지방자치단체의 갈등대응방식에 관한 연구

A Study on the Conflict Management of Local Governments - Focusing on the Locations of Thermoelectric Power Plants -

Many local governments have been facing stringent conditions such as rapid population decline, financial hardship, and economic instability, etc. Many of them have tried to deal with their urgent crisis by locating NIMBY facilities into their localities for population and economic growth. But many local governments have tended to face unexpected conflicts that then resulted to undermine local community and social trust. This paper analyzes the processes of many local governments that tried to locate thermal power plants in order to register their decisions into a national energy plan. During the processes, they have experienced serious conflicts between the mayors who wanted power plants for growth engine and residents who saw them as damage to local environments. This goal of this paper is to differentiate the reactions to the conflicts among local governments and to find a better approach both to find growth engine and to deal with conflicts in local governments. And this paper also pays attention to the leadership of local governments, especially mayors to deal with and resolve their public disputes. Many local governments and mayors did not recognized the effects of their unilateral decisions without deliberation and consultation with local residents about locating power plants. So, they faced anger and resistance from their residents. Finally, they failed the locations of power plants. However, a few of local governments and mayors tried to communicate the issues–including both positive and negative- related to locating power plants into their localities with their residents. They succeeded in locating power plants with support from residents. The implications from this paper is that the decisions for many local governments and mayors to stimulate their localities may tend to bring about unexpected conflicts and only result to undermine their already scarce resources. The decisions for the future of fragile localities need to be made with their residents by information-sharing, communication, and deliberations.