A Delphi Study on the Determinants of Better Legislation: Focusing on the Tacit Knowledge and Field Perceptions of Legislative Practitioners

This study aims to comprehensively analyze legislative practitioners’ perceptions of the criteria for “better legislation,” practical constraints in the legislative process, the actual determinants of bill passage, and the effectiveness of public consultation procedures. A three-round Delphi survey was conducted with 15 legislative practitioners with more than five years of professional experience in institutions including the National Assembly Secretariat, the National Assembly Research Service, the Korea Legislation Research Institute, and academia. The findings reveal that practitioners prioritized constitutional compliance and legal coherence as the primary criteria for better legislation; however, they recognized that non-contentious character, political consensus, public opinion, and inter-ministerial coordination are the dominant factors in actual bill passage. Chronic time shortage and insufficient staffing were identified as the key structural constraints on coherence review, leading practitioners to rely on internal legal consistency checks rather than social scientific evidence. Among public consultation mechanisms, only the formal solicitation of opinions from government ministries and relevant stakeholders was assessed as effective, while public notice, public hearings, and online participation platforms were regarded as largely ineffective. Strengthening stakeholder mediation functions and mandating consultation for high-impact bills were identified as the most viable reform measures. This study makes an empirical contribution by demonstrating that the asymmetry between normative legislative ideals and the actual dynamics of the legislative process is concretely reflected in expert practitioners’ perceptions, and by highlighting the need for structural improvements to legislative support infrastructure to realize evidence-based legislation.