This paper seeks to explain the role of civic groups in welfare reform in Korea, focusing on the introduction of basic pension. It shows that the President and the ruling party(hereafter referred to as ‘the ruling party’) attempted to introduce ba...
This paper seeks to explain the role of civic groups in welfare reform in Korea, focusing on the introduction of basic pension. It shows that the President and the ruling party(hereafter referred to as ‘the ruling party’) attempted to introduce basic pension along with changes to the National Pension. However, civic groups opposed this, and in the end, the current National Pension system was maintained. Nevertheless, the ruling party succeeded in introducing basic pension they aimed for. They used suboptimal policy instruments to bring about changes that produced the expected effects through the original policy goals without reforming the National Pension. As a result, the policy goals of the ruling party were achieved.
In the policy-making process, civic groups limited the extent to which the policy goals of the ruling party were implemented. Additionally, some policy were implemented as policy instruments into policy outputs. As an independent variable explaining welfare reform, civic groups cannot bring about policy change through their own capabilities alone, but they play a meaningful role. Civic groups established political coalitions to pursue agendas and compete with other actors. Although they failed to achieve their policy goals, they were effective to the extent that they reduced the degree to which other actors' policy goals were achieved.
The role of civic groups is strengthened or weakened by their institutional positioning, expertise, and policy-oriented learning. Therefore, aspects of policy change must be interpreted in various ways. There is a need to expand the discussion about civic groups beyond political opportunities to include orientation, consistency, and policy production capacity.