2008, Vol.6, No.1

Civil Society and NGO 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.84

pISSN : 1599-8568
https://journal.kci.go.kr/civil&NGO

'Democratic' governance, distinct from 'good' governance, concerns about the democratic principles such as the autonomy of civil society, transparency, accountability and empowerment. As the UK Compact on relations between the government and civil society shows a good example, the government has to have a strong political will and commitment to pursue a sustainable partnership with civil society by adopting the civil society’s autonomy and innovative competence to the process of policy design and implementation. There is a strong tendency for the government of Korea to consider civil society as an instrument rather than a policy partner. For the governance to be transformed from the 'instrumental' to the 'supplementary' or 'transitory' and thereby the 'democratic' governance to be achieved, both the government and civil society are demanded to pursue 'more often', 'more inclusive' and 'more competent' partnership relations.

Theoretically, this study starts with the assumption that more participation in, and more transparency of global governance institutions are not the only solution for democratizing global governance. Special consideration should be given to the balance between the levels when trying to promote "democratic" global governance. This study aims to reveal the reality of unbalance between the global and the national levels and its implication for the theoretical assumption, studying the case of international migration governance in particular. The research question is as follows: what is impact of launching global migration governance institution upon the governance institution at the national level? The empirical research focuses on the German immigration law reform process. The results show that the efforts to promote global migration governance institutions since 2000 at the global level resulted in the unexpected demise of the German typical corporative governance institutions in the policy process around the immigration law reform: it was conditioned by political calculations, not by institutionalized democratic policy process. It implies that you are likely to neglect the negative impacts of promoting global governance institutions upon the "democratic" governance institution which has been working, while focusing mainly on democratizing the global governance institutions itself, not the balance between the two levels. In conclusion, the one axis of democratizing global governance should be given to the 'democratic' nationstate which mediates between the global and the local.

This paper purposes to analyze the history of the "Tripartite Committee"h in the past 10 years from the perspective of 'governance'. Analyzing the Tripartite Committee from the perspective of governance is important in that it focuses on the interaction among labor, capital and the state, and the process and the outcome of negotiations. In this paper, the reason why the Tripartite Committee was not successful in Korean society was examined by looking at interactions among labor, capital and the state in terms of the dynamics of governance within the committee. As a result of examining the history of the Tripartite Committee, it was found that the committee as an institution to produce the social consensus had limitations in constituting the partnership among labor, capital and the state because each party of the committee did not fully develop the elements of democratic governance; participation, accountability, and empowerment. Therefore, the role of the committee has been suspected and criticized. Especially, the improper representativeness of each party, the distrust among parties and the power relations in the committee played a critical role in unsuccessful performance of the committee. In Korean society, the Tripartite Committee came to have a legal and institutional framework; however, it has not been successful in manufacturing consent and delivering the outcome of negotiation. Despite limitations of the Tripartite Committee, its social significance will increase because more problems regarding employment relations will happen as neoliberal economic forces have a wide-spread influence on Korean national economy. The concept of democratic governance is useful to improve the role of the Tripartite committee when each party is fully willing to develop this existing institution.