Abstract In the last three decades, many Asian democracies have decentralized their political systems to promote the democratic, equal, and efficient distribution of national resources across regions. Nonetheless, most of these countries, including South Korea, are still in a stage of “partial fiscal decentralization,” in which locally elected officials have spending authority, while a significant portion of their financing relies on transfers from the central government. This article argues that the decentralized distribution is significantly influenced by the partisan interests of central and local governments. The central government transfers more funds to local governments that their co-partisans govern, and local incumbents follow partisan policy priorities to obtain the allocation of available fiscal resources. This argument is strongly supported by the empirical analysis of subsidy transfers and regional social expenditures in South Korea from 2002 to 2015. First, we find that the central government in Korea transfers larger subsidies to politically aligned regions. Second, regional governments with larger subsidy transfers have higher levels of social expenditures. Third, governors or mayors affiliated with a progressive party spend significantly more on social welfare and education than do those affiliated with a conservative party.
{"title":"Partisanship, Fiscal Transfers, and Social Spending in Korea: The Politics of Partial Decentralization","authors":"Eunyoung Ha, Dong Wook Lee","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.33","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the last three decades, many Asian democracies have decentralized their political systems to promote the democratic, equal, and efficient distribution of national resources across regions. Nonetheless, most of these countries, including South Korea, are still in a stage of “partial fiscal decentralization,” in which locally elected officials have spending authority, while a significant portion of their financing relies on transfers from the central government. This article argues that the decentralized distribution is significantly influenced by the partisan interests of central and local governments. The central government transfers more funds to local governments that their co-partisans govern, and local incumbents follow partisan policy priorities to obtain the allocation of available fiscal resources. This argument is strongly supported by the empirical analysis of subsidy transfers and regional social expenditures in South Korea from 2002 to 2015. First, we find that the central government in Korea transfers larger subsidies to politically aligned regions. Second, regional governments with larger subsidy transfers have higher levels of social expenditures. Third, governors or mayors affiliated with a progressive party spend significantly more on social welfare and education than do those affiliated with a conservative party.","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"171 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43130544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract North Korea is widely seen as having among the most corrupt governments in the world. However, the Kim family regime has not always been so accepting of government wrongdoing. Drawing on archival evidence, this study shows that Kim Il-sung saw corruption as a threat to economic development and launched campaigns to curb it throughout the 1950s. I find that these campaigns were at least somewhat successful, and they contributed to post-Korean War reconstruction and rapid development afterwards. So when and why did the regime shift from combating corruption to embracing it? I argue that changes in the country's economic system following the crisis of the 1990s, especially de facto marketization, made corruption more beneficial to the regime both as a source of revenue and as an escape valve for public discontent. This study's findings contribute to our understanding of the politics of corruption control in authoritarian regimes.
{"title":"The Rise and Fall of Anti-Corruption in North Korea","authors":"Christopher Carothers","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.38","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract North Korea is widely seen as having among the most corrupt governments in the world. However, the Kim family regime has not always been so accepting of government wrongdoing. Drawing on archival evidence, this study shows that Kim Il-sung saw corruption as a threat to economic development and launched campaigns to curb it throughout the 1950s. I find that these campaigns were at least somewhat successful, and they contributed to post-Korean War reconstruction and rapid development afterwards. So when and why did the regime shift from combating corruption to embracing it? I argue that changes in the country's economic system following the crisis of the 1990s, especially de facto marketization, made corruption more beneficial to the regime both as a source of revenue and as an escape valve for public discontent. This study's findings contribute to our understanding of the politics of corruption control in authoritarian regimes.","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"147 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48425926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This study analyzes political polarization among the South Korean elite by examining 17 years’ worth of subcommittee meeting minutes from the South Korean National Assembly's standing committees. Its analysis applies various natural language processing techniques and the bidirectional encoder representations from the transformers model to measure and analyze polarization in the language used during these meetings. Its findings indicate that the degree of political polarization increased and decreased at various times over the study period but has risen sharply since the second half of 2016 and remained high throughout 2020. This result suggests that partisan political gaps between members of the South Korean National Assembly increase substantially.
