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Journal Article

How Responsive is Trade Adjustment Assistance? (2020.10)

  • Author : Sung Eun Kim  & Krzysztof Pelc
  • Journal : Political Science Research and Methods
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Volume : First View
  • Publication Date : October 2020
  • Abstract : How responsive is the US’ Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to the labor dislocation that results from trade integration? Recent findings suggest that the world’s most ambitious trade adjustment program barely responds to import shocks, and that the shortfall is made up by disability insurance and early retirement. This holds considerable implications: TAA offers a lens onto the central question of whether developed democracies can effectively redistribute the gains from international economic integration. We take a closer look at these results. Using petition-level data over a 20-year period, we find that TAA is between 1.7 and 3.3 times more responsive than current estimates suggest. Yet the news is not all good. As we show, the responsiveness of TAA has decreased considerably since the 1990s, just as developed democracies started facing increasing pushback against liberalization. This shortfall, in turn, has political consequences: areas where TAA has been least responsive were also more likely to shift toward voting for Trump in the 2016 Presidential election. Our findings speak to the considerable challenge governments face in aiding workers “left behind” by liberalization.

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Foreign Policy Dilemma in South Korean Democracy: Challenge of Polarized and Politicized Public Opinion (2020.10)

  • Author : Shin-wha Lee
  • Journal : Peace Studies
  • Publisher : Peace and Democracy Institute
  • Volume : 28(2)
  • Publication Date : October 2020
  • Abstract : The paper empirically examines the extent to which the public’s perceptions and preferences have been reflected in the official foreign policymaking process in Korea. Through this analysis, the paper discusses the relationship between democracy and foreign policy determinants, and highlights the problems that arise due to polarization of the public. The paper argues that the divided political jinyoung nonri (partisanship argument) within the country poses the biggest threat to Korean diplomacy, as the political polarization among both political elites and civic groups increasingly causes great restrictions in foreign policymaking. The paper demonstrates how these issues have been relevant in recent years by analyzing and comparing the foreign policy decision-making process in Korea during three diplomatic episodes: the Mad cow disease protests in 2008, opposition against the ‘comfort women’ agreement signed in 2015; and public debates about the deployment of THAAD Batteries since 2017. These cases demonstrate how Korean governments may be prohibited from pursuing foreign policies essential for its national interests and security due to domestic pressure from a polarized public, or promote unwise strategies based on misguided populism. In many ways, this emphasizes the need for a ‘win-win’ approach between the government and citizens through constructive conversations about Korea’s foreign policy, especially because the public will continue to be more involved in the foreign policy decision-making process.

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The Chinese Failure to Disarm North Korea: Geographical Proximity, U.S. Unipolarity, and Alliance Restraint (2020.10)

  • Author :  Dong Sun Lee, Iordanka Alexandrova & Yihei Zhao
  • Journal : Contemporary Security Policy
  • Publisher : Taylor & Francis
  • Volume : 41(4)
  • Publication Date : October 2020
  • Abstract : This article explains China’s abortive attempt to stop North Korean nuclear development between 1993 and 2016. It attributes this failure to two international conditions. The first is geographical contiguity. As an adjacent great power, China had limited leverage over North Korea. Beijing’s threats of sanctions lacked credibility, as sanctions could trigger dangerous local instabilities. Its security inducements implied a risk of subordination, which Pyongyang was unwilling to accept. The second is the unipolar international system. Unipolarity curbed Beijing’s ability to protect Pyongyang from the United States, while simultaneously inducing China to pass the buck of restraining North Korea to the American unipole. This article corroborates these main arguments by drawing upon primary and secondary sources in Korean, Chinese, and English.

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Territorial threat and women’s legislative representation(2020.07)

Abstract : Why do some countries have fewer women in parliament than do others? Recent studies find that women have less access to positions of political power in countries facing external threats. Existing studies, however, do not differentiate between types of threat. We theorize that territorial threats are a particular driver of gender inequality in national parliaments. When a country’s land is under threat, people prefer having “tough” representatives in the national legislature who are competent on the military and defence more so than when a country faces other threats. Moreover, when countries face territorial threats, they build larger standing armies and adopt military conscription, raising the level of militarization in society, which negatively influences women’s access to the national legislature. Using a time-series cross-sectional data set of 101 democracies, we find that countries facing external territorial threats have lower percentages of women in parliament compared to countries facing other or no external threats. Additionally, we find that countries with higher levels of militarization have fewer women in the national legislature.

