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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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The Prospects of Human Rights in US–China Relations: A Constructivist Understanding (2020.01)

  • Author : Hun Joon Kim
  • Journal : International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Volume : 20(1)
  • Publication Date : 2020년 1월
  • DOI : 10.1093/irap/lcy020
  • Abstract : What are the prospects of U.S.-China relations in the area of human rights? Skeptics maintain that human rights is no longer an issue between the United States and China. A traditional understanding of U.S.–China relations ignores the role of norms, while the constructivist perspective recognizes their independent effects. This paper links the traditional understanding of power politics between the United States and China with the study of constructivist norm research. The three findings of constructivist norm theories are relevant and applied to predict the status of human rights in U.S.-China relations: the historical construction of norms, the long-term and multifaceted effects of norms, and the persistence of norms. Based on these theoretical predictions, it is expected that, although convergence is not completely impossible, the past dynamic of competition and confrontation will continue and human rights will still be a contentious issue in U.S.-China relations.

Tradition and Innovation in Max Weber’s Political Thoughts (2019.12)

  • Authors : Chiwon Choi
  • Journal : Zeitschrift der Koreanisch-Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Sozialwissenschaften
  • Publisher : K-G Association For Social Sciences
  • Volume : 29(4)
  • Publication Date : December, 2019
  • Abstract : This paper re-presents ‘Max Weber’ as a political scientist and political thinker in the context of German intellectual and academic traditions. For Weber, politics is culture in a comprehensive sense. From Weber’s confrontation of ​the ‘autonomous logics’(Eigengesetzlichkeiten) of cultural modernity, a concept of political thoughts consisting of five elements, is derived. The core ls the third and fourth element. As the value domains within the ‘cultural modernity’ collide and conflict with each other while developing their own ‘autonomous logics’, so do the value domains within Weber’s thoughts. This is inevitable because Weber’s thoughts were influenced and shaped by various disciplines such as law, philosophy, theology, history, and economics. Weber’s theoretical and practical experience with real politics characterizes his thoughts of politics. Above all, Weber’s political thoughts, which were formed through his confrontation with the German Historical school of economics as an ‘older form of political theory’, develops its own ‘autonomous logics’. It has a dual moment of tradition and innovation. ‘Value-freedom’ is only one representative form of the full expression of this ‘autonomous logics’. The real essence of the ‘autonomous logics’ in Weber’s thoughts are hidden, are pulsed in the German intellectual and academic context. In West’s intellectual history, Weber’s political thoughts have the meaning of reflection of the problem within the tradition of Western politics since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Intra-Regional Balance of Power and Economic Integration (2019.12)

  • Author : Sangsoo Lim and Iordanka Alexandrova
  • Journal : JIAS
  • Publisher : Institute of International Affairs
  • Volume : 26(2)
  • Publication Date : 2019년 12월
  • Abstract : What made possible the voluntary formation of the European Community? The answer to this question lies in the distribution of capabilities in Europe after the end of World War II. Centralized integration took place because three conditions occurred at the same time. First, the emergence of the Soviet Union as an overwhelming symmetrical common threat to France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux gave them incentive to cooperate. Second, the aggregate power of the threatened states was sufficient to counter the threat. Third, no single state within the balancing coalition was more powerful than all the others taken together. This allowed them to surrender decision-making authority over important economic sectors to supranational institutions without concern that these would be dominated by a single state.

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The Rise of the US Federal Reserve as a World Monetary Authority: Revisiting the Volcker Shock (2019.12)

  • Author : Kyuteg Lim
  • Journal : The Korean Journal of International Studies
  • Publisher : The Korean Association of International Studies
  • Volume : 17(3)
  • Publication Date : December, 2019
  • Abstract : In the existing International Political Economy literature, the Volcker Shock has been widely regarded as historical significance in the development of international political economy. Three successive waves of IPE have evolved to highlight it respectively, as a subjugation of the US state to pressures of foreign states, to international financial power, and institutional configurations of US financial power. Without close attention to the particular role of the US Federal Reserve, however, these observations obscure the unprecedented process of a new mode of monetary governance. This paper argues that the Volcker Shock ushered in the rise of the US Federal Reserve as a world monetary authority in a way that the inner-making process of autonomous monetary policy became a new way of governing monetary and financial affairs. The Federal Reserve was able to pursue autonomous monetary policy far away from the economic management of the US government and at the same time to discipline banks in international financial markets. The Federal Reserve eventually established itself as a new kind of monetary authority between US government and international financial markets. This paper contributes to the study of international monetary power.

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The Principles of Institutional Design through The 1987 Constitutional System of Korea – Focusing on Representativeness, Effectiveness and Accountability(2019. 12)

  • Authors : Hyun-Jae Ho
  • Journal : Journal of Parliamentary Research
  • Publisher : The Korea Parliamentary Research Institute
  • Volume : 14(2)
  • Publication Date : December, 2019
  • Abstract :This paper analyzes the 1987 constitutional system by focusing on representativeness, effectiveness and accountability which can be called the core principles of institutional design. The results of the analysis are as follows. Firstly, the 1987 constitutional system was focused on functional efficiency based on a thorough winner-take-all while excluding representativeness in its formation. Secondly, it failed to establish accountability as well as the intended efficiency in the outcome. What we have confirmed from these two facts is that the crisis of the 1987 constitutional system is not just a matter of the operation of the system, but a more fundamental problem stemming from the inconsistency of institutional combination based on the principles of the system’s institutional design. Thus, the alternative system should begin by considering the combination of the principles of effectiveness and consequential accountability on representativeness that can be combined in a mutually virtuous cycle and produce desirable outcomes. One such combination at this stage can be a combination of proportional representation and parliamentary system. Because it allows us to transform a weak party system into a strong party system in that the interests in society are properly represented through political parties and fair competition is achieved, while also training the political party as the primary organization of democratic accountability. And this naturally leads to accountability through the very mechanism of institutional combination.