Public Interest 'Blackballing' in South Korea's Elections

PARTY POLITICS VOL 8. No.5 pp. 541–562

PUBLIC INTEREST ‘BLACKBALLING’ IN SOUTH KOREA’S ELECTIONS Shale Horowitz and Sunwoong Kim

ABSTRACT

South Korea’s April 2000 congressional elections saw large numbers of incumbent candidates defeated. The South Korean mass media attributed considerable importance to the activities of a public interest umbrella organization, the Citizens’ Alliance (CA) for the 2000 General Elections. CA ‘blackballed’ 86 candidates of all parties as corrupt, unqualified or otherwise unsuited for office, and 59 of these candidates lost. After controlling for a variety of other factors – characteristics of districts, candidates and parties, and campaign spending – we find that CA did indeed exert a remarkably strong influence on electoral outcomes. Being blackballed was most damaging to independent candidates. Blackballing had the greatest impact on the probability of winning in districts with weaker party loyalties, and, somewhat ironically, for candidates of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party – the party most closely identified with the issue of clean government.

KEY WORDS elections endorsements public interest groups South Korea

Introduction

South Korea’s April 2000 legislative elections achieved unusual international notoriety because of the apparently strong impact of an unusual type of public interest organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Elections. The Citizens’ Alliance (CA) did not endorse candidates, but rather ‘blackballed’ candidates that its affiliates identified as unfit. Remarkably, 59 of the 86 blackballed candidates lost. The resulting media sensation raises two important questions about CA. First, did blackballed candidates tend to lose largely because CA blackballed them, or was the impact of blackballing insignificant relative to other factors? Second, to the extent CA did have a significant impact, under what conditions are its methods most likely to be successfully replicated? Is CA just an exotic

1354-0688(200209)8:5;541–562;027212 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) creature fit to flourish once or twice in a specifically Korean setting, or is it a technological innovation in politics that will in due time become an important feature of many democratic systems? On 13 April 2000, South Korea held midterm elections to its National Assembly.1 The outcome did not significantly affect the overall balance of power between the ruling Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) of President Kim Dae-jung and the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) of Lee Hoi-chang. The MDP still requires votes from small parties and independents to provide a razor-thin majority. The elections also showcased the con- tinuing power of regional loyalties. The MDP won 25 of 29 seats in the southwestern Cholla region, and the GNP 64 of 65 seats in southeastern Kyongsang. However, there was noticeable turbulence beneath this superficial stability. The MDP’s old coalition partner, the United Liberal Democrats (ULD) of Kim Jong-pil, suffered a severe setback, both in its total number of seats and in its central Chungchong base. Incumbent candidates generally took a beating. Eighty-six of 207 incumbents running lost their seats, dramatically reducing the average age of representatives (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 14 April 2000; Economist, 22 April 2000; Korea Now, 22 April 2000; Korea Times, 30 May 2000). Most remarkably, media coverage of the election focused heavily on the activities of a non-partisan, grassroots public interest organization, the Citizens’ Alliance (CA) for the 2000 General Elections. CA’s strategy was to ‘blackball’ incumbents and challengers of all parties that its affiliates viewed as corrupt and incompetent – regardless of party affiliation. A first round of blackballing focused on the candidate nominations within each of the three major parties.2 CA criticized all the parties for ignoring its strictures, and redoubled its efforts to discredit the 86 candidates blackballed in the general elections. CA broadened its blackballing criteria from the original ones of corruption, opposition to reform, and complicity with the authoritarian regime, to encompass divisive appeals to regional loyalties, election law vio- lations and false candidate reporting of personal information. The group also employed a variety of tactics to publicize its ‘hit list’ and its associated causes, including demonstrations, petitions, sit-ins, national bus tours and what might be termed ‘youth carnivals’. One all-day event in Seoul, attract- ing 30,000 people, ‘featured skateboard and bicycle competitions, dancing contests, and live performances from top pop stars and traditional musi- cians’ (Korea Herald, 10 April 2000). A flavor of CA’s appeal can be gained from the following accusing questions, addressed to the parties on a late- night talk show episode that caused a public sensation: ‘Do you politicians have any reputation left to defend after all the corruption, incompetence and laziness you have demonstrated? What about the honor of ordinary people, who labored diligently only to see their country teeter on the verge of bank- ruptcy two years ago?’ CA’s influence can be inferred not just from media coverage, but also from what voters themselves have said. In polls, 85 542 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA percent expressed pre-election approval for CA’s campaign, and 46 percent afterwards said that it had influenced their voting decisions (Korea Herald, 24 February 2000; Digital Chosun Ilbo, 14 April 2000).3 We seek to determine whether CA had the dramatic impact on congressional election outcomes that observers and voters have attributed to it. We are interested in how CA’s blackballing campaign affected candidates’ vote shares, and more narrowly, in whether it affected their probability of winning. The literature on congressional elections and the specific conditions of the April 2000 elections in South Korea suggest a variety of other factors likely to have influenced election outcomes. These include characteristics of districts, characteristics of candidates, characteristics of parties and levels of campaign spending. To the extent CA blackballing is estimated to have a statistically significant impact after controlling for these other factors, we are interested in whether blackballing is more effective under some conditions than others. In particular, was blackballing more effective when combined with high-profile public campaigns and more extensive media coverage, when used in regions with weaker party loyalties, or when used against candidates of particular parties or without party affiliations? We find that blackballing had a strongly negative, statistically significant effect on both vote share and probability of winning. We also find that almost all the hypothesized control variables had statistically significant effects in the expected directions. In predicting vote share, we find that blackballing had a particularly significant effect on independent candidates. Being blackballed is estimated to have cost all major candidates 5.3 percent of the vote, and independent candidates a further 5.4 percent of the vote. In predicting the probability of winning, we find that being blackballed no longer has a statistically significant effect once the effects of being blackballed under specific conditions is taken into account. Here we find that statistically significant negative effects of being blackballed were confined to candidates running in the less partisan, more closely contested Seoul region, and to candidates of the ruling party, the MDP. We also discuss a set of conditions hypothesized to be important for the success of organizations like CA. The relevant conditions appear to have existed during South Korea’s 2000 elections. But we conclude tentatively that such organizations are not likely to have similarly dramatic impacts in the future, either in South Korea or elsewhere. This is because, under the relevant transitional political conditions, their bases of highly educated activists are more likely to be attracted directly into partisan political activity. If and when such partisan activity successfully forces reforms, the window of political opportunity is closed.

