In most countries, for a long time, a centralized government system is adopted when the performance of decentralized government system is not satisfactory and vice versa. However, both centralization and decentralization are opposite means of governin...
In most countries, for a long time, a centralized government system is adopted when the performance of decentralized government system is not satisfactory and vice versa. However, both centralization and decentralization are opposite means of governing and only part of a governing apparatus. In other words, neither decentralization nor centralization is wholly responsible for the local government failure. Over 50 years of academic efforts since Tiebout's death narrowly focused on how to relieve unrealistic propositions of his Model, made a fallacy ignoring public officers' utility maximizing behavior. A new theoretical perspective could be evaluated as an academic improvement, however, it also fails to include various rent-seeking behavior of public officers in reality. When we analyse Korean local governments' competitive behavior, it becomes manifest the fact that the most influential factor which cause local government failure is the degenerated emulation. As a conclusion, the author recommends to establish a skim to intensify internal competition among local governments.