Only principled policy can restore trust

An Evaluation of the Yoon Suk Yeol Administration’s First 100 Days and Its Tasks / Administration and Policy

It has been 100 days since the Yoon Suk Yeol administration was launched. From the moment he took office, President Yoon has pursued a “small government,” boldly seeking to reduce the size of a government that had grown excessively large and to reorganize it more efficiently through rational integration and consolidation, while also advancing various administrative reforms.

Furthermore, based on an ideology that emphasizes individual freedom and seeks a market economy, the administration has set the direction of policy toward national development driven by private-sector-centered market principles. In this context, changes to the various government-led industrial policies of the past and regulatory reform appear to be moving forward.

What, then, is the fundamental cause of the various socioeconomic problems and policy failures we are confronting today?

On closer examination, the root cause lies in government failure: under the pretext of correcting market failures, the government produced unreasonable and unnecessary regulations that restricted business activity, while also intervening indiscriminately and excessively in citizens’ personal decisions and everyday lives. In that respect, at least, it seems fair to conclude that the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s diagnosis of the problem and the direction of its reforms are heading down the right path.

Here, I would like to assess the first 100 days of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, which has just embarked on its five-year voyage, from the perspective of administration and policy, and to offer recommendations, from both managerial and policy standpoints, on the tasks that must be pursued in order to successfully complete the difficult journey ahead.

When political power changes hands and a new administration is launched, it first establishes a governing ideology and vision, and on that basis draws the blueprint for the policies it intends to pursue. It then reorganizes the government’s structure as the basic implementation system for carrying out specific policies.

Accordingly, government reorganization is important because it newly constitutes the bodies responsible for the policies the administration seeks to promote and reorganizes the basic framework of the government structure.

The most noticeable organizational change in the new administration is the reorganization of the presidential office. Of course, in physical terms, opening Cheong Wa Dae to the public for the first time in more than 60 years—Cheong Wa Dae having stood in stark contrast to the practices of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan as an isolated seat of power where the president reigned in seclusion—will likely be remembered as a historic event that goes beyond mere organizational restructuring.

There have also been significant changes from the perspective of administrative organization. The Yoon Suk Yeol administration reduced the size of the presidential office by restructuring it from the former Blue House system of three offices and eight senior secretaries to two offices—the Office of the Chief of Staff and the National Security Office—and five senior secretaries for political affairs, civil society, public relations, economic affairs, and social affairs, including the abolition of the Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs.

Although some have assessed this as a retreat from certain earlier campaign pledges, it deserves a positive evaluation insofar as the new administration, which declared its commitment to small government, began by reforming the presidential office itself.

Government Reorganization Must Focus on Eliminating Siloed Administration

However, the issue of abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family—one of the biggest points of contention among President Yoon’s campaign pledges—has not been properly pursued and remains at a standstill.

Although the administration announced plans such as abolishing the existing ministry and transferring youth and family affairs to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, even after the government was launched it has merely repeated that discussions on reorganization are ongoing, without presenting even a concrete methodology for how the reform will proceed.

The ultimate purpose of government reorganization is to improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of government policy and to enhance the quality of administrative services. No meaning or effect can be expected from a merely schematic and physical restructuring of organizations.

Even if the Yoon Suk Yeol administration adopts small government as its basic line, it should boldly abolish unnecessary organizations that no longer fit the times; at the same time, it should not hesitate to establish organizations that are necessary.

For example, in order to effectively promote regulatory reform, which is central to economic policy, the government must create a permanent organization—not some makeshift committee or temporary body—and commit the necessary personnel and budget to it.

Government reorganization will be properly evaluated not when emphasis is placed on restructuring itself, but when it seeks ways to break down existing bureaucratic silos, activate interministerial collaboration, and realize accountable administration.

Government policy is a series of courses of action decided and carried out by the government to solve public problems. In that sense, policy is purpose-oriented toward problem-solving. At the same time, because public policy is a product that emerges through the political process involving official and unofficial participants, it is highly political in nature.

