A Discourse on Local Autonomy and Decentralized Constitutional Reform for Balanced National Development

In this study, the constitutional basis for securing the autonomy of the local autonomy law and the local council was examined, recognizing the constitutional duty of the state to create social integration and balanced national economy growth and living foundation. For this purpose, this study reviewed the previous studies that tried to realize decentralization and local autonomy and discussed the standard of interpretation of the constitutional norms. In order to promote the decentralization required for the realization of local autonomy, I proposed the following constitutional grounds for securing the autonomy of local councils and appropriate allocation of authority for legislation, administration, justice and finance between the state and local governments. First, in order to guarantee the national sovereignty and citizen autonomy as much as possible and to realize the distribution of decentralized power through local autonomy, the Korean Constitution proposed a constitutional amendment that aims to be a decentralized democratic state, and provided guidelines and grounds for constitutional interpretation as the highest norm for the provisions of the local autonomy system under Chapter 8 of the Constitution. Second, the revised bill of Article 117 (1) of the Constitution and the revised bill of Article 118 (3) of the Constitution, which local governments have financial autonomy within the scope of laws and ordinances, were proposed to substantially reflect the decentralization and to strengthen the autonomy of local councils as resident autonomous bodies. Third, in order to achieve a balance between local governments and neighboring communities, Article 123 (2) proposes a constitutional amendment that guarantees the autonomy of local governments and residents as much as possible and adds an obligation to strive for balanced national development. This study is meaningful in that it reflects the political reality of diversified civil society, raises the need to expand the discourse of constitutional amendment on the purpose of the constitutional guarantee of the local autonomy system, and provides the constitutional basis that the balanced national development led by the central government is transformed into a decentralized balanced regional development led by the local government.