Evolving Electoral Cleavages in Korea

This paper explores changes in Korea’s voter alignments. Since Korea has experienced abridged social changes, she appears to have undergone dramatic changes of political cleavages as well which is contrary to the ‘fixation’ theory of Lipset and Rokkan. The main cleavages shown in Korean politics are urbanrural, regional, generation, and ideology cleavages. Urban-rural cleavage dominated the era of authoritarian rule because electoral fraud with threats or bribery was less likely in more modernized urban areas while illegal electioneering was more prevalent in under-modernized rural areas where the level of education was relatively lower. After democratization, regional cleavage became the main cleavage since voters chose candidates based on strong regional ties in the absence of the issue of democratization that had dominated Korean politics for forty years. Though it was still the main one, regional cleavage became weakened by new cleavages of generation and ideology in the 2002 presidential election. In the 2007 presidential election, regional cleavage appears to have been modified significantly. The capital region, used to being a swing region, became a strong electoral basis for Lee Myung-bak. Noticeably voters in the region began to cut their connections to their birthplaces.

keywords: electoral cleavage, urban-rural cleavage, regionalism, generation cleavage

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Article Contents

Vol.11 No.4

Evolving Electoral Cleavages in Korea

Abstract

Reference

The Review of Korean Studies