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PurposeThis article conceptualizes and constructs a comprehensive framework that can better help to answer that question – Who is accountable for social and public problems? – theoretically and practically.Design/methodology/approachTracing the drivers behind two phenomena "accountability hole" and "accountability black hole", stemming from "pushing power game" and "pulling power game", respectively, this study considers (1) the three actors of society: citizens (civil society), corporations (market) and civil servants (government), and (2) the principal-agent relationship between the three actors in the face of social and public problems. As a result, the 4CAs framework that contains the three actors' collaborative accountabilities to one another is presented.FindingsThe 4CAs model emphasizes (1) all three actors function as agents that are accountable to one another, (2) collaborative accountability beyond collaborative governance and (3) repowering citizens and corporations beyond just empowering them, i.e. returning their inherent rights and obligations to serve one another.Originality/valueThe 4CAs model may function as a descriptive and prescriptive lens through which the trilemma between market failure, government failure and citizen failure can be re-assessed and balanced. The model can also be used as a set of indicators for assessing and helping a society to better resolve the social and public problems collectively.

This study explores what kinds of (and how) organizational capabilities (benchmarking, modeling, forecasting, and backcasting), respectively and collectively, help an organization to have a more proactive policy orientation. An analysis of the public agencies in South Korea in 2021 shows several significant findings. First, all four of the organizational capabilities are conducive to a proactive policy orientation, which may be intuitively acceptable. Second, however, in contrast to expectation, the relative impact of forecasting capability on proactive policy orientation turned out to be the weakest among the four capabilities. An interpretation of these findings indicates that, proactive policies might be better produced in the organizational environment where forecasting can be supported by empirical evidence (benchmarking), methodical reasoning (modeling), and tangible planning (backcasting).

AbstractCoopetition is a universal relationship in policy networks where various organizations cooperate and also compete with one another. Dealing with the ambivalent relationships in policy networks, organizations in the network need to assess their internal and external environments. However, such assessments are usually inclined to be biased for various reasons. The question is "If multiple organizations' assessment biases interact with one another, what happens to mutual trust or distrust?" This study explores the patterns and impact of interactions of assessment biases using surveys and interviews administered to nuclear‐related public institutions in South Korea. The findings imply that the interactions of individual biases impact trust and distrust differently according to diverse dimensions of bias, including power, cooperation, competition, and contribution in policy networks. What determines trust or distrust among network members may not only be whether biases exist but also how biases of network members are combined and matched.

PurposeThis article aims to explore (1) specific frames of dyadic relationship in policy network beyond a simplistic dichotomy of "friend or foe" and (2) the multi-dimensional drivers behind the framing patterns.Design/methodology/approachTo that end, the interviews with the key actors in a nuclear energy policy network in South Korea were conducted, and their relationships in terms of three dimensions were analyzed: belief accordance, communication frequency and resource symmetry.FindingsAs a result, 12 relationships that can occur in the policy networks were identified: helping, collaborating, cooperating, unconcerned, stabilizing, observing, pushing, confronting, challenging, ignoring, watching and avoiding. These 12 frames were observed in various in-/congruent patterns between network actors.Originality/valueThe findings provide theoretical and practical implications on why and how the network actors may assess one another through the 12 discrete frames, which are drawn from the three dimensional drivers of belief accordance, communication frequency and resource symmetry.

Since participatory budgeting (PB) has been advocated by both theorists and practitioners of public administration, its adoption has become a global phenomenon. As of 2017, all local governments in South Korea are legally mandated to operate a PB system as a policy for inviting citizen participation in local budget decision‐making. Using an impact assessment tool completed by PB managers in local governments, this research tested two sets of independent variables—citizens' participatory capacity and the diversification of communication in the PB process—that could be associated with the dependent variables "citizens' trust in government (CTG)" and "government officials' trust in citizens (GTC)." The paper presents the three major findings on the common drivers behind CTG and GTC: (1) citizen participants' knowledge on budget and budgeting process; (2) local government's efforts in gathering citizens' inputs for PB; and (3) the mutual efforts to understand the needs and limitations of both citizens and the local government. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for the design and delivery of effective PB implementation.