for passion, or for democratic control. Davies' concerns, and those of Carr and Walter, raise important questions about the way in which we understand the structure of government, the significance of our changing understanding for the democratic ideal, and the implications of these changes for social scientists.     

Assessing the Responsiveness of Spanish Policymakers to the Priorities of their Citizens

This article analyses how well Spanish political elites have responded to the issues signalled as priorities preferred by Spanish citizens from the early 1990s to the present, and to what extent the degree of correspondence between citizens' and policymakers' priorities is related to elections, type of government, issue jurisdiction and institutional friction. To measure this the authors rely on Most Important Problem surveys and several databases on laws, bills, oral questions and annual speeches, coded according to the comparative agendas project. They argue that the prioritisation of issues by political elites better matches public preferences at the agenda-setting stage than at the decision-making stage, and that correspondence of public and policymakers' priorities is inversely related to institutional friction. The evidence also illustrates that policymakers are more responsive to public priorities on those issues without shared jurisdiction, when the executive governs without a majority and immediately after elections.     

转型期中国公共领导体制变革与廉政建设

腐败与反腐败是社会政治生活中的一个永恒主题。腐败的存在与公共权力密切相关,作为公共权力运作的核心性规范,公共领导体制直接规定着高层领导者运用权力的方式,影响着社会的腐败与反腐败活动。伴随着社会发展,中国公共领导体制开始现代化转型,从传统型权威和个人魅力型权威向法理型权威转换,其反腐败方略也相应地从注重思想教育和社会运动转向注重制度约束。与此相适应,必须深化公共领导体制改革,以制度创新根治腐败,包括:进行良好的宪政分权,发展直接民主;引入政治竞争,实行政务公开;转变政府职能,推动行政体制改革,规范政府行为;强化监督机制和惩罚机制;加强思想教育和道德约束,提高政府官员的廉洁自律度,等等。     

A Political Science of Punishment: Francis Lieber and the Discipline of American Prisons

This article examines the history of political science in relation to the history of the prison. It considers how theories of the state in political science have assumed that proper states should punish with prisons, and traces these ideas to the work of Francis Lieber, the first academic political scientist in the USA. Because his ideas about prison reform were central to his conceptualization of the discipline as a science of punishment, his theory of the state is an understudied part of the history of mass incarceration. Lieber argued that the state had a moral duty to punish its citizens with the prison, and an obligation to manage the risks of democracy through the prison's principles of scientific certainty, less eligibility, and disciplinary solitude. By examining the life and work of Francis Lieber, this article offers new ways of thinking about political science's past, and its status as part of the history of the American prison.     

Reform Politics through the Creation of Inefficient Political Institutions: The Case of the 2007 Danish Administrative Reform

This article poses the question of whether reform politicians' pursuit of institutional goods may, under certain circumstances, lead to the creation of inefficient political institutions. The theory of weakening political actors through the creation of inefficient political institutions, as elaborated by Terry M. Moe, is applied in a comparative analysis of two main elements in the recent Danish administrative reform: the consolidation of 270 municipalities into 98 larger ones, and the creation of five new macro regions with special responsibilities. In contrast to the coherent institutional structure of the municipalities, the level of coherence in the regional reform elements is inappropriate and inefficient. The article shows that the different institutions in the municipalities and the regions can be interpreted as an attempt by the (national) reform parties to prevent other political actors from gaining access to future substantial, as well as institutional, goods.     

The Lost Treasure of Arendt's Council System

Abstract

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution offers a critique of modern representative democracy combined with a manifesto-like treatise on council systems as they have arisen over the course of revolutions and uprisings. However, Arendt's contribution to democratic theory has been obscured by her commentators who argue that her reflections on democracy are either an aberration in her work or easily reconcilable within a liberal democratic framework. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive outline of Arendt's writing on the council system and a clarification of her work outside the milieu of the post-Cold War return to Arendt. Her analyses bring to light a political system that guarantees civil and political rights while allowing all willing citizens direct participation in government. Framing her discussion within the language of the current renewed interest in constituent power, her council system could be described as a blending together of constituent power and constitutional form. Arendt resists the complete dominance and superiority of either element and argues that the foundation of a free state requires nothing less than the stabilization and persistence of constituent power within an open and fluid institution that would resist either the bureaucratization of politics or its dispersal into a revolutionary flux. Although one may conclude that her institutional suggestions are far from flawless, her political principles allow a conceptualization of democracy in more substantial ways than current liberal political philosophy.     

Is Britain Facing a Crisis of Democracy?

This article contributes to the debate in this journal about the state of British democracy. I criticise the tendency to use a ‘demand–supply’ dichotomy in interpreting the strong distrust experienced by institutions and politicians, and especially the idea that all the blame for current problems is to be attributed to the inadequateness of the British political tradition (BPT). By referring to international data on democracy and to recent British trends in both public attitudes and institutional innovations, a more nuanced picture on the state of democracy emerges. I argue that the BPT is not incompatible with incremental changes that have already introduced innovations in the way politics works in Britain today, and that the task of empowering citizens is one of the most delicate aspects in this process of innovation.