Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:24:07.429Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Electoral Systems, Political Career Paths and Legislative Behavior: Evidence from South Korea's Mixed-Member System1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2010

HAE-WON JUN  and
SIMON HIX
HAE-WON JUN
Affiliation:
Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, [email protected]
SIMON HIX
Affiliation:
London School of Economics, LSE
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A growing literature looks at how the design of the electoral system shapes the voting behavior of politicians in parliaments. Existing research tends to confirm that in mixed-member systems the politicians elected in the single-member districts are more likely to vote against their parties than the politicians elected on the party lists. However, we find that in South Korea, the members of the Korean National Assembly who were elected on PR lists are more likely to vote against their party leadership than the members elected in single-member districts (SMDs). This counterintuitive behavior stems from the particular structure of candidate selection and politicians' career paths. This suggests that any theory of how electoral systems shape individual parliamentary behavior needs to look beyond the opportunities provided by the electoral rules for voters to reward or punish individual politicians (as opposed to parties), to the structure of candidate selection inside parties and the related career paths of politicians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 153 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Benedetto, Giacomo and Hix, Simon (2007), ‘The Rejected, the Dejected and the Ejected: Explaining Government Rebels in the 2001–2005 British House of Commons’, Comparative Political Studies, 40: 755–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, John M. (1996), Term Limits and Legislative Representation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, John M. (2007), ‘Competing Principals, Political Institutions, and Party Unity in Legislative Voting’, American Journal of Political Science, 51: 92–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, John M. (2008), Legislative Voting and Accountability, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, John M. and Shugart, Matthew S. (1995), ‘Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas’, Electoral Studies, 14: 417–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crisp, Brian F. (2007), ‘Incentives in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: General Election Laws, Candidate Selection Procedures, and Cameral Rules’, Comparative Political Studies, 40: 1460–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Karen and Schoppa, Len (2002), ‘Interaction Effects and Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: Theory and Evidence from Germany, Japan, and Italy’, Comparative Political Studies, 35: 1027–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrara, Federico (2004), ‘Electoral Coordination and Strategic Desertion of Strong Parties in Compensatory Mixed Systems with Negative Transfers’, Electoral Studies, 23: 391–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrara, Federico, Herron, Erik S., and Nishikawa, Misa (2005), Mixed Electoral Systems: Contamination and Its Consequences, New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haspel, Moshe, Remington, Thomas F., and Smith, Steven S. (1998), ‘Electoral Institutions and Party Cohesion in the Russian Duma’, The Journal of Politics, 60: 417–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herron, Erik S. (2002), ‘Electoral Influences on Legislative Behavior in Mixed-Member Systems: Evidence from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 27: 361–82.Google Scholar
Herron, Erik S. and Nishikawa, Misa (2001), ‘Contamination Effects and the Number of Parties in Mixed-Superposition Electoral Systems’, Electoral Studies, 20: 63–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hix, Simon (2004), ‘Electoral Institutions and Legislative Behavior: Explaining Voting Defection in the European Parliament’, World Politics, 56: 194–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hix, Simon and Jun, Hae-Won (2009), ‘Party Behaviour in the Parliamentary Arena: The Case of the Korean National Assembly’, Party Politics, 15: 667–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joong Ang Daily and Korean Party Studies Association (2005), ‘Survey of the Members of the 17th Korean National Assembly’, Korean Party Studies Association, Seoul.Google Scholar
Kam, Christopher (2008), Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, Keith (1993), ‘Where's the Party?’, British Journal of Political Science, 23: 235–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Paul (2000), ‘Voters and Their Representatives: Electoral Institutions and Delegation in Parliamentary Democracies’, European Journal of Political Research, 37: 335–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moon, Woojin (2005), ‘Decomposition of Regional Voting in South Korea: Ideological Conflicts and Regional Benefits’, Party Politics, 11: 579–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noury, Abdul and Mielcova, Elena (2005), ‘Electoral Performance and Voting Behavior in the Czech Republic’, Working Paper 2005–14IGS, UC Berkeley.Google Scholar
Pekkanen, Robert, Nyblade, Benjamin, and Krauss, Ellis S. (2006), ‘Electoral Incentives in Mixed Member Systems: Party, Posts, and Zombie Politicians in Japan’, American Political Science Review, 100: 183–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, David J. (1999), ‘Incentives to Cultivate a Party Vote in Candidate-Centric Electoral Systems: Evidence from Brazil’, Comparative Political Studies, 32: 487–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, David J. (2003), Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shugart, Matthew S. (2005), ‘Comparative Electoral Systems Research’, in Gallagher, Michael and Mitchell, Paul (eds.), The Politics of Electoral Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shugart, Mathew S., Valdini, Melody E., and Suominen, Kati (2005), ‘Looking for Locals: Voter Information Demands and Personal Vote-Earning Attributes of Legislators Under Proportional Representation’, American Journal of Political Science, 49: 437–49.Google Scholar
Stratmann, Thomas and Baur, Martin (2002), ‘Plurality Rule, Proportional Representation, and the German Bundestag: How Incentives to Pork-Barrel Differ across Electoral Systems’, American Journal of Political Science, 46: 506–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Frank C. (2005), ‘A House Divided Party Strength and the Mandate Divide in Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine’, Comparative Political Studies, 38: 282–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar