한국 정당정책연구소와 독일 정당재단의 역할과 특징: 2005년 한국정당정책연구소의 성과와 문제점을 줌심으로

Abstract

Korean political parties call for special policy institutes, so that they may reform themselves to the ‘parties with policies’, and uphold stabilization of party system. On that line, they amended the Political Party Law and Political Fund Law in 2004, whereby establishing the institutes of policy of political parties. Korean institutes of policy of political parties have pursued to perform the function of education and training as German political party foundations do, and to take the role of ‘think tank’ as the U. S. institutes of policy do. German party foundations do not perform the function of institutes of political parties helping the activities of parties, but are absolutely independent political foundations, which are ‘intimate to the parties’. This research is aimed at reviewing achievements and problems of Korean institutes of policy of political parties in 2005, centered to the functional traits of institutes of policy of political parties. For the same purpose, I also reviewed German political party foundations. I believe that the result of this research will expand a horizon of research in political parties, in view that we can scarcely see the researches on Korean institutes of institutes of political parties. My conclusions are that Korean institutes of policy lack functions of forming agenda and analysing policies, as well as scientific assessment and analysis as professional groups on policy matters, and that they seem to exert little influence on parties' policy framing. In order to make up for such shortfalls, they should carry out medium- or long-term researches, instead of short-term researches on on-going issues. At the same time, parties should develop their policies independently based on their own principle, rather than affected by temporal political environment or popular opinion, through which each party shall reinforce credibility and continuity of its policy.