The Impact of Democratic Transition on Elections and Parties in South Korea

Abstract

With the 'third wave of democratization', South Korea joined the democracy club in the late 1980s. Although electoral performance and the party system have changed since the transition to democracy, there has been little systematic examination of the changes. In this article, we conduct an empirical test after developing a theoretical argument about why democratization leads to change. Before democratization, the manipulation of electoral laws and the urban–rural cleavage dominated Korean elections. After democratization, the electoral rules stabilized and opposition parties were given a fair chance to win the election. However, the average life of political parties shortened because of regionalism and personalism. There is now reason to believe that personalism may be set to diminish, thus encouraging authentic structural cleavages to emerge and shape Korean party politics in the coming years.