Grassroots Democracy and the Role of Community Center
Korea is traditionally centralized country with unitary political structure. Though local autonomy is institutionalized in its Constitution and related laws, the value of local autonomy is not fully appreciated by many Koreans. No wonder that civic participation or grassroots organizations at local level are not fully developed under this circumstance. Furthermore, since 2010 the Korean government has been pushing through administrative territory reforms by eliminating small local governments at the lower level and amalgamating them into larger entities under the slogan of promoting "administrative efficiency”.
This has been raising serious concerns on democratic functions and representativeness of local autonomy. It’s said that big local governments are not appropriate to encourage citizen participation, unless they invigorate neighborhood autonomy. Aware of these concerns, the Korean government is currently preparing measures to improve existing community centers meant to encourage citizens’ participation in local affairs, which are to be re-established with enhanced responsibility and functions in 2014.
Against this background, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and the Center for Local Autonomy at Hanyang University co-hosted the 26th FNF-CLA International Conference entitled “Grassroots Democracy and the Role of Community Center” in Seoul, on October 25. The conference aimed to discuss issues of citizen’s participation, i.e. community centers and to elaborate on the possible model for Korea by sharing successful overseas cases.
Japan is also facing similar problems. Professor Mitsuhiko Okamoto from Tokai University in Japan pointed out that community centers in Japan are also suffering from less participation of citizens in their activities. However, he trusts the potentials of residents. “Even if only one percent of residents can lead the community organization, it can become a significant power. If one percent of residents can exercise leadership and take positive action in the community, they can change local autonomy”, he stressed.
During the conference, participants recognized that existing community centers in Korea have failed to carry out their proper functions as promoting grassroots democracy and called for reforms towards a better model which can foster citizens’ participation. According to Professor Kim Soon Eun from Seoul National University, the representation issues are the most important reasons for this failure. The level of residents’ participation has not been so high and the composition of the autonomous neighborhood board (who is responsible for running the community center) does not stand for fair representation of the community. The members of the board are assumed to be more government oriented rather than resident oriented. As a solution, he proposed three alterative models to solve these problems and found the “integrated model”- which consists of local civil servants and representatives of citizens- the most feasible under Korean context.
Based on comparative studies on reforms at the local level in European countries, Professor Hubert Heinelt from Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany claimed we should “consider the given responsibilities and autonomy of local government” when reflecting on options to encourage and to strengthen citizens’ participation”. According to him, “without broader responsibilities and autonomy at the local level neither local government has genuine interest to engage seriously in reforms fostering citizen’s participation neither do citizens have incentives to be involved in policy-making at the lowest level of government”
Finally, Professor Robert Chaskin from University of Chicago presented on case studies on various community organizations and associations in three U.S cities, where he found “a loosely coupled system of organizations and associations interacting with one another, with the formal system of governance as well as with the outsiders to promote community-building efforts in each city. He claimed that “engaging in this set of arrangements most successfully requires recognizing the multiple mechanisms in place and the particular ways they operate in the local context and negotiating relationships among them”
The conference was attended by about 100 participants, who were mostly local civil servants, local councillors and researchers.