정당과 지방자치의 관계 : 지방자치에 대한 정당참여의 범위와 한계를 중심으로

A political party and a local autonomy share the common ground in that they both are legitimized within a democratic framework; they are both organized and run in a democratic way. As they work within the framework, each does not run individually nor independently, but relates to each other in mutual fashion by affecting one another. However, the difference between a political party's “centralist” characteristic and a local autonomy's “regionalist” characteristic causes some practical problems to overcome with. The focal point of conflict lies in the matter of the official nomination in local elections. Political parties are needed as mediators in a local election, but in reality of Korean politics, the excessive influence of the central party has brought about serious subordination of local politics to the central one. The characteristics of Korean political parties and the reality of local self-governance considered, it is desirable to exclude official nomination of political parties from local government elections, but allow it only in metropolitan level. Also, it is necessary to cultivate “local parties” to curb current monopolistic structural control of national party to form competitive environment. The common goal of “realization of public opinions' diversity” based on popular sovereignty and pluralism cannot be realized by focusing only on either of political party and local autonomy. Therefore, the harmony between both needs to be achieved for realization of democracy. When the function and the role of each political party and local autonomy are restored, one's positive aspect would influence the other, and eventually the restoration could bring about the intensification, expansion and reinforcement of democracy as its result.