{"title":"Elite Polarization in South Korea: Evidence from a Natural Language Processing Model","authors":"Seungjoo Han","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.36","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study analyzes political polarization among the South Korean elite by examining 17 years’ worth of subcommittee meeting minutes from the South Korean National Assembly's standing committees. Its analysis applies various natural language processing techniques and the bidirectional encoder representations from the transformers model to measure and analyze polarization in the language used during these meetings. Its findings indicate that the degree of political polarization increased and decreased at various times over the study period but has risen sharply since the second half of 2016 and remained high throughout 2020. This result suggests that partisan political gaps between members of the South Korean National Assembly increase substantially.","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"45 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45226180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Do history wars shape international affairs? If so, how and for whom? Taking the historical dispute between China and South Korea over the ancient Gaogouli/Goguryeo Kingdom as a case study, this article explores the individual-level psychological micro-foundations of history wars. A 2020 survey experiment in South Korea pit “ours” vs “theirs” Goguryeo imitation Wikipedia entries to explore their downstream consequences. It revealed direct, indirect, and conditional effects. Exposure to China's claim to the Kingdom undermined Korean pride, increasing dislike of China, and lessening desires to cooperate with it. Pre-existing levels of nationalism divided South Koreans in how angry they became after exposure the Wikipedia primes. That anger, however, only shaped the China policy preferences of those South Koreans who viewed the balance of military power with China favorably. Implications for ownership disputes over kimchi and other national possessions are also discussed, as are the implications of history wars for war and peace in twenty-first-century East Asia.
{"title":"How History Wars Shape Foreign Policy: An Ancient Kingdom and the Future of China–South Korea Relations","authors":"P. Gries, Yasuki Masui","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.30","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.30","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Do history wars shape international affairs? If so, how and for whom? Taking the historical dispute between China and South Korea over the ancient Gaogouli/Goguryeo Kingdom as a case study, this article explores the individual-level psychological micro-foundations of history wars. A 2020 survey experiment in South Korea pit “ours” vs “theirs” Goguryeo imitation Wikipedia entries to explore their downstream consequences. It revealed direct, indirect, and conditional effects. Exposure to China's claim to the Kingdom undermined Korean pride, increasing dislike of China, and lessening desires to cooperate with it. Pre-existing levels of nationalism divided South Koreans in how angry they became after exposure the Wikipedia primes. That anger, however, only shaped the China policy preferences of those South Koreans who viewed the balance of military power with China favorably. Implications for ownership disputes over kimchi and other national possessions are also discussed, as are the implications of history wars for war and peace in twenty-first-century East Asia.","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"1 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49093363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In this article, I offer a theory of lawmaking in multiparty presidential systems with different legislative institutions. I present a model that combines Krehbiel's pivotal politics theory with Tsebelis's veto players theory. This model simplifies various institutional veto players into the de facto veto players. I analyze the model to explain how the government type (unified versus divided governments), the legislative rules (majoritarian versus supermajoritarian rules), and the party system (two-party versus multiparty systems) affect legislative productivity. I apply the theoretical results obtained to solve the puzzle about the nondifferential legislative performance between unified and divided governments in the National Assembly. I test a hypothesis stating that the distance between the ideological positions of the agenda-setter and the de facto veto players has a negative effect on the proportion of controversial bills enacted between the 16th and the early 21st National Assemblies.
