The Politics of Coalition in Korea

Abstract

This book examines how inter-and intra-party coalition-building affects governability in South Korea. Focusing on the Kim Dae-jung administration (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003) as a case study in the failure of a government to turn electoral success into stable governability, or ability to implement reform policies, the book's research draws on two bodies of literature which, though focusing on the same dependent variable (cabinet or government stability), have rarely been used in tandem: coalition research on parliamentary systems and studies of divided government in presidential systems.Youngmi Kim argues that a weak institutionalization of the ruling party and the party system accounts for political instability and inefficient governability in Korea and, in doing so, her study makes a number of key contributions to the field. Theoretically it proposes a framework that integrates a rationalist approach with one that acknowledges the role of political culture. It further enhances the understanding of factors affecting governability after coalition-building across regime types and aims to build on recent demands for broader cross-regime analysis of minority/divided government and of the determinants of governability. This has important comparative implications as coalition-building within (semi-)presidential systems has occurred in other post-authoritarian contexts.The book finally provides a new data set that fills a gap in a field where Western cases constitute the main focus of research.The Politics of Coalition in Korea will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean studies, Korean politics, Asian studies and Asian politics.

Democratization, Political Parties and Korean Welfare Politics: Korean Family Policy Reforms in Comparative Perspective

“…In tandem with the retirement of the three Kims, the impact of regionalism on electoral behaviour began to decline. For instance, Roh Moo-Hyun gained only 52 per cent of support from the centre-left party’s regional base of Cholla Province, which was substantially lower than the 93 per cent his predecessor Kim Dae-Jung had received (Kim 2011).…”

“…It is conventional wisdom in the Korean party politics literature that regionalism became the most dominant factor in electoral politics in the 1990s. This decade was known as the ‘three Kims era’, as the main political parties were essentially identified with three long-standing politicians (Kim Young-Sam, Kim Dae-Jung and Kim Jong-Pil) rather than with distinctive ideologies or policy positions (Kim 2011; Lee 1998). As noted earlier, Korean parties do not have close links with social classes, which prohibited them from mobilizing mass membership.…”

Question of Timing: Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Multiparty Presidential Regimes

“…In addition, we retrieved data relative to Latin American pre-electoral coalitions from , Freudenreich (2016), Kellam (2015), and Lopes (2022). In a complementary fashion, evidence on Asian preelectoral coalitions came from case studies, namely Hanan (2012), Kim (2011Kim ( , 2008, and Teehankee (2020), and WikiLeaks 16 . In case of conflicting information across the different sources, we crosschecked it with data obtained directly from the countries' respective electoral bodies to ascertain which direction to follow.…”

“…Of course, this entails dealing with some existing singularities of Asian multiparty presidential systems to make fruitful comparisons with their Latin American counterparts. For instance, the political cleavages encountered in Asia do not precisely mirror those found in Latin America (HANAN, 2012;KIM, 2011). However, this is just a side-effect we must deal with to widen the framework of coalition theories on presidential regimes.…”

“…Prior to the 1997 presidential election, the NCNP (National Congress for New Politics) had made an early electoral agreement with the ULD (United Liberal Democrats). Indeed, the preelectoral coalition, comprised of the NCNP and the ULD, turned out to be the winner of the presidential election in 1997; also, even though the new government was plagued by extensive deadlocks in the legislature, the initial coalition pact remained intact 5 until September 2001, covering approximately 70% of Kim Dae-jung's presidential term(KIM, 2011). By contrast, other patterns in the region are at loggerheads with the current presidential coalition theories.…”