政策決定 과정에서 NGO의 役割에 관한 硏究 - 영월댐과 새만금 간척사업 사례를 중심으로

Abstract

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are recently extending its social roles such as Civil Society, Social Capital and Governmental Policy Decision etc. Above all, NGOs’ participation has a favorable influence upon the policy ?making process. The purpose of this study is to understand accurately NGOs’ roles and analysis relation between Government and NGOs in the governmental policy decision through the Youngwol Dam construction and the Saemanguem project. Environmental conflicts surrounding governmental constructions have become serious social problems. This paper finds out importance of NGOs’ roles with a comparative study in two environmental cases. Both the Youngwol Dam construction and the Saemanguem Project had consisted of joint investigation and been managed by professionals. Environmental conflicts are very complicated, so professionals who can interpret and explain complicated situations are needed. However, the role of professionals should be limited because, in terms of environment, we are short of knowledge which is owned in common. In order to overcome these, we need to participate in not only professionals but also NGOs to reach a successful agreement. Therefore, both professionals and NGOs are very important to make a policy decision and need to make many efforts to solve environmental conflicts. The Youngwol Dam construction and the Saemanguem Project are summarized below. The Youngwol Dam construction isn’t environmental conservation and local development but stability of Dam and a side of economy which had affected the agreement of joint investors including the public with an effort of cooperation. The Joint Investigation of the Youngwol Dam construction has been such a success which drew a mutual agreement from two sides. But Saemanguem Project had lacked of balance of consistence of joint investigation commission. Also, the period of time was not flexible to come to an arrangement, so it affected the objectivity of the commission and had no way to hear what the public said. For the satisfactory settlement in the governmental policy decision, First, not only the direct concerned party’s opinion but also various options of a government and the public have to be reflected the governmental policy decision. Second, Communication has to be carried out on the basis of mutual trust. Third, the professionals’ commission has to be realized both rationality and impartiality. The results of analysis of two environmental cases, NGO’s role affects important variable in the policy change especially through the instance of Youngwol Dam. NGOs have opened up the civic culture through collecting the public opinions in terms of the governmental policy decision. On the basis of NGOs’ power about the policy decision, NGOs became not only a new partner of a government but also a new reliable cooperator of the public. Also NGOs occupy an important position to come up with a solution in the policy issue.