Cabinet Instability In The Consolidation Of Democracy: South Korea Case Study

South Korea, as China’s near neighbors and belongs to the cultural circle of Confucianism. Because of the special relationship, our Chinese scholars always attaché great importance to the study of South Korean politics, especially the study of South Korea’s democratic transition. With South Korea to democratic consolidation phase, South Korea Issues of democratic consolidation are also increasing. But a prominent issue- Korean cabinet instability, in political development, has been ignored. This paper puts the cabinet minister’s tenure length as an indicator to measure the stability of the cabinet, in the base of discussing the relationship between the minister term and policy stability in theory, through empirical analysis of the basic situation of the Korean cabinet ministers term and the micro statistical analysis of main reasons of the outgoing cabinet minister, explores the factors that lead to South Korean cabinet instability, from political system, political structure and political culture, etc., and to further explore the impact of these factors on the impact of the consolidation of the democratization of Korea.Firstly, this paper analyses the short minister tenures effect their ability to perform their duties, pursue short-term policy outcomes and increase "balkanization" among departments in theory. From the two aspects of the budgetary process and policy process, this paper the necessity of ensuring the shortest term of two years. Secondly, this paper compares minister tenures among South Korea and other countries and regions as well as between before and after of South Korea’s democratization. In general, though there are differences in term of Ministers among the U.S. and Europe and other developed countries, all remained relatively stable level and the average tenures of Ministers of these countries are much longer than the South Korean. The average tenure of the democratic government is short than the average term of the authoritarian government and the cabinet became more and more unstable. Once again, this paper analysis the reasons of the South Korean Minister of cabinet resignation from the micro aspect. Only about 16.2% of the ministers were dismissed because of accountability and more than 80% of ministerial were changed because of political purposes or specific circumstances. Finally, the paper analyses factors of the constitutional structure, political culture and other aspects that influence cabinet instability, and explore the impacts of these factors on South Korea’s democratic consolidation. Single presidential term, Instrumentalism of replacement of the Minister, political authority and unlimited competition, and civil society blindly advocating "the Minister’s responsibility" have destabilized the cabinet and deeply affected the process of South Korea’s democratic consolidation.This paper aims to draw great attention on issues of the Minister of the cabinet instability caused by short term through the study of South Korean minister’s tenure and provides clues for the research on democratic consolidation in the developing world. On the basis of the study of other scholars, this paper adds factors of political system, political culture and the civil society and others’ aspect that influence the South Korean cabinet instability. These factors precisely reflect the problems in the process of the democratic consolidation in the Korea, and will help us to understand the problems existing in the process more comprehensively and profoundly.