A Study on the Effective Institutionalization Measures to guarantee the Basic Political Rights of Public Servants: Focusing on the Cases of the United Kingdom, Japan, and Taiwan

Abstract

The act of expressing political opinions by public servants can be a great hurt to those in charge of running the state, but it can also be a great source of balance and a great driving force in the management of state affairs. While previous governments have focused on the former possibility and restricted the political expression of public officials, future governments may need to regulate by focusing on the latter, as will be the case in the countries below. The reason for guaranteeing the status of civil servants and demanding political impartiality was to provide an institutional foundation for them to carry out their official duties independently of the influence of the ruling party in a party-based state. However, what should be taken into account here is that the civil servant already has the status of an ordinary citizen before obtaining that status. In terms of the form of regulations on the political expression of civil servants in each country, there are countries that restrict the basic political rights of civil servants as much as possible, while there are countries that guarantee them to a certain extent, and there are countries that impose only minimal restrictions on the operation of state administration and widely recognize basic political rights. However, this difference in recognizing the basic political rights of civil servants does not lead to a difference in the management of state administration. Therefore, this article examines the process of restricting the basic political rights of civil servants in Korea, and examines whether it would not be better for the Korean government to accept civil servants as active agents of expression in the management of the state through the examples of the United Kingdom, Japan, and Taiwan. In the case of the United Kingdom and Japan, the basic political rights of civil servants are allowed differently depending on the rank or whether they are in charge of central or local administration, and in the case of Taiwan, the basic political rights of civil servants are allowed through a special law. It was thought to provide us with considerable implications.