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Theoretical Approach to ‘Blackballing’ and Its Electoral Impact

Briefly, under what conditions would a single public interest organization like CA be most likely to have an appreciable influence on voting behavior? We distinguish three important types of conditions, related to public demand for the services of such an organization, to the organization’s own attributes, and to the extent of competition in providing and distributing the relevant information: 1 Public demand for information on ‘unfit’ candidates is likely to be strongest where there exist widespread, systemic abuses of important public service norms. 2 To have the potential for appreciable influence on voters, a given public interest organization must be both credible and visible. An organization is more likely to be viewed as a credible source of information on candidate fitness where the organization is viewed as non-partisan and trustworthy. Visibility is likely to depend on both the structure and tactics of the organization. 3 There must be limited competition in providing the relevant information about candidates, whether from other public interest organizations, from the mass media or from the political parties themselves. Consider now the specific conditions of South Korea’s April 2000 legislative elections. How are the impacts of blackballing and other relevant factors to be understood and operationalized, and what are their expected effects? Our unit of analysis is major candidate performance in single-member district races.4 We examine two types of voting outcomes: candidates’ vote shares and whether or not they won. We use a dummy variable to capture the effect of being blackballed by CA. Another dummy variable is included for cases where a major opponent was blackballed. However, the latter would be expected to have a weaker effect. This is especially so in a party system such as South Korea’s, where there are usually three major party candidates and often one or more independent and minor party candidates. Voters driven away from blackballed opponents will not necessarily go to the particular major candidate whose performance is being examined. They will scatter to a number of different candidates, and may be more likely to defect to minor candidates than to a strong candidate of a party they do not typically identify with. Also, some voters can be expected to abstain when the candidate of their preferred party is blackballed. There are a number of ways in which any apparent effects of blackballing might prove to be exaggerated or oversimplified. Most obviously, once other factors known to strongly affect the popularity of candidates are taken into account, being blackballed may not be a statistically significant factor. If blackballing has a statistically significant negative effect on candidates after controlling for other important factors, it is worth inquiring 544 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA whether blackballing has a greater impact under some conditions than under others. Again, does blackballing have a particularly strong effect in combination with other influential factors? Does any general effect of blackballing remain after such interactions are taken into account? Other factors relevant to explaining support for candidates in congressional elections can be divided into four main categories: characteristics of districts, characteristics of candidates, characteristics of parties and campaign spending. Ideally, it would be desirable to have access to a variety of socio-economic indicators for districts, for example on income, occu- pation and education. For example, a Gallup Korea poll showed that white- collar workers were 6 percent more likely than average to approve of CA’s campaign (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 14 April 2000). However, district-level demographic data are not available because administrative boundaries for census purposes do not correspond to electoral district boundaries. Moreover, Korean politics outside of the Seoul region has in the past been marked by a high level of regional loyalty to particular parties (Economist, 18 March 2000; Far Eastern Economic Review, 24 February 2000 and 20 April 2000; Oh, 1999; Shin, 1999; Steinberg, 1998). In order to capture this combination of factors, we use the election vote share of the same party’s candidate in the previous election. In the case of candidates running again in the same district for the same party, this is the same candidate’s vote share in the last congressional election (1996). Otherwise, it is the vote share of a different candidate of the same party in the last election. Around 5 percent of districts have been divided or have been merged with other districts. Redistricting alters the voter base and often significantly affects electoral outcomes (Cox and Katz, 1999; Niemi and Abramowitz, 1994), so we include a dummy variable to account for the consequences of changing district boundaries.5 Characteristics of candidates form another category of factors likely to affect outcomes of congressional elections. Some of these are factors of long- standing importance in the literature. Other characteristics of candidates would be expected to be particularly important in the Korean context, or in the 2000 elections in particular. Incumbent candidates are thought to have significant advantages owing to their name recognition and extensive access to state-subsidized publicity and private media coverage (Krashinsky and Milne, 1993). On the other hand, an unusually large number of incumbents lost in South Korea’s 2000 elections, so in this case it could be that the usual advantages of incumbency may have been offset significantly by an anti- incumbent reaction. We remove from the general category of incumbents those that bolted from their old parties and ran either with a new party affiliation or as independents. Switching of parties often takes place because of intra-party power struggles, or because candidates are ‘revealed’ in office as being weak prospects for re-election. When candidates choose to run despite such negative developments, they are often local notables who believe their 545 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) notoriety is sufficient to offer a chance of winning even with the stigma attached to betrayal of party. We include a dummy variable for such party switching, and hypothesize that it alienated some voters who would otherwise have chosen such candidates. It is common in Korean politics for parties to run candidates without long-standing ties to the local community. We are interested in whether some voters are likely to punish such ‘carpet-baggers’. However, we were not able to find any centralized records of when candidates took up residence in their districts. As a result, we used the imperfect dummy variable of whether a candidate graduated from a high school in their district. Another relevant personal characteristic is distinction in other careers prior to running for office. This is likely to be taken by voters as a signal of quality, and in more high-profile cases may also be associated with the already-noted name recognition and publicity advantages of incumbents. It has also been shown that higher-quality candidates are more likely to choose to run strategically, when they have a better chance of winning. This may be, for example, because the incumbent isn’t running again, or because the incumbent barely won in the previous election (Lublin, 1994). Public campaigns by the media and by organizations like CA led to legis- lation that made public personal information about candidates that the state had previously kept confidential. This includes tax returns and military service records (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 7 April 2000; Korea Times, 16 April 2000). As a