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Envy and Pride: How Economic Inequality Deepens Happiness Inequality in South Korea (2020.07)

  • Author :  Woo Chang Kang, Jae Seung Lee, and BK Song
  • Journal : Social Indicators Research
  • Publisher : Springer
  • Volume : 150(2)
  • Publication Date : July 2020
  • DOI: 10.1007/s11205-020-02339-2 
  • Abstract : This paper examines how economic inequality at the local level affects individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB) through social comparison in Seoul, South Korea. We implement a multi-level analysis combining asset inequality, calculated using the actual transaction prices of apartments, and public opinion surveys conducted by Seoul Metropolitan City between 2008 and 2016. Our analysis shows that inequality negatively affects SWB among respondents whose family income is lower than the median (the envy effect), but drives up SWB among the other half (the pride effect). Further analysis on the effect of inequality on subjective class awareness corroborates a social comparison mechanism: the haves embrace an upper-class awareness as local inequality increases, while the have-nots embrace a lower class awareness. These findings suggest that, despite concerns about economic inequality and its negative consequences, calling for policy reform to reduce inequality may be unpersuasive to the better off members of society, especially if doing so increases individual financial burdens.

Environmental Degradation and Public Opinion: The Case of Air Pollution in Vietnam (2020.06)

Electoral System and Trade Openness in Government Procurement Market (2020. 06)

Abstract : The article examines the effects of electoral system on the propensity to open up the government procurement market to foreign competition. Foreign discrimination in government procurement market is an non-tariff barrier that has different political dynamics compared to the conventional trade barriers. In a public procurement market, unlike in private markets, a government faces different incentives because it is also a market participant as well as a market regulator. By focusing on this dilemma, this article argues that various components of electoral system induce government to either open up or close the procurement market to foreign competition. Empirically, it finds support for the effects of district magnitude, allocation rule on the propensity to open up the procurement market.

Political Foundation of Educational Policy : the Generational Effects on Public Education Spending in South Korea (2020. 05)

Abstract : The paper examines public attitudes on the public educational policies in South Korea. Since 2000, the generational conflict became the most salient political cleavage in South Korea affecting not only elections but also various public policies. Building on the previous studies identifying strong generational effects on political attitudes, this study investigates the generational effects on public education policies, focusing on the millennial generation. Based on public opinion survey conducted in 2019, this paper finds that, in particular, the millennial generation in South Korea opposes the affirmative action policies and less likely to vote for the political parties that increase the public education spending. South Korea spends almost 12% of GDP on education but public education spending is only about 4% of GDP. Given the high level of private education spending, the educational policies became highly contentious issues that not only pertain to the equal opportunity problem but also to the high level of economic inequality in South Korea. Despite the fact that public education spending is an important tool to reduce economic inequality and educational inequality, this paper cautiously predict that political foundation of expanding the public spending on education will be weakened in the future due to the negative attitudes of millennial generations on public education spending.

When Top‐down Meets Bottom‐up: Local Adoption of Social Policy Reform in China (2020.04)

  • Author :  Xian Huang and Sung Eun Kim
  • Journal : Governance
  • Publisher : Wiley
  • Volume : 33(2)
  • Publication Date : 2020년 4월
  • DOI: 10.1111/gove.12433
  • Abstract : Authoritarian local leaders face two driving forces in social policymaking: top‐down pressure from the regime and bottom‐up motivations derived from local conditions. Existing studies recognize the importance of both forces, but remain unclear as to how they interact and which of them is more influential in driving local policy adoption. Focusing on two health insurance integration policies in China, we find that when the policy entails substantial class or distributive conflicts and bureaucratic friction, top‐down pressure for compliance is a dominant driver for local policy adoption; when the policy does not entail such conflicts or bureaucratic infighting, bottom‐up motivations based on local economic geography together with top‐down pressure drive local adoption. We find support for this argument from an analysis of an original city‐level data set in China from 2004 to 2016. This study has implications for social policy reform, decentralization, and government responsiveness in authoritarian countries with multilevel governance.

Employment Insecurity and Social Policy: Preferences for Investment vis-à-vis Consumption (2020.04)

  • Author : Seobin Han & Hyeok Yong Kwon
  • Journal : Policy and Society
  • Publisher : Taylor & Francis
  • Volume : 39(2)
  • Publication Date : 2020년 4월
  • DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2019.1699005
  • Abstract : While existing studies on redistribution politics provide explanations of ‘who’ supports redistribution, we know very little about who supports ‘what’ type of redistribution. This omission is unfortunate because government spending has diverse functions and impacts, which are not differentiated in existing research. By capturing individual preferences for specific types of government policy under conditions of unemployment, we assess how economic insecurity influences calls for government action. Building on the analytic distinction between social consumption and social investment, this study examined the role of unemployment in social policy preferences. First, the experience of unemployment drives individual demand for social consumption but reduces support for social investment. Second, income levels have a heterogeneous effect on social policy preferences. In other words, a high income level is positively associated with support for social investment but negatively associated with support for social consumption. Third, the income effect is conditional on the experience of job loss, with the effect more pronounced in lower income groups than in higher income groups. An analysis of European Social Survey (ESS) Wave 8 (2016) data found empirical evidence supporting arguments about the impact of economic insecurity on individual preferences for a particular type of social expenditure.

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