The Challenges of Consensus Building in a Consolidating Democracy

Why do consensus building efforts in a consolidating democracy often fail to resolve regulatory disputes and even escalate them? Dong-Young Kim uses the three, detailed, recent case studies of the efforts to balance economic development and environmental concerns in rapidly industrialized and democratizing Korea. He explores the main obstacles inherent in a consolidating democracy to meeting necessary conditions for successful consensus building process with a new research framework which incorporates the theory of negotiation and consensus building into the theory of policy process. He shows that dispute resolution efforts initiated by policy entrepreneurs who are not neutral are likely to fall victims to adversarial power games in politics rather than genuine consensus building process.
'For anyone interested in comparative studies of regulatory negotiation, conflict resolution and environmental management, this is a major find.'
Lawrence Susskind, Vice-Chair for Instruction, Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
'Kim's study is a must read for anyone wishing to understand South Korea's environmental policy dilemmas and emerging dispute resolution systems.'
Miranda A. Schreurs, Director, Environmental Policy Research Center and Professor of Comparative Policies, Freie Universität Berlin.