result, we have chosen to include the logarithm of personal assets (wealth) and a dummy variable for candidates who did not perform military service. Since we include variables for campaign spending (see below), wealth is not expected to matter through its effects on official campaign expenditures. However, it might be expected to matter in other ways. It might be a source of unrecorded campaign expenditures, or of campaign expenditures of well-endowed persons or organizations with con- nections to candidates (Korea Herald, 15 May 2000 and 22 May 2000). It might also be a source of name recognition and previous media publicity. Last, it might be taken as a (positive or negative) signal of quality by voters. Failure to perform military service has recently been a high-profile public issue in South Korea, where universal conscription has long been the norm. Before the 1997 presidential election, the leader of the GNP, Lee Hoi-chang, was accused of using his influence to get two of his sons exempted from military service. This is widely believed to have contributed significantly to Kim Dae-jung’s victory. Just before the 2000 elections, the Seoul District Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation of whether National Assembly incumbents used influence or bribes to exempt their sons from military service (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 24 March 2000 and 15 April 2000; Far Eastern Economic Review, 30 March 2000). Opposition parties and CA itself criticized the MDP government for mounting such an investigation just before the election, after ignoring the issue for so long. In this atmosphere, it is possible that a candidate’s failure to perform military service may have 546 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA been taken by voters as a signal of special treatment – whether or not such special treatment was actually established by a public or media investigation. Many incumbents went down to defeat in the 2000 elections, and many of their replacements were unusually young by historical standards. There was also a strong focus on corruption. One might therefore expect that older candidates per se may have been at a disadvantage. Again, regardless of the truth, it might be presumed by many voters that older candidates were more likely to have been ‘part of the problem’ in the past. To test this hypothesis, we include a variable for age and for the square of age. The latter is meant to capture the possibility that voter suspicion increased at an accelerating rate as the age of the candidate increased. Particular parties often do better or worse in given elections. The best documented pattern of this type is the tendency of the sitting president’s party to suffer in midterm congressional elections in the United States (Campbell et al., 1966; Campbell, 1993). In South Korea’s 2000 elections, aggregate seat changes indicate that the ULD and independent candidates may have suffered, and that GNP candidates may have benefited dispro- portionately. The ULD was part of the governing coalition with President Kim Dae-jung’s MDP, but withdrew just before the elections. It may be that some voters punished both the ULD and MDP as incumbent parties, and that other voters punished the ULD in particular because of its pre-election defection. Another issue is whether the political system is moving from the present two-and-a-half party system to a two-party system. Finally, the ULD had a particularly harsh confrontation with CA. CA blackballed ULD leader Kim Jong-pil, who reciprocated with shrill condemnations of CA (Econo- mist, 8 April 2000; Korea Herald, 11 March 2000 and 5 April 2000). These party-related influences can be captured by including dummy variables for party affiliation – including running without affiliation as an independent. However, if such party variables do prove significant, it will not be easy to infer the relative importance of the factors discussed in the ULD’s decline. Campaign spending is another long-established influence on electoral outcomes (Gerber, 1998; Jacobson, 1978). Such funds can be used for adver- tising, canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts, or to finance other activities and events with similar effects. We include variables for a candidate’s own expenditures, and for those of the candidate’s highest-spending opponent. Even if blackballing proved significant after controlling for all of the other factors discussed above, its influence might still be exaggerated. This is because such influence can be confounded with negative media publicity. There are a couple of possibilities. First, it may be that the same candidate activities that invited blackballing also invited independent negative media attention. In that case, much of the effect attributed to blackballing might really be due to negative media attention. Second, blackballing would not be expected to have a strong effect if it did not receive sympathetic media publicity. In this case, the blackballing is having the hypothesized effect 547 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) largely due to heavy sympathetic media publicity. It is not easy to see how these two types of influence can be disentangled. To some extent, we address this issue by considering the candidate characteristic variables – personal assets and military service records – that CA and media activity helped to bring to public attention. If such variables are significant and blackballing is not, then it could be inferred that the information per se is what mattered. We also attempt to get at the issue in another way. CA singled out 22 of the 86 blackballed candidates as particularly unfit, and mounted more active protest campaigns against them. It has been argued that these ‘zealously blackballed’ candidates suffered more than the other blackballed candidates (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 13 April 2000). If this is true, it is consistent with either heightened CA influence through media publicity, or CA influence being confounded with media publicity that would in any case focus on the most questionable candidates. If a dummy variable limited to candidates that were zealously blackballed proves to have a stronger estimated effect than the broader blackball dummy variable, it seems reasonable to attribute at least an important mediating role to negative media publicity. And again, we cannot be certain that CA is primarily responsible for this negative media publicity. However, if the broader blackball variable proves as powerful or more powerful than the narrower, zealously blackballed variable, it would be more plausible to attribute an important, independent originating role to CA. In this case, media publicity still must play an important propagating role, but it can be more con- vincingly inferred that the CA ‘brand name’ gave such media publicity an unusual sting. A related question is whether blackballing had a stronger effect in certain situations. Blackballing may have hurt more when directed against candidates of particular parties. Again, the ULD clashed strongly with CA. Many also argued that CA was a de facto MDP front, since the MDP has the strongest association with the anti-corruption crusade against the old regime and its institutional remnants. Of the 86 blackballed candidates, 28 were affiliated with the GNP, 16 with the MDP, 18 with the ULD, 11 with 2 minor parties, and 13 were independents (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 3 April 2000). Another possibility is that blackballing hurt less in regions with strong loyalties to particular parties, and hurt more in the more competitive Seoul region. Of the 86 blackballed candidates, 19 ran in the more competitive Seoul region (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 13 April 2000). We test these possibilities with dummy interaction variables.

