주민참여와 지방자치 구현을 위한 주민참여예산제에 관한 논의

As the local self-government system has become activated, and the participatory consciousness of residents has gone up, so has the attention on the residents-participant budgetary system in the process of preparation of local government budgets. The residents-participant budgetary system is the institution designed to upgrade transparency and fairness of local government finances by allowing residents participate directly in their budget preparation process. The citizen participate in the process of the compilation of a budget, and they estimate the necessity and validity of the business, estimated effect and the budget should be distributed most efficiently for the citizen therefore the budget system of participation is in the interest of elevating the quality of residents life. Especially the budget system of citizen participation aims to raise the transparency of fiscal management and to embody the ideal of fiscal democracy. The budget system of citizen participation in korea starts from as a part of the budget participation movement by the group of civic movement. In this study, I studied the significance, function and introduction of participatory budgeting to realize the ideals of self-governmen and analyze its meaning and limits by comparing the foreign cases with the structure and surroundings of local government finance to find out whether the participatory budgeting institution can be successfully managed in the Republic of Korea. The Participatory Budgeting is institutionalized to provide the opportunity to reflect the intention of the people in the course of budget compilation process by the head of local government in Korea. In the past, local residents expressed their intents and will regarding the financial operations (as the form of petition, monitoring and control), which is ensured by the freedom of speech. But, today the mandatory implementation of participatory budgeting enables the local residents to take part in the channel to discuss the direction of public finance management. Besides it may be evaluated to overcome the crisis of democracy due to the tendency of strengthening the function of parties and administrative bodies with pluralistic democratic public sphere. Therefore, it is not the means of direct democracy, but should be understood within the framework of representative democracy that the democratic legitimacy of budget is strengthened by the third representatives of local residents (neither the local assembly nor the local government). Therefore, it is necessary to expand the scope of citizens' participation, guarantee citizen-led autonomy and offer an opportunity for all citizens to participate. For this, a wide variety of information should be available, and all budget-related processes from budgeting to settlement of accounts should be open and transparent to attract citizens' participation. To answer the fundamental purpose of the citizen-participatory budget system, in addition, it is important to develop citizens' expertise by holding conference and public hearing and operating local budget schools. It is also required to design a customized citizen-participatory budget system considering regional characteristics and conditions and keep developing the operating system for better efficiency by expanding citizens' voluntary participation.