{"title":"Law Production in Multiparty Presidentialism: Veto Player Theory and its Application to Korea","authors":"Woojin Moon","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.32","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.32","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, I offer a theory of lawmaking in multiparty presidential systems with different legislative institutions. I present a model that combines Krehbiel's pivotal politics theory with Tsebelis's veto players theory. This model simplifies various institutional veto players into the de facto veto players. I analyze the model to explain how the government type (unified versus divided governments), the legislative rules (majoritarian versus supermajoritarian rules), and the party system (two-party versus multiparty systems) affect legislative productivity. I apply the theoretical results obtained to solve the puzzle about the nondifferential legislative performance between unified and divided governments in the National Assembly. I test a hypothesis stating that the distance between the ideological positions of the agenda-setter and the de facto veto players has a negative effect on the proportion of controversial bills enacted between the 16th and the early 21st National Assemblies.","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"125 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44355741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract One source of the idea that Taiwan independence would be politically desirable is belief in the concept of “Taiwan subjectivity,” which indicates that Taiwan is not an appendage of China but instead an autonomous actor charting its own course – or trying to do so in the face of huge difficulties. The ruling (since 2016) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) pledges fealty to the goal of ultimately realizing subjectivity but cannot aggressively pursue the agenda because of opposition from the People's Republic of China (PRC), the United States, and some in Taiwan itself. What might that agenda be? Using a Structural Topic Model, we excavate the subjectivity discourse as it developed from 2008 to 2020 in the mainstream DPP-supporting newspaper, the Liberty Times. We find fourteen topics associated with the concept, the most prevalent of which in recent years warn of threats to subjectivity's realization in the political and sociocultural spheres.
{"title":"What Exactly is it that the Taiwan Greens Want? Extracting “Taiwan Subjectivity” from the Liberty Times Newspaper","authors":"Daniel C. Lynch, Cody Wai-kwok Yau","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.37","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.37","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract One source of the idea that Taiwan independence would be politically desirable is belief in the concept of “Taiwan subjectivity,” which indicates that Taiwan is not an appendage of China but instead an autonomous actor charting its own course – or trying to do so in the face of huge difficulties. The ruling (since 2016) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) pledges fealty to the goal of ultimately realizing subjectivity but cannot aggressively pursue the agenda because of opposition from the People's Republic of China (PRC), the United States, and some in Taiwan itself. What might that agenda be? Using a Structural Topic Model, we excavate the subjectivity discourse as it developed from 2008 to 2020 in the mainstream DPP-supporting newspaper, the Liberty Times. We find fourteen topics associated with the concept, the most prevalent of which in recent years warn of threats to subjectivity's realization in the political and sociocultural spheres.","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"23 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48719301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE EFFECTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ON PUBLIC ATTITUDES: EVIDENCE FROM THE CHINESE-SPEAKING WORLD – CORRIGENDUM","authors":"Yue Hu, Amy H. Liu","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.31","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"169 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42343714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article examines how violence against citizens affects their political attitudes and behavior in the long run, and how those effects vary over time. We construct and analyze a novel dataset on the victims of Taiwan's February 28 Incident, in 1947, with survey data spanning 1990 to 2017. Our empirical analysis shows that cohorts having directly or indirectly experienced the Incident are less likely to support the Kuomintang Party (KMT), the former authoritarian ruling party responsible for the Incident. They tend to disagree with the key conventional policy stand of the KMT (unification with mainland China), are more likely to self-identify as Taiwanese, and are less likely to vote for KMT presidential candidates. Taiwan's residents who were born in towns with larger number of casualties during the Incident are more likely to reject unification. Finally, the effects are found to vary over the period following democratization.
{"title":"THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF STATE REPRESSION ON POLITICAL BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES: EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN","authors":"Fang-Yi Chiou, J. Hong","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.24","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines how violence against citizens affects their political attitudes and behavior in the long run, and how those effects vary over time. We construct and analyze a novel dataset on the victims of Taiwan's February 28 Incident, in 1947, with survey data spanning 1990 to 2017. Our empirical analysis shows that cohorts having directly or indirectly experienced the Incident are less likely to support the Kuomintang Party (KMT), the former authoritarian ruling party responsible for the Incident. They tend to disagree with the key conventional policy stand of the KMT (unification with mainland China), are more likely to self-identify as Taiwanese, and are less likely to vote for KMT presidential candidates. Taiwan's residents who were born in towns with larger number of casualties during the Incident are more likely to reject unification. Finally, the effects are found to vary over the period following democratization.","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"427 - 448"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45191024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"JEA volume 21 issue 3 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.35","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"b1 - b1"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48454171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"JEA volume 21 issue 3 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/jea.2021.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2021.34","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45829,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"f1 - f3"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48807888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}