Methods, Measures and Data

In Models 1A–4A below, ordinary least squares is used to estimate the impact of these various factors on major candidate vote shares. In Models 1B–4B below, probit is used to estimate their impact on major candidate 548 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA probabilities of winning. Major candidates are deﬁned as those who received at least 10 percent of the vote. We distinguish ﬁve main categories of independent variables.

(1) Blackball Variables and Their Reﬁnements BLACK: incumbent blackballed by CA (dummy variable). OPBLACK: major opponent blackballed by CA (dummy variable). ZBLACK: zealously blackballed, i.e. candidate selected by CA from the larger group of blackballed candidates for more extensive and organized protests (dummy variable). ZOPBLACK: opponent zealously blackballed by CA (dummy variable). BLACK*SEOUL: interaction term for blackballed candidates from more competitive Seoul area electoral districts (including suburban districts in neighboring Kyonggi). OPBLACK*SEOUL: interaction term for blackballed opponents in more competitive Seoul area electoral districts (including suburban districts in neighboring Kyonggi). BLACK*MDP: interaction term for blackballed candidate of Millennium Democratic Party. BLACK*ULD: interaction term for blackballed candidate of United Liberal Democratic Party. BLACK*INDEP: interaction term for blackballed candidate without party afﬁliation.

(2) Characteristics of Districts SHR1996: vote share of the same party’s candidate in the 1996 congressional election. REDIST: district merged, divided or otherwise changed since the 1996 election.

(3) Characteristics of Candidates INCUMB: candidate is an incumbent that has not switched party affiliation (dummy variable). SWITCH: candidate has switched party affiliation since the 1996 election (dummy variable). ESTAB: candidate has a notable career as a proxy for being of relatively high quality (dummy variable); defined as having been a congressman or 549 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) congresswoman for two or more terms, governor of a province, a cabinet minister, a general in the armed forces, or the CEO of a major corporation. AGE: candidate’s age. AGE2: square of candidate’s age. LNWEALTH: natural logarithm of candidate’s wealth. LOCAL: candidate graduated from a local high school (dummy variable). NOMIL: candidate did not perform military service (dummy variable).

(4) Characteristics of Parties MDP: Millennium Democratic Party candidate (dummy variable). ULD: United Liberal Democratic Party candidate (dummy variable). INDEP: independent candidate (dummy variable).

(5) Campaign Spending EXPEND: campaign expenditures by major candidate. OPEXPEND: campaign expenditures by highest-spending opponent.

Election results, including data on redistricting and campaign expenditures, are available from the National Election Commission (2000). Personal characteristics of candidates are drawn from the website of the Donga Ilbo newspaper (2000).

Findings

Model types A and B take support for major candidates as the dependent variable, with type A’s dependent variable being the major candidate’s vote share and type B’s being whether the major candidate won the election. Models 1A and 1B show the impact of simple blackballing, controlling for characteristics of districts, candidates and parties, and for campaign spending. As can be seen in Tables 1 and 2, the results are almost entirely consistent across the two models. In both models, being blackballed by CA has a strongly negative, statistically signiﬁcant impact on voter support. In Model 1A, it is estimated that blackballing costs the incumbent party’s candidate 6.38 percent of the vote. Also in both models, when a strong opponent of the candidate is blackballed, the estimated effect on support for the candidate is noticeably weaker and more inconsistent. The effect on voter support (1A) is weakly negative rather than positive, and is not statistically signiﬁcant. And the effect on 550 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA

Table 1. Predictors of candidate vote shares in the April 2000 elections (ordinary least squares) Model 1A Model 2A Model 3A Model 4A Constant 25.317*** 24.807*** 25.590*** 25.590*** (3.559) (3.579) (3.516) (3.504) BLACK 6.378*** 2.130 4.249** 5.270*** (1.405) (2.376) (1.729) (1.547) OPBLACK 0.052 1.797 (1.185) (1.440) SHR1996 0.041*** 0.041*** 0.041*** 0.041*** (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) REDIST 0.727 (1.126) INCUMB 3.512*** 3.509*** 3.808*** 3.606*** (1.211) (1.204) (1.185) (1.179) SWITCH 5.306*** 4.484*** 4.681*** 4.848*** (1.660) (1.691) (1.685) (1.675) ESTAB 2.989** 2.764** 2.694** 2.808** (1.179) (1.187) (1.182) (1.183) AGE 0.011 0.010 0.010 0.011 (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) AGE2 0.100 0.079 0.079 0.088 (0.062) (0.062) (0.062) (0.062) LNWEALTH 0.749** 0.757** 0.744** 0.755** (0.372) (0.372) (0.370) (0.370) LOCAL 0.915 0.688 (0.954) (0.954) NOMIL 1.120 (1.104) MDP 3.529*** 3.172** 3.482*** 3.475*** (1.271) (1.325) (1.265) (1.267) ULD 13.111*** 12.375*** 13.273*** 13.474*** (1.572) (1.749) (1.563) (1.553) INDEP 8.614*** 7.210*** 7.269*** –7.215*** (1.614) (1.821) (1.805) (1.792) EXPEND 0.213*** 0.215*** 0.213*** 0.212*** (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) OPEXPEND 0.184*** 0.189*** 0.193*** 0.188*** (0.026) (0.026) (0.025) (0.025) ZBLACK 1.189 (2.954) OPZBLACK 3.954 2.668 (2.455) (2.249) BLACK* 3.563 4.003 SEOUL (3.153) (3.049) OPBLACK* 3.450 2.216

