A Study on the Party System in South Korea after Democratization

In this study on the party system in South Korea after democratization, I propose to disentangle the electoral influence of regionalism, instigated by a historical contingency at the beginning but developed into a stable and intense linkage between the parties and their core regional bases from other stable grounds for party support: the economy and ideology. The critical election of 1987 resulted in a fragmented national party system divided by cohesive regional support for a particular party. Over the 25-year period in my study, it is transforming into a national two-party system, where major parties gain similarly dispersed electoral support across regions and grow ideologically polarized.;The electoral influence of region being a constant, the economy and ideology may explain the changes in partisanship over time. The rightist party is found to own the economic issue area of maintaining price stability and economic growth, while the leftist party support is correlated with unemployment rate. There is a closer relationship between the economy and the votes in Korean elections than previously thought. As the size of the national party system converges on 2, and the leftist party gains more balanced electoral support, regional cleavage is being absorbed into party competition, most likely along the ideological divide.;The party system of 1987 based on regional divide is persistent in that the alignment of the regions and political parties remains electorally relevant. There has been a crucial intervention of ideology in 2002 and 2004 elections, which accelerated the polarization at the elite level and party sorting in the mass electorate. In consequence, the Korean party system of 2012 reflects not only the electoral partnership between the two southern regions and major political parties, but also the coordination in ideology and issue positions between the parties and their constituents.