The Korean Public Administration Review (KPAR), which has published quarterly volumes since its establishment in 1967, is the official journal of the Korean Association for Public Administration(KAPA). As a scholarly journal, KPAR not only hold the highest authority in the field of public administration in South Korea, but also in social science. Since the National Research Foundation of Korea began evaluating journals, KPAR has been listed in the Korea Citation Index (KCI) journal index.
Changing Patterns of the Regulatory State in Korea, 1948-2025: Focusing on Regulatory Legislation 한국 규제국가의 전개 양상, 1948-2025: 규제법률 규모의 변화를 중심으로
이민호 ( Lee Minho ) , 한혜진 ( Han Hyejin ) , 정용덕 ( Jung Yong-duck )
DOI:10.18333/KPAR.60.3.3 Vol.60(No.3) 3-39, 2026
Abstract
Recognizing the expanding use of government regulation as a defining feature of the modern state, this study empirically analyzes the changing patterns of the regulatory state in Korea based on regulatory statutes enacted between 1948 and 2025. It constructs time-series data on the annual cumulative number of regulatory statutes and applies segmented regression analysis to examine structural changes in the scale, relative size, and policy-purpose composition of regulatory legislation.
The findings show that the cumulative number of regulatory statutes in Korea increased over the long term, but this growth cannot be understood as either a simple incremental expansion or a sequence of frequent structural breaks. Rather, changes unfolded over a relatively long-term horizon, with major structural changes concentrated in particular periods. Rapid expansion occurred in the early 1960s and from the 2000s to the mid-2010s, with the early 1960s representing the most significant structural change. In relative terms, the ratio of regulatory statutes to all statutes rose sharply in the early 1960s and then gradually declined toward stability, while regulatory legislation relative to fiscal expenditure temporarily rebounded in the mid-1980s and around 2000.
By policy purpose, the ratio of social regulatory statutes to economic regulatory statutes generally increased, indicating a gradual shift from economic growth–centered regulation toward the management of social values and everyday risks. The long-term increase in and subsequent stabilization of development-oriented regulatory statutes also suggest that Korea’s regulatory state has a hybrid character, combining the legacy of the developmental state with institutional features of the regulatory state.
Future research should extend the analysis to subordinate legislation, individual regulatory provisions, and registered regulation data.
Key Words
규제국가, 한국의 정부규제, 규제법률, 구조적 변화, regulatory state, government regulation in Korea, regulatory statutes, structural change
Analysis of Research Trends in the Korean Public Administration Review: Focusing on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Drivers and Changes in Research Topics 『한국행정학보』 연구동향 분석: 내재적·외재적 동인과 연구주제 변화를 중심으로
This study aims to identify the dynamics of Korean public administration research by verifying the role of intrinsic changes in public administration topics along with extrinsic drivers. To this end, Structural Topic Modeling (STM) was utilized for 2,074 articles published in the Korean Public Administration Review (1991-2025) to analyze changes in the public administration research agenda over time, as well as associations with the IMF crisis and the global financial crisis. As a result of the analysis, 29 topics were derived. Korean public administration research showed a dispersed structure without concentration on specific themes. In the time-series analysis, micro and practical topics such as organizational behavior, networks and governance, and publicness emerged, while macro and structural themes such as state theory and national policy, and institutional and institutionalist analysis showed a declining trend. Distinctive patterns appeared: after the IMF crisis, micro and practical topics reflecting NPM-style reforms tended to increase, whereas after the global financial crisis, post-NPM topics such as publicness and government trust tended to emerge. This suggests that Korean public administration is an applied discipline that responds sensitively to contemporary crises, while simultaneously suggesting that securing a balance between practicality and macro-level reflection remains a continuous challenge.
Key Words
한국행정학, 한국행정학보, 연구동향, korean public administration, korean public administration review, kpar, research trends analysis
Revisiting the Garbage Can Model: Model Replication and Actors’ Search Scope in Organizational Decision-Making 쓰레기통 모형의 합리성 재검토: 모형의 재현과 행위자의 탐색 시야를 중심으로
This study critically examines the assumptions embedded in the original simulation of the garbage can model (GCM) of decision-making and reconstructs the model from the perspective of bounded rationality. To this end, the original FORTRAN code was replicated in Python in order to analyze its algorithmic limitations. A modified model was then simulated by introducing a search-scope mechanism that constrains actors to explore only a limited number of choice opportunities.
The analysis yields two main findings. First, patterns of organizational problem-solving vary substantially depending on the search scope of both problems and decision-makers. When individual problems explore a large number of choice opportunities through an expansive search scope, a paradox emerges: rather than improving outcomes, such extensive search induces system-wide overload and bottlenecks, thereby hindering overall problem resolution. In contrast, when decision-makers possess a broad search scope, they are better able to alleviate accumulated bottlenecks within the system. Second, the effects of search scope differ according to the organization’s access structure-unsegmented, hierarchical, or specialized.