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Table 1. Continued SEOUL (2.499) (2.260) BLACK*MDP 2.740 (3.563) BLACK*ULD 4.089 (3.799) BLACK* 7.764** 6.030* 5.384* INDEP (3.562) (3.196) (3.118) N 510 509 509 509 F 46.544 36.997 47.788 57.534 R2 0.618 0.626 0.625 0.620

*p <.10, **p < .05, ***p < .01

Table 2. Predictors of candidate victory in the April 2000 elections (probit) Model 1B Model 2B Model 3C Model 4D Constant 1.426*** 1.517*** 1.571*** 1.494*** (0.510) (0.520) (0.482) (0.474) BLACK 0.455** 0.384 0.091 (0.210) (0.373) (0.282) OPBLACK 0.245 0.076 (0.167) (0.208) SHR1996 0.003*** 0.003*** 0.003*** 0.003*** (0.000) (0.001) (0.000) (0.000) REDIST 0.035 (0.161) INCUMB 0.591*** 0.584*** 0.524*** 0.521*** (0.168) (0.169) (0.164) (0.164) SWITCH 0.710*** 0.687*** 0.671*** 0.744*** (0.246) (0.255) (0.252) (0.248) ESTAB 0.323** 0.352** 0.345** 0.355** (0.163) (0.166) (0.165) (0.164) AGE 0.001 0.001 (0.003) (0.003) AGE2 0.019** 0.018* 0.019** 0.020** (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) (0.009) LNWEALTH 0.138** 0.136** 0.138** 0.132** (0.055) (0.056) (0.055) (0.055) LOCAL 0.341*** 0.346*** 0.365*** 0.361*** (0.132) (0.135) (0.133) (0.132) NOMIL 0.031 (0.156) MDP 0.100 0.010 (0.171) (0.180) ULD 0.960*** 0.852*** 0.983*** 0.961*** (0.237) (0.260) (0.230) (0.228)

552 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA

Table 2. Continued INDEP 0.751*** 0.644*** 0.670*** 0.840*** (0.245) (0.278) (0.254) (0.226) EXPEND 0.009** 0.009** 0.009** 0.009** (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) OPEXPEND 0.008** 0.009** 0.007** 0.007** (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) (0.004) ZBLACK 0.184 (0.482) OPZBLACK 0.284 (0.348) BLACK* 1.697** 1.375** 1.325** SEOUL (0.697) (0.622) (0.607) OPBLACK* 0.408 SEOUL (0.337) BLACK*MDP 1.018* 0.822* 0.730* (0.539) (0.483) (0.434) BLACK*ULD 0.788 (0.635) BLACK* 1.006 0.756 INDEP (0.632) (0.584) N 508 509 509 509 Log 249.751 242.626 245.909 246.832 Likelihood

