지방자치구현과 지역정당

Abstract

The true realization of the local autonomy is the desirable direction of human society to go. The ultimate goal of decentralization is the realization of full democracy of State and society, by returning a political and administrative power in the area to the residents of local governments, especially to the closest residents from local governments. Also, the ideal of local autonomy is that our constitutional principles of national sovereignty and democracy will actually be realized in the local administration. For its realization, the constitutional principle of national sovereignty and democracy must be settled to the far corners of the country and society. And all institutions of state and local governments should be enhanced in direction that constitutional principles can be realized. I called this as a completion of national sovereignty and democracy. Today, developed local governments of the world shall exercise their various authorities, such as foreign policy, territorial jurisdiction of the sea, the rights to regulate private property, including a broad range of taxation. Because local governments were delegated such authority from States. Therefore, local governments can regulate them with their own ordinances. In Japan, many of the local governments enact their basic ordinances which is called as ‘Constitution of Local Government.’ I think these activities are closely related to the expansion of the autonomy of local governments. However, unlike the global trend such as for strengthening and expanding the autonomy of local governments, because the nature and operation of political party system in our current Constitution and Political Party Law is consisted of centralism and its operating too, national party subordinates local governments through the election. As well as it significantly hurts the ideal of local autonomy in Constitution, and compared to the flow of world history that is the true realization of local autonomy, this is a completely different direction. Therefore, this researcher thinks that ‘political decentralization’ is essential for strengthening and expanding of local autonomy, and also strongly argue that the free activity and establishment of local party should be guaranteed as a useful tool for political decentralization. Local party is a political association to collect the entire public opinion is secondary purpose, but to resolve the local issues and to gather public opinion of local residents is primary purpose. The local residents have a primary responsibility for local issues, so they should endeavor to resolve them. Under our current legal system, these local parties are not accepted, but they will be secured by the freedom of association in our Constitution(Article 21, Paragraph 1). But local parties can’t be the subject of rights and obligations under our current legal system, and also they can’t participate in the election, because they can’t be met the requirements that Political Party Law and Election Law need. Therefore, in order to guarantee the freedom of establishment and their activities, and to participate in local elections, the revision of our current Political Party Law and Election Law is urgently needed. If so, the national party and local party will be able to compete fairly in a the two-dimensional system. Then, our political system and the development of local government will be taking place concurrently. I hope that our current Political Party Law and Election Law will be amended soon. If these laws quickly will be amended, by looking at examples in other countries, the establishment of local parties can be institutionalized by law, and the national parties and local parties shall be equally protected by the Constitution and these laws. Once again, I strongly argue that the political decentralization is our urgent task to solve for true realization of local autonomy.