In today’s society, there are coming up some limitations to solve general problems of local community with hierarchical control based on governmental domination in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. For this reason, realization of public policy ...
In today’s society, there are coming up some limitations to solve general problems of local community with hierarchical control based on governmental domination in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. For this reason, realization of public policy through decentralization is now highly emphasized. Governance, is on the rise as a new strategy to effectively manage public policy, on the basis of systemized and decentralized reality of policy and transcendental moral such as government failure or market failure. In such trend, the neighborhood is now paid attention in terms of governance. The neighborhood means a space where people face each other based on the adjacency of housing. That means a zone of intimacy where people form an identity on the basis of loose bond. The characteristic of neighborhood, such as high-level accessibility and psychological·social bond, has been recognized as an important resource to create public goods in the field of local economy, welfare, public safety and so on. Therefore, the concept of ‘Neighborhood-Governance’is drawn as a strategy which promotes and utilizes neighborhood-unit formation of social capital to solve problems of today’s society.
Neighborhood-Governance is based on the thought that it is the neighborhood-governance that is the most valid space-unit to lead local community which had been considered as an object of governmental service, to subject or partner of solving public problems. Several countries such as United Kingdom are now focusing on Neighborhood-Governance as a new strategy of public policy, and neighborhood-unit local communities are trying various attempts.
In 1999 according to the policy switching the function of eup, myeon and dong, Korea set up resident autonomy center, which is an autonomous organization in underused space of community center (eup, myeon and dong). Autonomous committee of residence was also built in order to manage the center. This meant the rebirth of neighborhood-resident autonomy. However, this new attempt of neighborhood-resident autonomy has not functioned well because of the absence of resident representative which was due to the institutional limitation, immaturity of awareness of participation and so on. These days, most programs of nearly every Korea’s resident autonomy center are cultural leisure activity. Active, functional participation on decision making & execution process to settle social problems, or vitalization of community by volunteer participation of resident on a governance scale is extremely limited.
According to enactment of 『Special law on reorganization of local administration system』in 2010 and reformation of local administration system, neighborhood autonomy was brought up as topic again. However, it was pointed out that neighborhood autonomy is too defensive and passive, designed to avoid criticism on excessively effectiveness-oriented viewpoint of reorganization of administration system ultimately for merging city, gun and gu. It is required to try hard to essentially improve resident autonomy over the subsidiary and fragmentary attempt. Next year in 2011, deliberative discussion on neighborhood autonomy had been continued, and proposed three kinds of resident autonomy’s model. Eventually, in 2013, Ministry of Security and Public Administration started a trial project of resident autonomy as neighborhood autonomy organization in 31 eup, myeon, and dongs based on these deliberative discussion and positive study. In 2013, 『Special law on the decentralization system and reorganization of local administrative system』, in which『Special law on promotion of decentralization』integrated with『Special law on reorganization of local administrative system』, made activity for neighborhood autonomy continue. However, according to special law, details needed for constitution and management of resident autonomy, such as time of constitution, organization and finance, must be enacted as legislation. Also, the function and organization of resident autonomy should be autonomously decided as ordinance and regulation by local government considering local environment. There are some problems; First, it only suggest direction for reintroduction of neighborhood autonomy, not suggesting the emphasis to realize essential neighborhood resident autonomy. Second, various kinds of planning and experiment on the development of neighborhood resident autonomy in neighborhood governance-scale are limited because only cooperative-type model (similar to current resident autonomy committee) is just selected for trial project.
Therefore, through literature search and analysis on the reality and examples of neighborhood resident autonomy, the correlation between the development of neighborhood resident autonomy and representative nature, identity, responsibility derived from the type and form of neighborhood resident autonomy is analyzed, and based on this, the practical strategy on the direction of improvement is suggested like this;
The ideal form of organization that maximizes promotional factors of neighborhood resident autonomy suggests neighborhood-level parliament style neighborhood resident autonomy organization as a way to secure representative based on resident’s direct participation. This is a form in which representatives of neighborhood resident autonomy(elected in a tong·lee, neighborhood unit) organize parliament style neighborhood resident autonomy and hold a general meeting of the Assembly members in neighborhood (eup, myeon and dong unit). Also, multi-dimensional governance system should be set up, constituting neighborhood resident autonomy’s alliance which is equal to city·gun·gu. Through this, governance-scale, developmental form such as deliberation of resident-participated budget system can be derived.
In order to secure the identity of neighborhood resident autonomy, it is suggested that a representative of neighborhood parliament carry out direct deliberative poll on own responsible tong·lee’s voters.
If the representative carries out direct deliberative poll on own responsible tong·lee’s voters before eup·myeon·dong’s general meeting of the Assembly members, and analyzes the result and actively applies it on the policy, factors of resident’s direct participation would be considerably realized, resident’s efficacy rise, and the identity of resident on region also soar.
As a way to secure responsibility, it can be suggested; first, review on neighborhood resident autonomy can be carried out twice a year in tong·lee scale by direct participation, and second, active release of information.
This study has a meaning of suggesting practical strategy in type of neighborhood resident autonomy and the relationship of typicality, identity, and responsibility as an developmental way; the realization of grass-roots resident autonomy according to governance-scale display of social problem solving skills and expansion of participation.
It is expected for planning and experiment on neighborhood governance-scale local autonomy development’s type and form in order to develop neighborhood resident autonomy to be activated and grass-roots democracy to be realized.
Key words : Neighborhood-Governance, Neighborhood autonomy organization, Neighborhood resident autonomy