*p < .10, **p < .05, *** p < .01 probability of winning (1B), while positive as expected, is not statistically significant. As discussed above, these weaker results for the effect of an opponent being blackballed are probably due to voters’ switching to third candidates. In other words, being blackballed hurts one’s own support much more certainly than it benefits a particular one of one’s opponents. In both models, other variables are generally significant in the expected manner. Among the characteristics of districts, vote share of the candidate’s party in 1996 (SHR1996) has a strongly positive, statistically significant effect.6 However, redistricting (REDIST) is not significant. Among the characteristics of candidates, those that are statistically significant with the expected effect are incumbency (INCUMB), disloyalty to one’s party (SWITCH), great career accomplishments (ESTAB), and natural logarithm of wealth (LNWEALTH). Age (AGE) and its square (AGE2) are close to being statistically significant at the 10 percent level in the model of vote share, although in the model of winning the square of age is statistically significant and age definitely isn’t. Candidates are strengthened by being incumbents, by having significant career accomplishments and by having considerable personal wealth. Candidates are weakened, however, by breaking with their parties and by advanced age. A couple of other candidate characteristics are 553 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) not significant, or at least not consistently so. Graduating from a local high school (LOCAL) apparently helps candidates to win, but does not have a statistically significant effect on one’s vote share generally. Avoiding military service (NOMIL) does not have a significant effect in either model. Dummy variables for candidates’ party affiliations are strongly negative and significant for the United Liberal Democrats (ULD) and for independents (INDEP). The Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) variable is more weakly negative but significant in the vote share model, but has little effect and loses significance in the model of winning. These results are consistent with the poor showing of ULD and independent candidates on the national level, and with the fact that the GNP made greater gains at their expense than the MDP. Given that the ULD clashed so frontally with CA, completely rejecting its legitimacy and calling for it to be dissolved, there is a possibility that CA is responsible for much of the general anti-ULD vote. Other factors are also involved. As the smallest major party, the ULD would be most likely to suffer from any institutional tendency of the predominantly SMD-based system to create two dominant parties. The ULD also defected from the coalition with the MDP in the run-up to the elections. However, the sudden collapse of what had been considered strong regional loyalties points to a strong effect of the conflict with CA – especially given the latter’s general impact. Last, both candidates’ expenditures and those of their highest- spending opponent have significant effects in the expected directions. Models 2A and 2B drop the consistently insignificant variables, redistricting and military service, and add a set of interaction terms that seek to pinpoint more narrowly the effects of blackballing. Not surprisingly, the addition of seven new special variants of the blackball variable significantly reduces the impact and statistical significance of simple blackballing (BLACK) in both models. All the new blackball variables have the expected signs, but most are not statistically significant. This is not surprising, given that strong covariation is likely between simple blackballing and some linear combination of the various special blackball variables. The blackball variant that shows consistent statistical significance across both models is blackballing of independents (BLACK*INDEP). Black- balling of independents is significant at the 5 percent level in the vote share model and at close to the 10 percent level in the model of winning. Turning to the other party interaction terms, blackballing of MDP candidates (BLACK*MDP) is significant at the 10 percent level in the model of winning, but not in the vote share model. Blackballing of ULD candidates (BLACK*ULD) is not significant in either model. These results may seem counterintuitive. Among the parties, the MDP has the most reformist image, whereas some elements of the GNP have the closest ties to the old regime. So why might blackballing tend to hurt MDP candidates more strongly than GNP candidates? One possibility is that swing voters may already discount for the possibility of past corruption in considering GNP candidates, but are more put off when supposedly ‘cleaner’ MDP 554 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA candidates are tainted by such allegations. Why are the effects of blackballing on ULD candidates not stronger and more significant? Given that ULD leader Kim Jong-pil clashed so strongly with CA, it is possible that this hurt all ULD candidates, as reflected in the estimated impact of the non-interacted party variable. Blackballing of candidates and of their opponents in the Seoul region (BLACK*SEOUL and OPBLACK*SEOUL) falls somewhat short of significance at the 10 percent level in the vote share model, as does blackballing of opponents in the Seoul region in the model of winning. But blackballing of candidates in the Seoul region is more strongly significant in the model of winning. Thus, blackballing appears to have been especially effective in the Seoul region, with its weaker party loyalties and historically more competitive races. Finally, the zealous blackballing variables (ZBLACK and OPZBLACK) are not significant – although OPZBLACK is close to being significant at the 10 percent level in the vote share model. Thus, blackballed candidates targeted for more intense hostile demonstrations and activism, and exposed to predictably greater media scrutiny, did not suffer dispropor- tionately. As discussed, this provides some evidence that CA is not being credited with an impact that is more exclusively due to negative media coverage that would have occurred in any case. This conclusion is also sup- ported by inclusion of a number of variables – particularly candidate characteristic variables – that would be expected to attract negative media coverage. Models 3A and 3B drop the variables from Models 2A and 2B that are not close to being significant. However, the simple blackball variable (BLACK) is left in to see if removing all the weak blackball variants restores its significance. The variables dropped from the vote share model (2A) are LOCAL, ZBLACK, BLACK*MDP, and BLACK*ULD. The variables dropped from the model of winning (2B) are MDP, OPBLACK, ZBLACK, OPZBLACK, OPBLACK*SEOUL and BLACK*ULD. Trimming these weaker variables restores the statistical significance of simple blackballing (BLACK) in the vote share model, but weakens it even further in the model of winning. None of the other variables’ estimates or significance levels is strongly affected. Models 4A and 4B continue the process by weeding out the remaining variables not significant at the 10 percent level – with the exception of the two nearly significant age variables in the vote share model. Models 2–4 show that different combinations of the blackball variables are most significant in the two types of model. In the vote share models, simple blackballing, along with blackballing specifically targeting independent candidates, is the most robust variable. In the models of winning, by contrast, being blackballed particularly hurt MDP candidates and candidates running in the Seoul region. All the other results of Models 1 and 2 remain largely unchanged in Models 3 and 4. The effects of blackballing can now be summarized. In the final vote share model, simple blackballing is highly significant and estimated to cost candidates 5.27 percent of votes. Independent blackballed candidates are 555 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) estimated to have lost an additional 5.38 percent of votes. In the model of winning, blackballing was most likely to influence Seoul area voters, and especially likely to hurt MDP candidates. It makes sense that Seoul voters, with their traditionally weaker party loyalties and closer races, would be more likely to switch away from blackballed candidates in large enough numbers to significantly affect the probability of winning. It also appears that candidates from the party with the most reformist reputation were most vulnerable to blackballing-related defections likely to affect the probability of winning. One of the MDP’s primary attractions is its reformist image – especially in the Seoul region, as opposed to its own regional Cholla stronghold or the GNP’s Kyongsang stronghold. Where winning or losing the race was at stake, erstwhile supporters were more likely to punish alleged hyp- ocrites in the MDP ranks.

