한국 녹색당의 성장 조건에 관한 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the emergence and development of green parties around the world to identify general conditions for their growth and to see if the findings can be applied to the Korean Green Party. In doing so, it explores the requirements of a political party based on the experience of the Korean Green Party.
 The empirical analysis shows that in terms of political opportunity structure, green parties around the world grow into parties that influence the political system when elections are highly proportional and the proportional representation rate is above 40%. However, in the case of the Korean Green Party, the limitations of the quasi-connected proportional representation system with a ‘cap’ clause and the emergence of satellite parties in the 2020 general election resulted in lower electoral proportionality than before, and the proportional representation rate was only 15.67%, which did not have favorable conditions for growth.
 Next, in terms of party leadership, global green parties have observed that green parties grow when they maintain intra-party unity and pursue coalition politics in elections. However, the Korean Green Party failed to create a growth engine during the 2020 general election, as it failed to maintain intra-party unity and pursue coalition politics.
 Based on this analysis, in order for the Korean Green Party to grow in the future, the party leadership should focus its efforts on introducing a more proportional electoral system and expanding the number of seats for proportional representation, while maintaining intra-party unity and pursuing coalition politics.