Suchergebnisse

Examines the evolution in the 1990s, using the results of three general elections to the House of Representatives (Lower House) in 1990, 1993, and 1996; some focus on independent (no-party) voters, voters' disillusionment with government, partisan dealignment, and political corruption.

Abstract: Democratic consolidation is the most important task to be accomplished by countries newly democratized over the last two decades. However, most new democracies with only a few exceptions have difficulties to various degrees in consolidating democracy. The primary aim of this paper is to get a clearer idea of the difficulties which new democracies are now facing by examining patterns and contributing factors of electoral volatility in four new democracies, that is, three East European countries (Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland) and one East Asian country (South Korea). The level of electoral volatility in terms of vote and seat share in these countries is extremely high. Regarding future prospects for democratic consolidation, however, a more important conclusion is that each country has a quite different combination of factors contributing to electoral volatility, implying that prospects for democratic consolidation might also differ, depending on these characteristics.

According to the author, elite recruitment is a fundamental function of every political system, perhaps the one which most visibly touches on the critical issue of system legitimacy. The processes and results of elite recruitment in unified Korea will be a crucial factor in deciding the legitimacy and stability of the new, unified political system. After dealing with the processes of post-unification elite recruitment, he (the author) explores new channels of elite recruitment to rectify the socio-economically biased elite structure of the pre-unification period. (DÜI-Sen)