Problems of political representation in representative democracy have become severe since appearance of participatory and deliberative democracy within recent contemporary democratic theories. Though elected representatives are not an alternative to deliberative and participatory democracies, but rather structure and constitute both. Representation is not an unfortunate compromise between an ideal of direct democracy and mess modern realities. Yet the very stability of elected representatives and electoral institutions means that they are several potential mechanisms of responsibility, accountability and fairness than other representation forms are typically categorized as participatory democracy, direct democracy, or deliberative democracy.
The opposite of representation is not participation but exclusion in representative democracy, and representation is incomplete without the deliberative attentiveness of citizens mediated by public spheres.
Here, this paper suggests such local political bodies might function as an important supplement to existing forms of representation to move closer to ideal representative democracy over minimizing exclusion of citizen. As we know, local assemblies are representative as well as sole deliberative organs in local governments, and are also stipulated in the Constitution that the members of the assemblies shall be elected by direct popular vote, in the same way as the chief executive in Japan and Korea.
In addition, the adopted integrating systems have been modified towards the direction of ensuring greater autonomy, as seen in the expansion of local initiatives and technical improvements in favor of the both local governments from the 2000s such as the Omnibus Decentralization Act in Japan and Special Law on Decentralization Promotion in Korea. But, despite of the expectation and interest on these performances of decentralization in both countries, unfortunately it is said that local assemblies of both countries have faced a crisis and a challenge as the performance and a representative on dual representative system. At the same time, although there are many similarities between two countries institutionally, representative performance of assemblies is seemed different appearance from each other.
Therefore, this paper is to explore the extent to which institutional level and design of disclosure of information on activity of local assembly find support for effective representation in local assemblies, especially comparing with Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly in Japan and Seoul Metropolitan Council in Korea. For this purpose, this paper applies a part of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is best viewed as a systematic method for organizing policy analysis activities that is compatible with a wide variety of more specialized analytic techniques used in the physical and social sciences.