지방자치제도에 관한 헌법개정방향

Local self-government provision of our Constitution have been maintained almost invariably since its establishment in 1948. These provisions define the scope of the autonomy power of local government very narrowly, so academic theories and court decisions have been understood the status and function of local governments narrowly as well as the realities of local self-government. This does not correspond to the request of liberal democracy, popular sovereignty and separation of powers in our Constitution and is contrary to the needs of decentralization which is currently deployed around the world as well as domestic. Many researches and proposals on constitutional amendment related local self-government were published over the past 10 years, most of those proposed amendment of the significant amount of 10-20 provisions. However, possibility of realization of these proposals are extremely low. In the process of amending constitution, it is obvious that its focus will be reform of governmental structure and arguments for amendment of the other parts will appear abundantly, then the possibility that a large amount of proposals on local self-government are accepted is very low. Therefore, I suggest the strategic small scale amendment of selection and concentration as follows. Provisions on guarantee of autonomy right of local self-governing body and residents, and duties of the state to solve the financial gap between local government, to supervise local financial soundness and to discuss with related local government or their association when establishing important local self-government policy should be introduced. The section 1 of article 117 in the current Constitution should be amended as follow; “Local government shall handle such affairs pertaining to the welfare of residents in accordance with subsidiarity principle, and may enact the rules relating to local self-government to the extent not in conflict with the law.” And remaining provisions keep intact.