지방자치단체 기관구성형태 결정의 영향 요인 : 전문가와 공무원 인식을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to provide practical implications for future legislation and system implementation to diversify the institutional structure of local governments by identifying the factors that influence the determination of the institutional structure of local governments. The Local Autonomy Act, which was revised in 2022, allows local governments to explore new forms of diverse institutional organization and operation, moving away from the institutional separation system that has been adopted uniformly. However, there is a lack of empirical research on the main influencing factors that determine the institutional structure of local governments. In this study, we categorized the factors that influence the institutional structure of local government into regional characteristics, resident characteristics, executive agency capacity, and local power structure, and examined the importance of each factor and the differences in perceptions between the two groups of experts and public officials. The results of the analysis are as follows; First, we found that among the four types of institutional structure, local characteristic factors are the most important factor in determining institutional structure. Second, among the regional characteristics, financial conditions were perceived as the most important factor in both regional and basic local governments, while the type of community and the size of the administrative district were also perceived as important. Third, among resident characteristics, homogeneity among residents is the most important factor in basic local governments, while it is the least important factor in regional local governments. Fourth, among the executive agency factors, local administration's professionalism and capacity to carry out decentralization were perceived as the most important in regional local governments, while responding to residents' needs was the most important in basic local governments. Fifth, among the local power structure factors, regional local governments considered the degree of autonomy and balance of power to be important determinants, while basic local governments considered the degree of balance of power and the proportion of dominant parties in the local council to be important determinants. Finally, the difference in perceptions between the respondent groups shows that the civil servants reported statistically higher importance for the following determinants of basic local governance: socioeconomic characteristics among local characteristics; inter-class conflict and education among resident characteristics; professionalism and innovation of local administration, political accountability, and receptivity to new institutions among executive capacity factors; and relations with other local governments among local power structure factors. On the other hand, the expert group perceived only the form of local government as having a higher importance among the local power structure factors.