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Using data from the Global View 2004 survey, this research examines the extent to which the idea of creating a regional community in Northeast Asia is supported by Korean citizens, and investigates the determinants of public support for this novel idea. It finds that both widely adopted affective and utilitarian models of public support for regional integration have critical limitations in accounting for the proposed regional integration in Northeast Asia. It shows that security-related utilitarian factors have the greatest explanatory power. Finally, it is suggested that enhancing cooperation with China and Japan in unraveling security problems is necessary to initiate regional integration, especially in Northeast Asia.

This study explores how economic performance prior to democratic transitions affects the fate of successors to authoritarian rulers in new democracies. It investigates 70 founding election outcomes, finding that successful economic performance under an authoritarian regime increases the vote share of successors. It also finds that the past economic performance of authoritarian rulers decreases the likelihood of government alternation to democratic oppositions. Interim governments that initiate democratic transition, however, are neither blamed nor rewarded for economic conditions during transition periods. This study concludes that electorates are not myopic and that economic voting is not a knee-jerk reaction to short-term economic performance in new democracies. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2008.]

This study explores how economic performance prior to democratic transitions affects the fate of successors to authoritarian rulers in new democracies. It investigates 70 founding election outcomes, finding that successful economic performance under an authoritarian regime increases the vote share of successors. It also finds that the past economic performance of authoritarian rulers decreases the likelihood of government alternation to democratic oppositions. Interim governments that initiate democratic transition, however, are neither blamed nor rewarded for economic conditions during transition periods. This study concludes that electorates are not myopic and that economic voting is not a knee-jerk reaction to short-term economic performance in new democracies.

AbstractDoes decentralisation lead to higher citizens' satisfaction with the public services that local governments provide? Despite arguments that decentralisation improves public service delivery, studies have not successfully verified the effects of decentralisation on citizen evaluations of local government services. Given the importance of increased local empowerment in promoting desired public goods, we examine whether the hypothesised advantages of decentralisation on public service delivery still hold when applied to citizens' satisfaction with public services. Specifically, we explore both the direct and indirect impacts of decentralisation on citizens' satisfaction through the mediating impact of the local management capacity in Korea. Based on structural equation modelling, the results indicate that decentralisation has a direct negative impact on public service satisfaction, but its impact is not mediated by local management capacity. Due to Korean citizens' lower expectations regarding decentralisation, citizens' satisfaction is not improved even when local management capacity is increased via higher decentralisation.

This article explores the ideological dynamics of democratic regime change in South Korea from a comparative perspective. Analyzing national sample surveys conducted during the first decade of democratic rule, we find that the democratization of the country's right-wing dictatorship has resulted in a movement of many South Koreans from the right to the left on the ideological spectrum. However, many of the South Koreans who have shifted their position on the spectrum have done so without changing their thinking about what "the left" and "the right" represent. This particular pattern of ideological dynamics that features change in identification, but continuity in content, confirms two distinct theories. As expected from the theory of democratic human development, democratization provided South Koreans with a wide array of legal rights allowing them to think freely. As expected from the theory of political socialization, however, the content of the thinking retains an old, authoritarian conception of rule. Unlike the democratization of political institutions, which can be achieved in a few years, the democratization of mass political thinking appears to be an intergenerational phenomenon that requires more than a decade for completion.