A Study on the Applicability of ‘Deliberative Democracy’ in the Candidate Selection of Korean Political Parties

Abstract

Candidate selection is an important issue that determines the quality of representative democracy. The final candidates selected by the people in the election are those who have passed the nomination process of the political party. In other words, the representatives chosen by the people cannot exceed the quality of party nominations. Therefore, the demand for “democratization” of candidate selection methods must now enter a new stage. It is not just democratization that returns the right of nomination to the people, but rather how the decision can be connected with a higher quality choice. In this respect, the problematic awareness of this study is focused on how to improve the quality of Korean party nominations. In this article, I focus on deliberative democracy in order to ensure that deliberation can be ensured in a thoughtful discussion, rather than a party's primary election being reduced to a 'survey democracy' based on opinion polls. If institutional planning is carried out in the candidate selection process in the future, it attempts to make an exploratory proposal on whether deliberative democracy can work.