In many recent government-led projects, various forms of conflicts surfaced and sometimes they reached extremes as witnessed in Saemangeum Reclamation Project and Seoul Outer Circular Road Project. However, the Korean government`s response in mediatin...
In many recent government-led projects, various forms of conflicts surfaced and sometimes they reached extremes as witnessed in Saemangeum Reclamation Project and Seoul Outer Circular Road Project. However, the Korean government`s response in mediating and managing these conflicts aggravated the situation rather than resolving them and in many cases ended up as conflict management failure cases. The biggest reason for these failures can be traced to the expedient, political and unofficial approaches to conflict management without establishing an organized system.
While taking into account these identified issues, this paper will study how to establish a conflict management system within the new administrative and policy environment, governance model, that can support `the enhancement of participation and deliberation` function in policy implementation.
The main body of this paper consists of four chapters. Chapter 2 provides a theoretical approach to the relationship between the governance model, democratic policy implementation process, and public conflicts. The chapter consequently will build a concrete governance model out of abstract concept and will suggest a `government-mediation governance model` as the suitable approach for conflict management system. Chapter 3 looks into the current status of laws and regulations and their problems from the perspective of the governance model. Chapter 4 deals with case studies based on the governance model and its analytical framework. The chapter analyzes four government projects focusing on participation in policy decision-making and the level of governance; Dong River Dam Construction, Saemangeum Reclamation, Seoul Outer Road Construction, and Cheonggye Stream Restoration project. In Chapter 5, comprehensives suggestions for conflict management system in alignment with governance policy environment are provided based on both theoretical studies and practical case studies, improving upon existing researches that mostly dealt with single cases and fragmented suggestions for them.
In conclusion, the key point in the conflict management system proposed in this paper is emphasized as `conflict management through participation and deliberation` in the process of policy implementation. It will be explained how the proposed approach is the right method for the governance model conflict management along with various suggestions that can ensure more official and consensus-building mechanism in preventing, expressing, resolving and mediating conflicts.