While retaining the other assumptions of the garbage can model, this study partially reconstructs the rationality assumption embedded in its search rules from the perspective of bounded rationality. The findings suggest that a strategy in which individual problems broadly search for favorable decision-making venues may be rational at the micro level, but at the macro level it can concentrate required energy on particular choice opportunities, leading to decision-making gridlock and systemic overload. However, because these results are derived while maintaining the original assumption of accumulated energy, a limitation of this study is that the observed effects of search scope may partly reflect its interaction with the energy accumulation mechanism.
Key Words
GCM, 제한된 합리성, 탐색 시야, 베뉴 쇼핑, 의사결정, garbage can model, bounded rationality, search scope, venue shopping, decision making
Reconstructing the Socialist Theory of the State in Public Administration: Analysis of State Apparatus and Bureaucracy with Application to North Korea 사회주의 국가론의 행정학적 재구성과 국가기구·관료제 분석: 북한 사례를 통한 적용
This study reconstructs the socialist theory of the state from a public administration perspective through a deductive framework linking state form, state functions, state apparatus, and bureaucracy. Rather than applying frameworks developed for capitalist democracies, it takes socialist state theory as its starting point and examines how state functions are institutionalized through state apparatus and bureaucracy.
The study divides the socialist transitional state into the dictatorship of the proletariat and the people’s state (developed socialism), identifying three core functions: repressive, economic-organizational, and cultural-legitimating. Their institutionalization is examined through democratic centralism as the operating principle and one-party leadership and the party–state–military structure as the administrative environment. Applied to North Korea, the framework traces changes across successive leadership periods. It also compares socialist state theory with pluralism, elitism, neo-Marxism, and comparative public administration and examines North Korea’s institutional particularity through comparison with China.
The findings suggest that socialist states share commonalities in state forms and basic state functions, whereas cross-national differences emerge as shared operating principles function within different historical and political administrative environments and state functions are institutionalized through state apparatus and bureaucracy.
Key Words
사회주의 국가론, 국가형태, 국가기능, 국가기구, 관료제, 민주집중제, 북한, socialist theory of the state, state form, state functions, state apparatus, bureaucracy, democratic centralism, North Korea
Democratic bureaucracy rests on the premise that civil servants are capable of ethical judgment and active responsibility. Public service ethical competence has long been discussed normatively in debates over accountability, public values, and the institutional design of administrative ethics, yet empirical research on the concept remains limited. This study conceptualizes public service ethical competence as the capacity to maintain ethical standards under organizational and practical pressures, to judge independently what is right, and to translate that judgment into action. Building on this conceptualization, we explore how public service ethical competence relates to civil servants' public-interest- oriented motivation and how this relationship varies with organizational conditions. Hierarchical regression analyses of the 2024 Public Service Ethics and Values Survey show that public service motivation is positively associated with public service ethical competence, and that this association is stronger among civil servants who perceive higher levels of organizational justice. These findings are consistent with prior research identifying public service motivation as an important foundation of ethical conduct, while further suggesting that motivation and fairness may function complementarily in public organizations. By repositioning public service ethical competence as a subject of behavioral analysis, this study underscores the need for a more evidence-based approach to public service ethics.
Key Words
행정이론, 공직윤리역량, 공공봉사동기, 조직공정성, administrative theory, ethical competence, public service motivation, organizational justice
This study analyzes the effects of the various managerial factors discussed in the existing public management literature on organizational performance. Specifically, it, examines how managerial behavior, managerial human capital, and managerial leadership―each traditionally regarded as effective in improving performance―affect organizational performance, while addressing the issues raised in recent studies, as well as the arguments for which new interpretations have been called for. Drawing on five years of data on Korean public institutions, this study presents the following findings. First, when managerial effort was measured by the frequency of contact with key actors, it had no significant effect on performance; however, a performance-improving effect emerged when the manager maintained good relationships with those actors. Second, among the components of managerial human capital, career experience in the public sector was effective in improving performance, whereas holding a master’s or doctoral degree had no significant effect. Finally, transformational and transactional leadership had no significant effect on performance, and an analysis of their fitness with educational attainment as a component of human capital suggests that they may even have a negative effect on performance.
Key Words
공공 관리, 조직성과, 관리 노력, 인적자본, 공공 리더십, public management, organizational performance, managerial effort, human capital, public leadership
The Hidden Condition for Securing Public Value: The Impartial Spectator and Citizens’ Self-Discipline in Pandemic Response 공공가치 확보의 숨은 조건: 공정한 관찰자와 방역 규칙에 대한 시민 자기규율
During the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korean citizens widely accepted mask-wearing as a social norm they ought to follow, independent of legal coercion. This study examined the mechanisms through which such voluntary behavior emerged. Drawing on Adam Smith’s concept of the “impartial spectator,” it analyzed how citizens internalized self-discipline. It distinguished three layers of visibility through which the impartial spectator operates- panopticon, synopticon, and omniopticon-and examined how each contributed to the formation of self-discipline. These three layers were redefined not by the classical question of who watches whom, but by the forms of visibility they generate in a digital network environment.
The analysis found that citizens’ self-discipline emerged from the overlapping operation of the three layers of visibility. Specifically, the panopticon provided the institutional foundation on which the synopticon and omniopticon could operate; the synopticon generated collective pressure through social evaluation and classification but did not fully translate into self-discipline at the individual level; and the omniopticon completed self-discipline as an internalized norm by fostering mutual expectations among citizens, amid the simultaneous operation of solidarity and stigma.
