Textbook vs. Praxis: Comparative Lessons in Policy-Making at the Local Level in East Asia

In the United States, there are multiple models of policy-making, some more well-known than others (Lasswell, 1951; Peterson, 1991). In general, these models have a normative basis that equates pluralist systems of democratic governance with economic free market systems. Thus certain political configurations, such as decentralized government structures, are assumed to have economic benefits. Such assumptions do not necessarily appear in European models of decentralization. This paper lays out the U.S. intergovernmental models, and then examines some of the key assumptions of such models. It is then examined how such models fare in the local policy-making environments of Japan and Korea under the decentralization programs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This examination highlights a marked difference in the understanding (and enactment) of the decentralization of policy-making between the U.S.