민주주의와 지방자치의 어울림: 역사적 맥락의 모색

This paper examines the linkage of democracy and local autonomy in the historical context. Upon reviewing the general relevance of the two important ideas, the paper examines the change in the model of democracy. We discuss the relevance of local autonomy in the process of evolution from direct democracy to representative democracy since ancient Greece, and then to participatory and deliberative democracy. Aristotle, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Tocqueville took it for granted that direct democracy in which residents participate in small local communities. Since the era of the nation-state, such direct participation has become difficult in reality, and Mill has looked at representative democracy as the ideal form, while downplaying local governance from the perspective of state elitism. Langrod argued that local autonomy would disappear if equalitarian democracy was realized; Weber and Schumpeter's elite competition democracy also regarded resident participation as a relic of the past. In participatory and deliberative democracy, which seeks to overcome the formal rationality of representative democracy, the realization of its goals is better suited to local governments than to the national government. In addition, democracy is more active in the so-called “narrow corridors” where national and social balance is achieved in places where local autonomy has developed earlier than in centralized countries.