2024, Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part A

The local government is commonly defined as the lowest tier of public administration within a known state. Local government aims at bringing government to the grassroots and enabling citizens to participate effectively in the making of decisions affecting their daily lives. As the level closest to the citizens, local government is, in principle, in a much better position than central government to deal with matters that require local knowledge and regulation on the basis of local needs and priorities. The democratic institution promised a system of separation of power, democratic rights and freedom for all people. From this viewpoint, the democratic change in central control is assumed to improve the performance of local government based on the theory that the growth of local autonomy motivates local government to improve its performance. Financial crises were used to justify the revival of pervasive central controls. So this study is concerned with the relationship between central control and local performance in the context of fiscal crisis, whose focus is driven by the experience of fiscal crises over recent years in Korea.