지방행정분야의 회고와 전망

Retrospect and Prospect on Local Administration Systems in Korea : An Analysis of Research Trends Published in the J ournal of Local Government Studies, 1991-2013

This paper aims to analyze research trends in the field of local administration with regard to the 822 papers published in the Journal of Korean Local Government Studies between 1991 and 2013. It employs Network Text Analysis to identify and analyze the individual and relational attributes of words occurring in the texts of each paper. The analysis results may be summarized as follows. First, a number of sub-fields of local administration, such as local government consolidation and local governance are generally conspicuous in terms of research area. Second, between 1991 and 1998 sub-fields including inter-governmental relations, local councillor, and performance evaluation attracted academic attention, whereas in the period between 1999 and 2013 sub-fields such as citizen participation and decentralization attracted greater attention. It was also found that from 2000 on, academic attention shifted from the settings for conflict management and collaboration systems to performance management and regional community. Finally, it may be noted that endeavors to examine theories developed in other countries and apply them to Korea have been rare, indicating that research trends in the field of local administration should undergo change in order to meet academic and practical needs.