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ABSTRACT
Recently, there has been an increase in the number of scholars focusing on why voters around the world differ in their evaluations of electoral integrity. One group of scholars contends that perceived electoral integrity is determined by partisan status according to election results. Another group claims that individual perception of election quality is influenced by such political cues as institutional support for election management bodies. Although the two groups have developed this subject differently, they both underestimate the degree to which the election process affects electoral integrity. Based on the theory of procedural justice, this study argues that the more problems citizens see in the electoral process, the more negatively they tend to rate elections. An analysis of a public opinion survey conducted immediately after the December 2012 presidential election in South Korea provides credible evidence for our theoretical expectations and presents an important implication for elections of new democracies in a comparative perspective.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Youngho Cho (PhD) is an assistant professor at Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea. His research includes public attitudes about democracy and democratization.
Yong Cheol Kim (PhD) is a professor at Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea. His research includes electoral politics and democracy in South Korea.
Notes
1. Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters.
2. Rose and Mishler, “How Do Electors Respond to an ‘Unfair' Election?”; Wattenberg, “Elections.”
3. Hartlyn et al., “Electoral Governance Matters”; Kerr, “Popular Evaluations of Election Quality in Africa.”
4. Wolak, “How Campaigns Promote the Legitimacy of Elections.”
5. Tyler, “Achieving Peaceful Regime Change.”
6. South Korea and North Korea agreed to an armed truce in 1953, but they have not ended the Korean War. Due to this long-term Cold War, Korean military and security forces have been involved in red-baiting activities targeting opposition leaders. Instigated by the governments, red-baiting has been controversial throughout Korean election history.
7. For example, according to an expert survey conducted by the Harvard-Sydney Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), Korean election laws are not impartial in that they are favourable toward the ruling party and unfavourable toward opposition parties. They also restrict voters' freedom of participation and expression. These two subindices are substantially lower than the others. See Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters.
8. However, scholarly studies on election quality have increased as a result of the severe controversies regarding the 2000 US election. See Wattenberg, “Elections.”
9. Lindberg's study is a recent exception. He suggests a thesis of democratization by election and has provided empirical evidence that continuous elections contribute to democratic consolidation in new democracies. However, Bogaards's critique is that the democratic power of elections is supported by few real cases. Despite this debate, most scholars in the literature of democratization agree that free and fair elections are good for democracy and political stability. See Bogaards, “Reexamining African Elections”; Lindberg, Democracy and Elections in Africa.
10. Anderson et al., Losers’ Consent; Craig et al., “Winners, Losers, and Election Context.”
11. Anderson et al., Losers' Consent, 39.
12. Tversky and Kahneman, “Advances in Prospect Theory.”
13. Birch, “Electoral Institutions and Popular Confidence in Electoral Processes”; Wattenberg, “Elections.”
14. Diamond and Morlino, Assessing the Quality of Democracy, 23.
15. Kerr, “Popular Evaluations of Election Quality in Africa.”
16. Hartlyn et al., “Electoral Governance Matters.”
17. Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.
18. Kerr, “Popular Evaluations of Election Quality in Africa.”
19. Hall et al., “The Human Dimension of Elections.”
20. Tyler, “Achieving Peaceful Regime Change”; Wolak, “How Campaigns Promote the Legitimacy of Elections.”
21. Craig et al., “Winners, Losers, and Election Context.”
22. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law.
23. Kerr, “Popular Evaluations of Election Quality in Africa.”
24. Maldonado and Seligson, “Winners, Losers, and Trust in Elections in 24 Nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
25. Rose and Mishler, “How Do Electors Respond to an ‘Unfair' Election?”
26. Kerr made an important contribution in this respect. He focused on the EMBs as well as other government agencies (police, military, judiciary, and economic regulatory committee) and examined their performance. However, our focus is on government neutrality rather than performance of government agencies. See Kerr, “Popular Evaluations of Election Quality in Africa.”
27. Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.
28. Wolak, “How Campaigns Promote the Legitimacy of Elections.”
29. Thibaut and Walker, Procedural Justice.
30. Lind and Tyler, Social Psychology of Procedural Justice.
31. Choi, Democracy after Democratization; Rose and Shin, “Democratization Backwards.”
32. According to the third round of the Asian Barometer, only 28% of Korean citizens rated the 2007 presidential election as completely free and fair. However, our survey indicates that about 48% offered the same response concerning the 2012 election.
33. Academy of Korean Studies, Korea through the Ages.
34. Harlan, “In South Korea's Latest Controversies, Spy Agency Takes a Leading Role.”
35. Choe, “Investigators Raid Agency of Military in South Korea”.
36. Rose and Shin, “Democratization Backwards.”
37. Dahl, Polyarchy.
38. On 29 December 2011, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled that a strict ban on open support of or opposition to a certain candidate via the Internet is unconstitutional. In practice, however, this judicial review is limited in improving freedom of expression during elections.
39. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law, 6–7
40. Norris conducted a meta-analysis on various measures of perceived electoral integrity and concluded that both single- and multiple- item measures of electoral integrity have validity and reliability. See Norris, “Does the World Agree About Standards of Electoral Integrity?”
41. In our survey, only 5% of the respondents answered that they did not vote. Given that the turnout was 76%, we suspect that about 20% of the respondents were non-voters in the last election. In addition, 12% of the respondents who said they voted refused to express their vote choices. Although there is a debate on whether non-voters prefer the ruling party or the opposition, recent studies show that non-voters have similar preferences to those of voters. This argument seems to hold in our survey because 52% of the respondents said they voted for Park Geun-hye and this number matches the election result. From these results, we inferred that respondents identified as non-voters split into winners and losers in a similar proportion to the election result. Therefore, this problem does not systematically distort our research design. See Kaufmann et al., Unconventional Wisdom.
42. These results suggest that non-voters are a distinct group and should not be combined with losers. Thus, we treated them as an independent group.
43. Rose and Mishler, “How Do Electors Respond to an ‘Unfair' Election?” 125
44. Choi, Democracy after Democratization.
45. Tyler, “Achieving Peaceful Regime Change.”
46. Ibid.
47. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law.
48. Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.
49. In addition, Korea's political rights rating for 2014 declined from 1 to 2 for the first time since 1987, mainly due to the political meddling of the NIS. See Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org).
50. So far, there is one exceptional panel study on this subject, which was conducted by Tyler (2013). Although he examined procedural justice in US elections, one of his two samples is skewed toward conservatives and the other targeted only partisans, Democrats and Republicans. Moreover, his focus was on acceptance of election outcome, which is different from that of our study.
51. According to the trial, the NIS posted about one million comments and its head was sentenced to three years in jail in February 2015. See Mundy, “S. Korea Ex-spy Chief Jailed for Election Smears.”