A comparative study of the influence of government reorganization on budgetary politics among South Korea, Japan and France

Reorganization, a typical tool for administrative reform, has great influence on power distribution of government bureaucracy. The power of an agency is likely to influence its budget, therefore reorganization changes budgetary politics. Thus, it is necessary to explore the impact of reorganization on budgetary allocations. In this study, the independent variable is reorganization and the dependent variable is budget share of each agency.;Four types of reorganization were handled in this study. The first type of reorganization reflects the change of terrain of political power. During the coalitional government of Korea, prime ministers of the coalitional government got more power. More power translated into more budgets during the coalitional government of Korea. The political structure of regional blocs prevented the Prime Minister of the coalitional government from winning a presidential election and channeled the efforts of the Prime Minister of the coalitional government into pursuit of more budgets for the office as a real benefit.;But, prime ministers of the French cohabitation did not increase budget shares for the office of prime minister. Instead, prime ministers of the cohabitation period influenced the budget of other ministries such as social affairs, which could be connected to the next presidential election. Getting more power meant more control over policy and allocation decisions, but did not always mean more budgets for their own offices.;As for merger of agencies, the budget share of the newly made organizations was not different from the sum of shares of original organizations. As for the absorption of new functions, reorganization influenced the share of the Korea Ministry of Information and Communication. However, budget share did not increase continually. As for an elevation of status, Korean government structure---existence of two kinds of Ministry such as "bu" and "chu"---could be connected with symbolic reorganization. The promotion from the Environment Administration to the Ministry of Environment (chu) did not increase budget share. The promotion of ME in Japan was accompanied with earmarked budget items, thus the ME of Japan resulted in an immediate increase of budget share. The differences are between symbolic organizations.