Party System Institutionalization Without Parties: Evidence from Korea

Abstract

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.

Left is right and right is left? Partisan difference on social welfare and particularistic benefits in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

“…Indeed, they continue to respond to the expectations of LDP supporters, many of whom are based in rural areas or related to specific industries as vested interests. Although the specific clienteles and the mode of party-vote exchanges vary between presidential Korea and Taiwan and parliamentary Japan (Park, 2008;Wang, 1994), high degrees of path dependency of clientelistic practices by right-leaning parties through particularistic benefits are likewise expected (Fell, 2012;Hellmann, 2014). Against this backdrop, we can expect a clear partisan difference over particularistic benefits between left-and right-leaning parties even after entering the multi-party competition period in the early 1990s.…”

Unpacking the Roles of Religion and Partisanship on Support for Same-Sex Marriage: Evidence from South Korea

“…Partisan attachments likely play a role even where debates over party system institutionalization endure (e.g., Hellmann, 2014; Park, 2010). Similarly, while one may expect a division according to ideological placement on a liberal-conservative continuum and for conservatives to, in essence, own the issue of opposing LGBT rights on grounds of traditional values, the links in East Asia appear less pronounced.…”

Institucionalização Do Sistema Partidário: Mesmas Dimensões, Outras Interpretações

“…No entanto, o intuito não é negar a importância das dimensões que compõem o conceito, e sim avan-çar problematizando e complexificando o mesmo. A necessidade de rever teórica e metodologicamente este conceito foi ratificada em trabalhos recentes (Luna, 2014;Piñeiro Rodríguez e Rosenblatt, 2018;Hellmann, 2014;Chiaramonte e Emanuele, 2017;Enyedi, 2016;Rose e Mishler, 2010). Inseridos nessa agenda, utilizamos o caso brasileiro para apresentar interpretações complementares com base nas mesmas dimensões propostas pelos autores.…”