In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea

Abstract

This study explores how authoritarian distributive policies may not only generate political support for the autocrat but may also help sustain powerful and lasting authoritarian legacies. We use microlevel data from South Korea's New Village Movement, a 1970s rural development program implemented under dictator Park Chung‐hee and widely touted as contributing to the country's rapid economic development. Our analysis shows that townships in receipt of larger cash transfers cast more votes for Park's incumbent party in the subsequent election. More importantly, we show that the effects of the subsidies still appeared almost four decades later in 2012, when the dictator's daughter was democratically elected as the president of South Korea. We show that these effects were not driven by villagers’ long‐term income gains or enhanced social capital due to the program but by the unwavering support of the beneficiary villagers for the dictator, whose legacy remained strong long after democratization.

Authoritarian Legacies and Partisan Bias in Corruption Voting

“…However, scholarship on authoritarian legacies has not yet considered a continued presence of authoritarian nostalgia among voters and political utilization of it by successor parties. Contrary to the finding that one of the key factors of successor party survival was the party's "break from the past" (Grzymała-Busse 2002), recent elections have demonstrated the persistent politicization of authoritarian legacies and its contribution to electoral success in post-authoritarian democracies (Kang 2018;Seligson and Tucker 2005;Chang, Zhu, and Pak 2007;Gherghina and Klymenko 2012;Hong, Park, and Yang, 2022). These authoritarian successors often seek their legitimacy from the authoritarian past and garner electoral support by evoking authoritarian nostalgia among their supporters.…”

“…Especially in post-authoritarian countries, supporters of authoritarian legacy parties may be more susceptible to partisan bias than supporters of other parties due to their heightened partisan attachment. As former ruling parties under dictatorship, authoritarian legacy parties still drive political competition (Loxton and Mainwaring 2018; Cheng and Huang 2018) and political attitudes and behavior in many post-authoritarian democracies (Pop-Eleches and Tucker 2017; Kang 2018; Chang, Zhu, and Pak 2007; Hong, Park, and Yang, 2022). Among sixty-five Third Wave democracies, authoritarian legacy parties operate in forty-seven, twenty-eight of which won more than 20 percent of the vote share in recent elections (see Table A.1; Loxton and Mainwaring 2018).…”

Personality traits, democratic support, and authoritarian nostalgia

“…In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, presidential candidate Trump promised his supporters to "make America great again" and invoked nostalgia for an idealized past, a strategy that has served as a successful rallying cry (Murphy 2009). Former president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, was elected thanks to her commitment to continue Park's legacies by adopting his economic and political policy approaches, including authoritarian means of governance (Hong, Park, and Yang 2022). People around the world have also developed nostalgia for the past: Stalin's old house has become a major tourist attraction in Georgia 1 ; the exhumation of former Spanish dictator, Franco, gathered his supporters in Madrid 2 ; and the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been bolstered by the nostalgia for Marcos Sr. in the Philippines.…”

When Authoritarian Legacies Matter: Constructive and Blind National Pride and Voter Turnout in New Democracies

“…Furthermore, the positive effects of the New Village Movement on political support persisted even after democratization in 1987. Villages that received more benefits from the program tended to show stronger support for Park Geun-hye, the daughter of President Park, in the 2012 presidential election (Hong, Park, and Yang 2022; Kang 2016). In particular, Hong and her colleagues (2022) demonstrate that the underlying mechanism of its lingering influence is psychological (e.g., attachment to the Park regime), rather than economic (e.g., material benefits).…”

“…Villages that received more benefits from the program tended to show stronger support for Park Geun-hye, the daughter of President Park, in the 2012 presidential election (Hong, Park, and Yang 2022; Kang 2016). In particular, Hong and her colleagues (2022) demonstrate that the underlying mechanism of its lingering influence is psychological (e.g., attachment to the Park regime), rather than economic (e.g., material benefits). This implies that the national sentiments Koreans formed under the economically successful authoritarian regime have not only produced political support during the past regime, but also provided a psychological foundation of blind nationalism even after democratization 6 .…”