An Ever-Underinstitutionalized Party System? A Critical Case Test of Ideological Partisanship
There has been a broad consensus among scholars of party politics that party systems in new democracies differ in some essential way from those of advanced democracies, especially in the level of party system institutionalization. One of the key dimensions of party system institutionalization is some social root of political parties, or ideological linkages to the electorate; party systems in new democracies are known to lack it. However, partisanship in these countries has not been empirically explored to the same extent as it has in old democracies, and ideological linkage to partisanship in East Asian countries has not been directly tested. This paper tests for the impact of ideology on partisanship, using South Korea as a critical case. South Korea has long been notorious for its under-institutionalized party system, despite its OECD member status and high level of industrialization; it is especially critiqued for lack of social roots of its political parties (other than regional ties). By incorporating two different indicators of ideology at the same time – self-placed ideology as a subjective indicator and issue ideology as a more objective indicator – I present strong evidence that the partisanship of this country does have an ideological basis. The issue ideology is aggregated from a series of issue attitudes by item response theory (IRT). Furthermore, by developing this measure, an index of attitudes on key ideological issues, I suggest a new measure of internal coherence of political parties at the public level, which can be widely used in comparison of parties not only within a single country but also across countries. Different levels of party coherence may help explain distinct patterns of party system polarization across countries, as well as the organizational changes and campaigning strategies of individual parties. This measure can provide a new basis for comparing organizational aspects of political parties in new democracies to their Western counterparts
Year of publication: |
2011
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Authors: | Koo, Sejin |
Publisher: |
[2011]: [S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Politische Partei | Political party | Ideologie | Ideology | Parteiensystem | Party system |
Saved in:
freely available
Extent: | 1 Online-Ressource (24 p) |
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Series: | |
Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments 2010 erstellt |
Classification: | A00 - General Economics and Teaching. General |
Source: | ECONIS - Online Catalogue of the ZBW |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013133268
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