Concluding Discussion

In conclusion, it is worth summarizing the main findings and focusing on some implications for understanding the impact of party affiliation. We then briefly review CA’s activities in the context of South Korea’s 2000 elections in order to formulate some tentative conclusions about whether CA’s apparent success can be replicated in the future – in South Korea or elsewhere. Literature on the effects of candidate endorsements might lead one to expect that CA-like organizations would not have a significant influence on voters. Thus, it has been found that people tend to be well informed in advance about issues likely to affect voting, and that media intermediation weakens remaining effects of endorsements (Gimpel, 1998; Krebs, 1998). This makes the findings above all the more surprising. As expected, characteristics of electoral districts, candidates and parties, along with levels of campaign spending, all appear to be significant determinants of voter choice. In particular, the statistically significant or near-significant influences were the character of electoral districts, incumbency, change of party, career accomplishments, age, wealth, party (or non-party) affiliation, and campaign expenditures. Even after controlling for these factors, however, blackballing appears to have had significant impacts on both candidate vote shares and on candidates’ chances of winning. The magnitude of the baseline estimated impact on vote shares of all blackballed candidates – 5.3 percent – seems remarkably large. As discussed, there is reason to suspect that at least some of this estimated effect is due to negative mass media coverage that was only partially due to CA’s activities. However, we made efforts to maximize the extent to which CA’s influence was isolated from that of the mass media. This involved controlling for candidate and other characteristics that might be expected to produce negative mass media coverage. It also involved separately testing the impact of zealous blackballing, in which especially controversial candidates 556 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA appear to have been subjected to above-average levels of negative media attention. The high estimated negative effect of ordinary blackballing controls for statistically significant and near-significant factors expected to prompt negative media coverage, and zealous blackballing was not found to have a statistically significant effect after controlling for ordinary blackballing. To provide further analysis of these results, future work might attempt to trace how blackballing quantitatively increased or qualitatively altered negative media coverage in particular district races. It is also worth highlighting how blackballing appears to have interacted with characteristics of parties. Both theoretically and empirically, investi- gators have viewed party identification as a means of simplifying and filter- ing information on political candidates (Grossman and Helpman, 1999; Schaffner et al., 2001). Blackballing apparently had a particularly strong negative impact on independent candidates’ vote shares, and on the chances of winning in the Seoul area and for MDP candidates. The stronger impact on independents would appear to indicate that party affiliation had the potential to provide a shield against blackballing. Independents may have been more uniformly hurt because they lacked a party ‘brand name’ that could act as an independent signal of quality. Moreover, it seems that some party brand names provide more effective protection than others. The results here were counterintuitive to many. As discussed, the mass media and the parties themselves apparently expected blackballing to damage the GNP and the ULD more than the MDP. This is because the GNP and the ULD are more closely associated with the old regime, and because the MDP is most strongly associated with the issue of clean governance.7 However, GNP candidates were apparently hurt least. This was probably because GNP or potential GNP voters already expect some unsavory characteristics in their candidates, but believe that these drawbacks are outweighed by the GNP’s (and the old regime’s) ability to ‘deliver the goods’. On the other hand, blackballed MDP candidates were more likely to lose races. This was probably due to the contradiction between the party’s ‘clean’ image and the apparent unfitness of some of its candidates.8 Thus, party reputations seem to have had the potential to shield candidates against blackballing, particularly where they led voters to discount the importance of clean governance relative to other, more favorable party characteristics. What are the chances that CA’s apparent success will serve as a model for similarly successful efforts in the future? First, there is some preliminary evidence that there was strong public demand for CA-like information services, that CA was both highly visible and viewed as relatively non- partisan and trustworthy, and that party practices and mass media activity created an opening for CA to have an independently significant impact. There was strong public demand for such CA-like information in South Korea9 because the democratic transition is relatively recent, and the traditional system was associated with close business–government ties and a privileged position of a small number of huge business conglomerates 557 PARTY POLITICS 8(5)

(chaebol). The chaebol received protected home markets and massive government-backed bank credits to finance their rapid expansion. In return, ruling elites received political backing, ruling parties received generous donations to finance their campaigns, and many associated with the ruling elites and parties were often cut in on lucrative business opportunities. The authoritarian regime and the country’s tremendous record of economic growth long insulated these practices from scrutiny. But democratization put the practices under the spotlight and made them politically vulnerable, and the recent financial crisis led many more citizens to believe that the practices have hurt rather than helped the South Korean economy. CA, in addition to receiving extensive media coverage, was apparently viewed as relatively non-partisan and trustworthy. CA made a point of blackballing candidates of all party and non-party affiliations. This does not appear to have been a feigned or partisan evenhandedness, in which one party’s ideological core is targeted along with moderates of other parties. Thus, CA frequently criticized MDP candidate nomination procedures and policies of the MDP-dominated government. What about CA’s reliability? Here it should be noted that CA is not a narrowly based organization with a single hierarchy of leaders, but rather a grassroots phenomenon of South Korean civil society. It is an umbrella organization formed from 463 mostly local civic groups. The credibility of such a broad-based movement is not easily undermined by the disconnected failings of a small number of indi- viduals.10 CA was a temporary manifestation of its subgroups’ strategy for the 2000 elections, and was duly disbanded afterwards. However, the broad organized base makes the movement a hydra-headed phenomenon. Thus, new umbrella organizations have since emerged to monitor elected representatives and push for a series of electoral reform measures. The broad organized base also made it difficult for other public interest organizations to attract comparable attention (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 7 April 2000; Korea Herald, 22 April 2000; Korea Times, 16 April 2000). Why did there exist an opening in which CA could have a significant influence? First, there were no other organizations with the scope, agenda and non-partisan character of CA. Second, a competitive mass media facilitated CA’s sophisticated efforts to get its message out. Last, the political parties had evidently not yet found it to be in their interests adequately to police themselves, thus leaving an opening for outsiders to attack them. The 2000 elections showed that there could be significant electoral costs of nominating ‘unfit’ candidates. Assuming that party leaderships are interested in competing successfully for power, it seems that in the past there have also been significant electoral benefits of nominating such candidates. These benefits primarily took the form of campaign contributions and quid pro quo business opportunities. Observers have also viewed South Korean parties as creatures of their strong leaders – Kim Dae-jung, Kim Jong-pil, and in the recent past, Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam (Oh, 1999; Steinberg, 1998). Cronyist nominating procedures presumably reinforced the 558 HOROWITZ AND KIM: BLACKBALLING IN KOREA top-down control of these leaders. However, CA’s activities appear to have increased the costs of the old system. In the aftermath of the 2000 elections, therefore, the main parties have made considerable efforts to make their candidate nomination processes more competitive and transparent. Can CA’s success be easily replicated? Prediction is of course a hazardous enterprise. But, tentatively, we do not believe that this is likely. We do not believe that the primary obstacles lie either with public demand or with the characteristics of organizations. Particularly in transitional political periods in which elements of the old regime have been widely discredited, the public is likely to be looking for CA-like information. Nor is it prohibitively difficult to copy the organization and methods of CA. Rather, it is the political opening that seems likely to be most rare and fleeting. To the extent the dominant party or parties are not yet adequately policing themselves, activists like those who built CA are typically likely to construct an alternative party with a clean governance appeal. Once the ruling party or parties seriously begin to reform themselves, such alternative parties lose much of their initial (often overwhelming) appeal. In other words, groups with CA- like character and appeal do not emerge more often in transitional political conditions because they usually enter the political fray more directly. By dis- ciplining the old ruling party or parties, this direct competition in turn closes the window of opportunity in which broad-based, non-partisan organizations like CA are more likely to have dramatic impacts on voting behavior.

