Supporting But Interfering: Formation and Structural Reform of the National Research System

Government-funded research institutes increased from only five in 1971 to 59 in 1998. However, they depended on government ministries and had to reform their high-cost, low-efficiency structures continually. Eventually 1999, reforms were made to divide government-funded research institutes into five research councils. By establishing a national research system modeled after the research councils in the UK or Germany, independence and autonomy in the management and research of research institutes were guaranteed by law. In this study, the formation process of the national research system and the aspect of structural reform were examined through the case of the NRC(National Research Council for Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences). NRC expected the establishment of the Haldane Principle and Harnack Principle, in which the government only supported research and did not interfere, but government interference continued in various ways. In particular, the application of the Act on the management of Public Institutions in 2007 and the impact of the regime change in 2008 served as an opportunity for NRC to confirm that there is a gap between the ideals and reality of the national research system.