Reciprocity of Government Restructuring/Policy Changes and the Convergent Environment in South Korea

Abstract

This paper takes the approach that policy responses to environmental challenges are at least partially dependent on the structure of governmental decision-making bodies. How ministries and regulatory bodies are designed and put together affect both their policy outlooks and managerial capabilities, in turn affecting their policy output. Governments have also consciously restructured ministries and regulators in order to promote specific policy orientations, or in response to changes in the industry. This two-way interaction is critically important to the responses of governments to the emerging broadband ecosystem. The paper examines four different restructurings in the Korean government, and argues that the identification of a governmental agency as a nodal agency was the result of a new policy orientation, and the response to an environmental change. Though no two countries are totally similar in terms of their industrial and political environments or policy needs, the paper is based on the premise that the example of South Korea has useful lessons for other countries, as a leading indicator of changes in government regulatory structures in response to convergence and the emergence of the broadband ecosystem.