The Korean Developmental State by Kyung Mi Kim

Author:Kyung Mi Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811534652
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Changes in Policy Governance: Authoritarian to Comprehensive/Democratic

Korea’s policy governance methods have dramatically changed since the authoritarian system of the 1960s and 1970s, when policy formulation, decision-making, and enforcement were centralized, closed, and one-sided. Korea’s industrial policy governance has transformed in three ways. First, the process of policy formulation, decision, and enforcement no longer depends on the discretionary order of the supreme commander, the president, but on the legal and institutional framework. Second, the government has established a co-governance system to create, decide on, and enforce industrial policies, involving all relevant stakeholders in the industry, government-funded research institutes, and academia. The government expresses this approach as “civilian-led industrial policy.” Third, policy enforcement is not based on unilateral goal setting and support, but on a system that resolves problems through a continuous feedback process, with policy agencies and firms working together.

Former president-centered, top-down practices left formal economic ministries out of policy decisions. Differences of opinions between the ministries were not horizontally coordinated but rather vertically adjusted by the president (Ha 2006, pp. 142–154; Lee 1969, pp. 405–406; Chung 1987, 1988, pp. 509–516). However, these closed, unilateral, and arbitrary forms of policymaking no longer worked.

First, the Korean developmental state established a legal and institutional system to replace policymaking and promotion functions that had been dependent on the charisma of the supreme commander until the 1970s. According to Yoon (2012), the Korean government gave institutional discretion to the government through legislation beginning in the 1980s. At the same time, the government has expanded its policy research institutes and industrial and scientific technology research institutes, thus institutionalizing state-centered policy governance. The role of the state has been institutionalized as the subject of industrial structure advancement and supplier of science and technology. This broader and more inclusive institutionalized policy governance has shaped both a physical condition of the state’s policy capacity and its ability to reinforce and reproduce policy ideology (Yoon 2012, pp. 4, 166).

Since the 1980s, the state has replaced its state-centered policy practices with a broader policy network. To this end, it established several government-funded research institutes that would complement functions of policymaking and implementation. The institutes responsible for policy research functions established in the 1980s were the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (1981), the Korea Information Society Development Institute (1985), the Science and Technology Policy Institute (1987), the Korea Energy Economics Institute (1986), the Korea Labor Institute (1988), and the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (1987). The institutes responsible for industrial technology R&D functions were the Korea Institute of Construction Technology (1983), the Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (1985), the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (1985), the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (1986), the Korea Food Research Institute (1987), and the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (1988). The institutes responsible for basic scientific technology research were the Korea Research Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology (1985), the Korea Basic Science Institute (1988), the Korea Research Institute (1986), the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (1989), and the Korea Polar Research Institute (1987).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.