This suggests that, in public crises, public value can be secured not only through institutional enforcement but also through self-discipline arising from mutual visibility among citizens, a “hidden condition” of public value realization.
Key Words
공공가치, 공정한 관찰자, 시민 자기규율, public value, impartial spectator, citizen self-discipline
Political-Administrative Decision-Making and the Institutionalization of Conflict in Public Deliberation Governance: Focusing on Constructivist Grounded Theory 공론화 거버넌스에서 정치-행정적 의사결정과 갈등의 제도화: 구성적 근거이론을 중심으로
This study examines the decision-making process and conflict management mechanisms of deliberative governance through a constructivist grounded theory analysis of participant observation data from the Shin-Kori Units 5 and 6 public deliberation case. The findings identify framing competition and constraints on deliberation as the central phenomena shaping the Committee’s decision-making process. These phenomena emerged under conditions of political-administrative power structures, intense social conflict, and policy uncertainty, while their effects were mediated by political commitments to accept deliberative outcomes and by media exposure. In response, the Public Deliberation Committee employed both framing strategies, such as agenda boundary setting and responsibility diffusion, and procedural strategies, including redesigning participation structures and managing communication. The findings suggest that the Committee functioned less as a mechanism for directly resolving policy conflicts than as a governance mechanism for securing procedural legitimacy and managing conflict-related discourses and responsibility structures. While the findings are limited to the Committee’s internal decision-making process and do not directly assess citizens’perceptions or social acceptance, this study extends the literature by demonstrating how public deliberation can operate as a mechanism for the procedural management of policy conflicts under specific political and administrative conditions.
Using an unbalanced panel of 251 Korean local governments (17 upper-tier and 234 lower-tier) for 2008-2024, this study analyzes how the real per capita levels and budget shares of social overhead capital (SOC, i.e., infrastructure) and social welfare expenditure change over the four-year local electoral cycle, and examines whether these changes are moderated by the structure of fiscal autonomy. Fiscal autonomy is captured by four indicators, each entered in a separate model: the fiscal autonomy ratio, which reflects discretion over expenditure decisions; the fiscal independence ratio, which reflects responsibility for raising own-source revenue; the autonomy gap (the former minus the latter); and the autonomy ratio (the former divided by the latter). Local government fixed-effects models with cluster-robust standard errors are estimated with interaction terms between each indicator and a set of election-cycle dummies, taking the year after an election as the reference category. Both the level and the share of SOC expenditure rise one year before an election and fall in the election year. The level of social welfare expenditure falls two years before an election, rises one year before, and falls again in the election year, while its share remains consistently lower from two years before the election through the election year than in the reference year. In the full sample, a larger autonomy gap and a higher autonomy ratio amplify the pre-election increase in the level of SOC expenditure and attenuate its election-year decline; among lower-tier (municipal) governments, however, these moderating effects appear only at certain points of the cycle. In both the full samples and the lower-tier subsample, the decline in the share of social welfare expenditure is attenuated as the financial autonomy ratio, the financial independence ratio, the autonomy gap, and the autonomy-independence ratio increase. For the level of social welfare expenditure, by contrast, a higher fiscal autonomy ratio attenuates the election-year decline in the full sample, whereas among lower-tier governments it amplifies the decline two years before an election and dampens the increase one year before. These findings indicate that political budget cycles are conditional rather than uniform, varying by expenditure type, point in the electoral cycle, tier of government, and fiscal autonomy structure, and the findings carry implications for strengthening fiscal discipline and accountability in local public finance.
Key Words
정치적 예산순환, 재정자율성, 지출 구성, 연성예산제약, political budget cycle, fiscal autonomy, expenditure composition, soft budget constraint
The Functional Meaning of Repeated Participation in Direct Job Creation Programs: Application of the Administrative Redundancy Perspective 직접일자리사업 반복참여의 기능적 의미: 가외성 관점의 적용
This study interrogates the limits of efficiency as the dominant evaluative criterion in policy implementation research and proposes administrative redundancy theory as a complementary framework, particularly for employment policies serving vulnerable populations where multifaceted goals and environmental uncertainty resist straightforward efficiency-based assessment. Drawing on focus group interviews with repeat participants in publicly funded direct job creation programs, the analysis reveals a persistent gap between efficiency-based assumptions―which presuppose a single employment-transition goal and a one-time intervention, and treat repetition as anomalous or problematic―and the nonlinear, often cyclical employment trajectories that participants actually experience. Rather than signaling inefficiency, repeated participation is shown to perform distinct redundant functions: providing a fallback pathway after unsuccessful transitions to private-sector employment, sustaining participant trust and engagement by preserving avenues for institutional re-entry, and securing multiple potential routes toward eventual employment. These findings suggest that repeated participation warrants evaluation not as a uniform indicator of program failure but as a context-dependent expression of system reliability and adaptability. The study concludes that efficiency and redundancy are best understood not as competing standards but as complementary criteria whose relative weight should be calibrated to the degree of uncertainty characterizing the policy environment.
