A Study on the Changes in the Central Government Apparatuses: From the Perspective of Regulation Theory

Abstract

This paper analyzes the changes in the central government apparatuses between 1992 and 2002. According to the hollowed out state and small government theses, the overall size of the government should have decreased because the Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung government pushed administrative reforms to reduce the size. However, the result shows that the size of the government did not decrease and the proportion of the government budget in the GDP increased on the contrary. These counter-conventional wisdom phenomena would be explained by Jessop's state theory, which is based upon the regulation theory. Jessop argues that the government is the core regulatory mechanism in capitalist society and that governmental characteristics concomitantly change from the KNWS to SWPR as the capitalism changes from Fordist mode to Post-Fordist mode. From this theoretical perspective, the increase/decrease of the government apparatuses depends on the role that each apparatus play in the capitalist society.