• American Studies
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.35-65
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• 2021

U.S. lawmakers tend to organize sub-party groups focusing on regions, ideologies, policies, and foreign affairs. Examples include the conservative Freedom Caucus loyal to Trump and the Congressional Black Caucus promoting the interests of African Americans. Then how do these legislative groups affect the making of U.S. foreign policy? Paying special attention to the Korea caucus in U.S. Congress, we have analyzed the sources and processes of congressional caucus and foreign policy and have learned that structures and activities of the caucuses differ from one another. The Korea caucus seems to be a bipartisan group that focuses on issues such as trade, travel, and troubles provoked by Pyongyang. However, the Korea caucus is not really a solid voting bloc for policy alternatives; it is instead more of a constituency-oriented legislative group that prioritizes local interests. This research underscores the need for systematic and comprehensive study of U.S. legislative politics and foreign policy.

• American Studies
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.115-143
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• 2020

The U.S. Congress has been known to effectively control the bureaucracy. On one hand, Congress adjusts the degree of discretion provided to the bureaucracy when making agencies or legislation: ex ante control. On the other hand, it also performs the oversight activities to punish or correct undesirable behaviors of bureaucrats: ex post control. While the dynamics of each control mechanism is widely examined theoretically, few have attempted to empirically investigate this with a special attention to partisan politics in Congress. I attempt to fill this gap by measuring the two types of control mechanisms, testing theoretical assertions, and analyzing the dynamics under the two control mechanisms.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.155-188
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• 2021

This study examines dynamics in election news making. It is important to understand when and how news media produce election news in order to grasp news making and voting behavior. The news media sometimes make election news by focusing on issues and policies. Often they frame elections as a game and focus on election strategies while covering elections. This article argues that as time goes by during the election period, the number of policy news tends to decrease while the frequency of strategic news is likely to increase. Also, TV's and newspapers show distinctive patterns of election news making. In order to examine the arguments, this study categorizes election news stories into policy and strategic news stories produced during the 2020 Korean congressional elections and constructs daily time-series data of them. The results of structural break and regression analyses partially support the arguments.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.129-150
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• 2013

The libraries of local councils contribute to realize democracy and promote national interests and the welfare of the people, by supporting democratic legislation activities and congressional politics of the local councilors. This study analyzes the libraries of local councils at 17 regional local governments, and it confirms that there are various deviations in their library services such as material acquisitions and legislative information services by regional groups. On the basis of that analysis, the study summarizes the ways for improving the service qualities of the libraries of local councils as follows. First, it is necessary to organize the institute for national council materials. Second, the cooperative network systems should be constructed to share council publications. Third, the provisions related the copyright law and the national assembly library act have to be modified. Fourth, the libraries of local councils share their own materials focusing on digital publications. Fifth, the National Assembly Library expands their legislative information services to the libraries of local councils.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.35
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• pp.3-40
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• 2013

Establishment and expansion of a FOI regime is a fundamental basis for modern democracy. Informed decisions and supports by the people are critical to establishment of democratic institutions and policies. The best tool to make informed decisions and to ensure accountability is the FOI. For effective FOI, good records management is necessary requirement. This paper observes and analyses the development of the FOI in the U.S., the Open Government policy, and the government records management reforms under Obama Administration to search viable solutions for Korean FOI and public records management reforms. Major revisions and advancement of the FOIA in the United States are examined, especially the revision of the FOIA as the OPEN Government Act of 2007. The FOIA revision enhanced greatly the freedom of information in the U.S. including the establishment of an independent FOI ombudsman by the Congress. The paper also discusses the Presidential memoranda on the Open Government and the FOI by President Obama, the following directives, Presidential memorandum on government records management and the Government Records Management Directive. Major contents of the directives, plans, and achievement are summarized and analysed. Finally, this paper compares the government records management reforms under former President Roh Mu Hyun with the Obama's reform drive. The comparison found that major difference in the "top-down" government records reforms are the difference in democratic institutions such as weak congressional politics, strong bureaucratic obstacles, and relatively weak social and professional supports for the reforms in Korea, while these reforms were similar in terms that they were driven by insightful political leaders. Independent FOI ombudsman and national records administration are necessary for such democratic reforms.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.67-101
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to examine the significant factors having an effect on voting behavior of legislators in the FTA ratification votes of the 18th and 19th National Assembly. The previous studies show that the ideology and party affiliation of lawmakers are the most important factors influencing voting decisions of legislators. The study investigates whether these factors plays a significant role in voting on the FTA ratification. Statistical results show three important findings. First of all, we expected that the influence of the party variable be the most important factor due to the strong discipline of the Korean party. However, the results show that the constituency-interest variable is the most influential factor in the all analyses. Likewise, the results show that the influence of ideology variables on voting behaviors is very strong even though its impact is different by cases and models. This indicates that in the analysis of the voting behaviors of legislators, it is necessary to examine the effect of ideological variables in depth and in various ways. In addition, the results reasonably suggest that the party variable be consistently important even though its statistical significance is not shown in some models. Because the study analyzes the voting on the free trade agreement(FTA) bill, the results may not be commonly applicable to other voting behavior of legislator. Likewise, there is a limit to discussing the general characteristics of lawmakers based on the analysis on the 5 FTA ratifications. Nevertheless, the finding of the study is very significant. This is because it comprehensively analyzed the factors having an influence on the voting behavior of the legislators on FTA ratifications submitted to the National Assembly steadily since the 16th National Assembly. In addition, the study is very meaningful because it analyzed the ideological variables of the legislators in various perspectives considering that it is not easy in measuring the ideology of the lawmakers.