This study aims to investigate whether the National Assembly of South Korea has been checking the president and the government through budget reviews since the democratization period. Previously, the budget process in South Korea was led by the govern...
This study aims to investigate whether the National Assembly of South Korea has been checking the president and the government through budget reviews since the democratization period. Previously, the budget process in South Korea was led by the government in terms of total amounts, particularly the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, with claims that the National Assembly played a limited role. Research on the National Assembly's role in budget reviews has suggested that the focus was on the “pork-barrel politics”, rather than on policy aspects.
This study, based on an actor-centered institutionalism framework, considers institutional, policy enviornmental, and political factors, but focuses particularly on the actors in the budget review process—the members of the National Assembly. Furthermore, rather than focusing on the total amount, this study analyzes the chatpers or subcategories of 16 titles and the upper categories of hundreds of programs to identify the characteristics revealed during the budget review process. The analysis covers the budget reviews from the 13th National Assembly to the 21st National Assembly, from the 1989 budget proposal to the 2024 budget proposal.
This study takes the view that the politics of budget review in the South Korean National Assembly unfolds through interactions among National Assembly members during the preliminary review in standing committees, comprehensive review in the Budget and Accounts Committee, and review and decision-making in plenary sessions, conditioned by institutional and policy factors. It suggests that the behavior of the National Assembly members may vary according to the composition of the assembly and the policy characteristics of budget sectors.
In terms of political factors, the number of seats held by the ruling party is considered, while policy factors emphasized by the president and partisan policy sectors are also taken into account. This study confirms that, when reviewing the budget, the National Assembly pays less attention to the policies prioritized by the president, but shows more interest in partisan policies, with the interaction between partisan policies and the number of seats held by the ruling party significantly affecting the outcome of the budget review. Despite the president and the government drafting and submitting the budget proposal, presidential policies with a high emphasis on national tasks or government proposals have not shown a statistically significant impact on the budget review results. On the other hand, the National Assembly tends to significantly cut budgets for sectors where the government's proposed budget has been substantially increased compared to the previous year's approved budget.
Such results suggest that, when analyzed by sectors, the National Assembly clearly influences the president and the government’s budget proposal. The focus of the National Assembly is not the president’s policies, but rather the partisan policies that reflect the opposition between the ruling and opposition parties. Partisan policies interact with the number of seats held by the ruling and opposition parties, thus influencing the budget review process differently.
In this way, when viewed at the sector level, the National Assembly clearly influences the budget proposed by the president and the government, which is a significant result not evident when considering the total amount. In the short review period and with limited personnel, the National Assembly does not review the budget equally across all sectors but focuses on politically significant sectors, namely, partisan policy sectors.
To examine the impact of partisan policies and presidential policies on the budget review, case studies were conducted. By comparing the process of reviewing the Ministry of Unification's budget in 2004 and 2005 during the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the study explored how partisan presidential policies were handled depending on whether the National Assembly was in a divided or unified government. In the 2004 budget review, in a divided government, opposition members sought to significantly cut the budget for projects they did not support, resulting in substantial revisions to the government’s proposed budget. In contrast, in the unified situation of 2005, ruling party members sought to increase the budget for projects they supported, leading to substantial revisions to the government’s proposed budget.
Next, the study analyzed the budget review process for the Four Major Rivers project during the Lee Myung-bak administration and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s budget during the Park Geun-hye administration to illustrate the politics of presidential policies and budget reviews. Through the review process of the Four Major Rivers project in 2009-2013, it was found that, despite strong opposition from the democrats, the ruling conservatives, which held a majority, did not make significant changes to the government’s proposed budget but passed it, particularly increasing the budget for projects related to ruling party constituencies. After the completion of the Four Major Rivers project, in the 2012 and 2013 budget reviews, the ruling party and opposition members allocated and increased the budget for constituencies that had been neglected during the project.
By comparing the 2011-2017 budget review process for the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family during the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, the study examined how presidential policies were handled. Although gender, family, and youth policies were priorities for both administrations, partisan characteristics were weak, so opposition members did not strongly criticize the government’s policies.
To analyze the politics of budget reviews when a budget sector involves both partisan and presidential policies, the study compared the 2019 budget reviews for the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Employment and Labor under the Moon Jae-in administration. In the Ministry of Environment, which had weak partisan characteristics, only a few specific projects were subject to budget cuts, while in the Ministry of Employment and Labor, where partisan characteristics were strong, the opposition party strongly opposed the government’s proposals, which continued throughout the budget review process. Because the ruling party did not have a majority, it had to accommodate much of the opposition’s stance, even accepting significant cuts in the government’s core policy budgets.