Article
Transition from the Developmental State: The Deliberative Policy Process of Civil Service Pension Reform in Korea*
Huck-ju Kwon1, Eunju Kim2
1Huck-ju Kwon is a professor in the Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University, Korea. His recent publications include Transforming the Developmental Welfare State in East Asia (Palgrave, 2005), The Korean State and Social Policy (Oxford University Press, 2011), and a number of journal articles, including “Policy Learning and Transfer: The Experience of the Developmental State in East Asia” (Policy and Politics, 2009) and “Introduction: Social Policy and Economic Development in Late Industrialisers” (International Journal of Social Welfare, 2009). E-mail:
hkwon4@snu.ac.kr.
2Eunju Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. E-mail:
joanne@snu.ac.kr.
© Copyright 2011 Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received: Oct 24, 2011; Revised: Oct 26, 2011; Revised: Nov 22, 2011; Accepted: Dec 01, 2011
Published Online: Dec 31, 2011
Abstract
This paper examines three recent efforts to reform Korea’s Civil Service Pension Program, in order to trace the changing policy process in Korea, where the policy regime of the developmental state used to be predominant. It has been argued that the government no longer has overwhelming influence over the policy-making process, while social actors are not able to compromise on social issues. This paper aims to test the hypotheses of the decline of government influence and the inability to reach social compromise, focusing on stakeholders’ interactions at the micro level. It argues that a new deliberative policy process has emerged that engages a range of stakeholders, such as trade unions and policy experts, and in which different government ministries compete against each other. The paradox of the new policy process is that despite its deliberative nature, the government’s strategic influence continues to be strong.
Keywords: civil service pension; policy making; pension reform; deliberative policy process
