2009, Vol.7, No.1

Civil Society and NGO 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.84

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

With some theoretical discussions on the democratization of civil society, this article analyzes what civil society has its own democratization issues in terms of cross-national comparisons. The international comparative method is based on the analytical framework of the principles of democratization of civil society which Brysk suggested in his study of “Democratizing Civil Society in Latin America.” This article attempts to measure the ‘democratizing civil society’ empirically in terms of representation, accountability, transparency, autonomy and human rights in civil society, with major findings from Civicus Civil Society Index research on Korea and six European nations and suggest some policy lessons for Korea.

Since 1990s, NGOs in Korea have drastically increased their influences to government and Korean society. However, People has also criticized to the Responsibility of NGOs in Korea. This paper has the following findings. NGOs in Korea depend financially too much upon governmental support. Therefore, NGOs in Korea have decreased their autonomy to government and responsibility to civil society. To improve of Responsibility of NGOs in Korea, combining the findings in this paper, three suggestions are derived. First, directly government subsidy should be converted to indirectly government subsidies. Second, new mutual foundation between public sector and private sector should be founded. Third, “Committee of public interest test” should be also founded likely UK and Japan.

This is to explore and analyze functional implications of ‘21st Town Hall Meeting’, which has been suggested as one of the efficient tools to respond to increasing demands for citizen's participation and deliberative democracy in the States. It is to accumulate collective wisdom, assumes intimate learning process among the citizens, tries to convert informal opinions of civil society into authoritative or official policies of government, task oriented in the sense that it really attempts to produce tangible and concrete outcomes, designed to reflect so balanced view that legitimacy, relevancy, and acceptance of government policies are upgraded and so respond to citizen’s needs and aspirations. It is not simply to approach from a managerial perspective but also from a power struggle and sees the roles of government as outcome of interactions between them as well.