시민의 입법참여와 헌법 - 국민발안제 도입논의를 중심으로

Abstract

Democracy in the 21st century seems to face new changes. The classic representative democracy that originated from the 17th century Britain centered on the parliament. The popular democracy in the 20th century had political parties at the center. The democracy in the 21st century is characterized by strong trends to incorporate the people’s voices—even the unpolished ones—into the democratic process. These trends, while some of them are based on distrust toward the parliament and political parties, prove that the existing democratic systems failed to properly consider the various voices of the people. Democracy in the 21st century, on the other hand, shows different trends. For example, the Brexit in the United Kingdom, President Trump’s victory in the United States presidential election, and President Macron’s victory in France, as well as the rapid growth of radical parties in the German general election, are expressions of people’s discontent over the failure of the parliaments and major parties to represent the will of the people. Granted that people’s judgments and decisions mentioned may be debatable, but one thing is clear: the shortcomings of the conventional representative politics are becoming more apparent, and they call for a new alternative that will succeed where the conventional system failed. Contemporary democracy is widely recognized as rooted in a representative system, which is supplemented by elements of direct democracy (citizen’s initiative, recall election, and national referendum). However, the elements of direct democracy have successfully supplemented representative democracy only in a few countries including Switzerland—at least among developed countries. At this juncture, new attempts at supplementing the representative system in meaningful ways with elements of direct democracy may only naturally occur. In this sense, Korea is not unique in witnessing a sudden spike of interest in citizen’s participation in legislation. Rather, it is a common trend shared by democratic countries of the 21st century. On the other hand, numerous commentators point out that an uncontrolled deluge of people’s voices may result in decisions dominated by the sentiment of the moment as exemplified the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, which may spread populism across the society. Therefore, approaching the issue of citizens’ participation in legislation warrants a high level of caution. In light of the issues discussed above, this article overviews the traditional structure of representative democracy and the elements of direct democracy (II), followed by a review of changes in the 21st-century citizens’ needs regarding democracy (III). On the basis of the discussions in the first two sections, the article moves onto an overview of the people’s elevated consciousness as sovereign beings after the Candlelight Protests in 2016, and the trajectory of demands for expanded participation (IV). This section also sheds light on the special significance that participation in legislation has with regard to supplementing the representative system (IV. A New Paradigm for Democracy in the 21st Century and Citizens’ Participation in Legislation). Then, the article reviews the scopes and requirements of Citizens’ initiative for legislative bills, which constitutes one of the key issues for the 10th amendment of the Korean Constitution (V. Discussions on Ways to Participate in Legislation and the Adoption of Citizens’ Initiative).