Evolution of political parties and the party system in South Korea

Author(s):  
Youngmi Kim
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olli Hellmann

Formally institutionalized party organization is usually considered a prerequisite for the development of programmatic linkages between parties and voters. However, in this article I show that political parties in South Korea have succeeded in stabilizing interparty competition through programmatic linkages without making any significant efforts to build a formal organizational base. In fact, it could be argued that South Korea is a “partyless” democracy, as political parties get easily captured by the interests of ambitious politicians, thus failing to establish themselves as independent actors. I therefore make a more general argument about the concept of party system institutionalization: we need to rethink the current practice of aggregating the different attributes of party system institutionalization into a single scale, as these attributes do not seem to be connected in a linear fashion.


Author(s):  
Sunghack Lim

Since the late 1980s, South Korea has established democratic rules and institutions to protect the political freedom and civil rights of its citizens. In this process, political parties played a pivotal role in building democratic institutions and became a necessary actor for democratic governance. The characteristics of South Korean political parties and party system such as non-ideological regional factionalism, personality-based party organization, growing electoral volatility due to party changes, and a cartelized two-party system have contributed to weak party system institutionalization (PSI). Despite weak PSI, South Korea successfully underwent three peaceful power transfers, thus exceeding Huntington’s two turnover test of democratic consolidation. The stability of interparty competition has been maintained despite moderate electoral volatility. While regionalism is still the most important factor in voter decisions, the ideological linkage between parties and voters has been tightening. The South Korean parties and party system have a long way to go before achieving the levels of PSI seen in the West, but they have followed in these countries’ footstep to some extent. More sophisticated measures and concepts should be developed to analyse political parties and party systems in new democracies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 464-470
Author(s):  
Kirill A. Solovyov

The article is devoted to the general patterns of political parties formation in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. They were preceded by proto-party organizations that were far from being ideologically monolithic. Under the conditions of rapid differentiation of political forces, the existing alliances were often accidental and situational. They hung on to the legacy of the pre-revolutionary era, when the public was just “learning” to talk about politics, and the boundaries between different ideological structures were quite rather relative.


Author(s):  
Tetiana Fedorchak

The author investigates political radicalism in the Czech Republic, a rather heterogeneous current considering the structure of participants: from political parties to the extremist organizations. The peculiarity of the Czech party system is the existence, along with typical radical parties, of other non-radical parties whose representatives support xenophobic, nationalist and anti-Islamic statements. This is primarily the Civil Democratic Party, known for its critical attitude towards European integration, and the Communist party of the Czech Republic and Moravia, which opposes Czech membership in NATO and the EU. Among the Czech politicians, who are close to radical views, analysts include the well-known for its anti-Islamic position of the Czech President M. Zeman and the leader of the movement ANO, billionaire A. Babich. Voters vote for them not because their economic or social programs are particularly attractive to the electorate, but because of dissatisfaction with the economic situation in the state. Almost all right populist parties oppose European integration, interpreting it as an anti-national project run by an elite distorted by a deficit of democracy and corruption. Keywords: Czech Republic, right-wing radical political parties, European integration, nationalism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
D.L. TSYBAKOV ◽  

The purpose of the article is to assess the nature of the evolution of the institution of political parties in post – Soviet Russia. The article substantiates that political parties continue to be one of the leading political institutions in the modern Russian Federation. The premature to recognize the functional incapacity of party institutions in the post-industrial/information society is noted. It is argued that political parties continue to be a link between society and state power, and retain the potential for targeted and regular influence on strategic directions of social development. The research methodology is based on the principles of consistency, which allowed us to analyze various sources of information and empirical data on trends and prospects for the evolution of the party system in the Russian Federation. As a result, the authors come to the conclusion that in Russian conditions the convergence of party elites with state bureaucracy is increasing, and there is a distance between political parties and civil society.


Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend

This chapter argues that individual voting behaviour and the strategies chosen by political parties across multiple electoral arenas should be considered jointly. Existing literature points to the importance of an election as a major driving force in voting behaviour, but it is argued that voters and parties may differ in their assessments of the importance of elections at different levels. The chapter discusses how the effect of the importance of an electoral arena, for both voter and party behaviour, will be conditioned by electoral institutions and characteristics of parties and the party system, in addition to individual voter characteristics contributing to it.


Author(s):  
Ekrem Karakoç

Using most similar design and process-tracing methodology, this chapter investigates the divergent outcomes in income inequality in Turkey and Spain. Even though social-security systems in both countries have been hierarchical, benefiting civil servants, the security apparatus, and workers in key sectors and others in formal sectors at the expense of the rest, they have adopted different social policies over time. This chapter discusses how Turkish governments, with a focus on 1983 to the present time, have designed contributory and noncontributory pensions, healthcare, and other social programs that have affected household income differently. In democratic Spain, however, pension-related policies and unemployment benefits have been dominant forms of social policy, but the Spanish party system has not created major incentives for political parties to utilize these policies in electoral campaigns until recently. This chapter ends with a discussion of how social policies in Turkey and Spain have affected inequality since the two nations transitioned to democracy.


2002 ◽  
Vol 172 ◽  
pp. 1010-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lau Siu-kai ◽  
Kuan Hsin-chi

Hong Kong's political parties are now in decline after the return of the former British colony to China. The decline of political parties stands out in stark relief in a context featuring “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong” and gradual democratization. A major reason for the decline is the stunted political party system of Hong Kong. Prominent in that stunted system is the absence of a ruling party. The stunted party system is primarily the result of Beijing's antipathy towards party politics in Hong Kong, which in turn discourages party formation by the Hong Kong government and the conservative elites. The lack of incentives for the business elites to organize political parties to protect their interests is another major reason. The stunted party system has produced serious adverse consequences for the governance of Hong Kong, representation of interests, public attitudes towards the political class and the further democratization of the territory.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Kselman ◽  
Eleanor Neff Powell ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker

This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status quo parties in the party system. This relationship weakens, and eventually disappears, as politicians’ emphasis on “office-seeking” motivations increases relative to their interest in public policy. We test these predictions with both aggregate electoral data in contemporary Europe and a data set on legislative volatility in Turkey, uncovering support for the argument that party system fragmentation should positively affect the likelihood of entry when policy-seeking motivations are relevant, but not otherwise.


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