Notes

1 In 1987 South Korea adopted a full-fledged democratic system. In this system, the presidential election and congressional elections are irregularly staggered. The presidency has been elected by a direct popular vote every five years, starting in December 1987. The last presidential election was held in December 1997, when current President Kim Dae-jung was elected. On the other hand, congressional elections have been held every four years, starting in April 1988. Since the 2000 congressional elections were held about in the middle of the current presidential term, they were also regarded as a confidence vote for the President. 2 CA announced the blacklist of potential nominees before the parties announced the endorsed candidates. Twelve of the 21 MDP politicians blackballed eventu- ally received their party’s nomination, while 12 of 30 blackballed GNP politicians were nominated. All of the blackballed ULD politicians secured the party’s nomination (Donga Ilbo, 19 February 2000). Since all parties strictly controlled nominations of congressional candidates, it is difficult to ascertain the effect of blackballing on nomination outcomes. Hence, we focus on its effect on election outcomes. 3 CA’s ‘negative campaigning’ methods have since been ruled to be in violation of South Korean election law. However, the decision is being appealed. In the meantime, public interest umbrella organizations continue to pool their networks and resources for further efforts (Digital Chosun Ilbo, 28 January 2001; Korea Herald, 13 April 2001). 559 PARTY POLITICS 8(5)

4 There were 227 single-member district seats in the 2000 election. The number of district seats was reduced by 26 in response to public criticism that there were too many congressmen. Besides the single-member districts, 46 seats are distrib- uted by proportional representation. We test the impact of blackballing on all ‘major’ single-member district candidates, i.e. on all candidates who received over 10 percent of the vote. 5 In South Korea, redistricting is controlled by seven-member committees, composed of four non-partisan notables and one representative of each of the three major parties. Committee decisions are bound by rules controlling district size and seeking to respect the boundaries of existing provincial, county, city and district units. Parliament then votes on the committee proposals. Hence the effects of redistricting would not be expected to vary systematically with party affiliation. 6 Theoretically, one might expect that using 1996 vote share to capture district characteristics might cause heteroscedastic errors. This is because, for incumbents, the 1996 vote share will also reflect characteristics of candidates. We checked for this with White Tests in which various combinations of incumbency, the six candidate characteristic variables (ESTAB, AGE, AGE2, LNWEALTH, LOCAL, NOMIL), and their interactions were used as the independent variables. These White Tests did not reject the null hypothesis of homoscedastic errors. 7 In fact, MDP officials publicly predicted that CA’s campaign would help them in closer Seoul area races (Korea Herald, 5 April 2000). 8 It is also possible that the more uniform collapse of ULD support, particularly in its traditional Chungchong heartland, is related to its highly public war with CA. The GNP may be most complicit in many of the political abuses of the past and present, but at least it expressed support for the norms championed by CA, and pledged to work to continue its efforts to address corruption and other problems. In contrast, the apparent intolerance of ULD leader Kim Jong-pil may have crossed the line for many voters. As discussed, this effect, if it indeed occurred, probably interacted with other factors – such as the ULD’s oppor- tunistic pre-election break with the MDP and institutional tendencies towards development of a two-party system. 9 As mentioned, 85 percent of respondents expressed pre-election approval for CA’s campaign. 10 A couple of CA-related scandals did emerge following the elections. One of CA’s most visible leaders, Chang Won, was indicted and arrested for sexually assault- ing an under-age volunteer. Perhaps more seriously for CA itself, one local activist was arrested for taking a bribe from a candidate in exchange for favorable treatment.

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SHALE HOROWITZ is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is co-editor (with Uk Heo) of The Political Economy of International Financial Crisis: Interest Groups, Ideologies, and Institutions (Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 2001) and has authored a number of articles on post-communist and East Asian politics, economic policy and security affairs. He is also a co-editor of Analysis of Current Events, a quarterly publication of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. His book War after Communism: Ethnic Conﬂict and Stillborn Reform in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, is forth- coming from Praeger. 561 PARTY POLITICS 8(5)

ADDRESS: Shale Horowitz, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA. [email: [email protected]]

SUNWOONG KIM is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is a specialist in urban economics, but also has strong research interests in political economy and political development, particularly in East Asian countries. He has published many articles in well-known professional journals, including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Housing Research and Social Science Quarterly. ADDRESS: Sunwoong Kim, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA. [email: [email protected]]

Paper submitted 2 May 2001; accepted for publication 3 October 2001.

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