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Restructuring the Governance of Social Services: Discretion Mix Perspective

Young Jun Choi 1 Hyejin Choi 2

1연세대학교
2고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article aims at discussing how to restructure the governance of social services by introducing a discretion mix approach. The Korean government has rapidly developed social services over the last ten years. However, scholars have criticised the inefficiency problems arising partly from the marketisation and partly from the duplication and overlapping of existing programmes. On this issue, previous studies mostly focus on the configuration of service production using the welfare mix approach, but there has been little scholarly attention on the distribution of the decision-making power across policy actors. This study analyses issues of childcare services as a case by using the discretion mix approach. Discretion mix is defined as the distributive status of autonomy and power in social services, i.e. who gets what and how, across law, central and local governments, front-line managers, service providers, and service users. This article argues that the central government dominated discretion mix has caused the dilemma of producing tailor-made and efficient social services. Therefore, it argues that the discretion mix should be restructured by releasing and transferring the discretionary power of central government to smaller units including local governments, service providers, and service recipients.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.