For this reason, it is critically important what kind of ideology and philosophy a government possesses in forming and implementing policy.

What is the essence of the problems that have arisen in the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s policy process thus far, and what tasks must be addressed going forward?

Policy is not something the government unilaterally decides and executes; rather, it is advanced through a series of “policy processes.” The first stage is the setting of the government agenda. Not every problem in the world becomes an agenda item requiring government intervention through policy.

For a government agenda to emerge, a particular social problem must become an important issue, and it must also be one that the government can intervene in and resolve. Therefore, at this stage, one must ask normatively whether the issue truly requires government intervention, and also examine carefully from an empirical perspective whether it can in fact be resolved through policy.

For example, most problems that arise in the market are naturally resolved through the voluntary decision-making and transactions of market participants. This is why the government must not rashly intervene in the market, as doing so only produces results that disrupt the market, such as price distortions. The failure of the previous administration’s real estate policy is a representative example.

Once the government agenda has been set, the process of policy decision-making follows. In this process, the government listens to the voices of various stakeholders and plays the role of coordinating the conflicts that arise. Because policy is inherently a political process that produces beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, government policy must be decided according to “principle.”

A policy in which the overwhelming majority is sacrificed in order to guarantee the interests of a small minority is not the result of principle but of interest. A typical example is the so-called “Tada ban law,” which, because of the interests of a small group including the taxi industry, forced the sacrifice of the broader public, who needed more convenient and diverse transportation options.

Only after going through the process of policy formation, taking into account the interactions among policy participants and the conditions and environment surrounding the policy, can the government begin to seriously implement it.

Recently, the Ministry of Education’s proposal to reform the school system by lowering the elementary school entrance age from 6 to 5 has emerged as a hot issue. However, amid resistance not only from some parents and other stakeholders but even from superintendents of education aligned with the ruling camp, it is effectively heading toward being scrapped.

In fact, it is difficult to regard this school system reform proposal as a core state task of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration. Moreover, it is hard to shake the impression that it suddenly appeared without any clear process of gathering stakeholder opinions or building public consensus as a government agenda. This is the result of disregarding the policy process that must be followed for policy to succeed.

Unfortunately, when education policy is sent back to square one in this way, it does not simply end there. More serious is the fact that policy mistakes in the early period of an administration place a tremendous burden on the implementation of major government policies that must be pursued in the future.

The success or failure of government policy is not determined simply by securing rationality and validity. Policy is directly tied to the public’s trust in the government. What is often called “slipshod administration” is nothing other than a mocking expression for a policy pushed ahead clumsily and hastily without following the basic procedures of the policy process.

The saying “slow but steady” applies, regardless of era or country, as a maxim for the promotion of all policy.

Charles E. Lindblom described policymaking as “incrementalism.” In short, government policy is decided in a gradual manner, improving little by little on the basis of existing practices and policies. His theory is accepted as a highly realistic approach to administration and policy.

Because administration and policy have a strong incremental character, it is difficult to expect “innovation,” in the sense of rapid change. That is why the government innovation proposed by previous administrations was closer to “fiction.” Regrettably, government can, in reality, only address the problems before it through gradual improvement and reform.

Therefore, no matter how intense public pressure may be, the government must cast off “impatience” in pursuing policy. To do so, it must promote policy based on principle. The belief that everyone will sympathize with a policy simply because it is motivated by good intentions and serves the public interest is a complete illusion.

In a democratic system, conflict and resistance are inevitable. The only alternative to avoiding an awkward posture shaped by policies entangled in vested interests and policies swayed by emotional public opinion is to pursue policy according to principle. Even now, the administration must reexamine the principles of liberal democracy and the market economy and restore trust in government through principle.

Professor Seongjun Kim, Kyungpook National University

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Original title: 원칙 있는 정책이어야 신뢰 회복

Author: Seong-jun Kim

Date: 2022-08-23

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=24919