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Public Interest 'Blackballing' in South Korea's Elections

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Public Interest 'Blackballing' in South Korea's Elections PARTY POLITICS VOL 8. No.5 pp. 541–562 Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi 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 Ⅲ elections Ⅲ endorsements Ⅲ public interest groups Ⅲ South Korea Introduction South Korea’s April 2000 legislative elections achieved unusual inter- national 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 indepen- dents 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 gener- ally 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 congres- sional 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 con- ditions of the April 2000 elections in South Korea suggest a variety of other factors likely to have influenced election outcomes. These include charac- teristics of districts, characteristics of candidates, characteristics of parties and levels of campaign spending. To the extent CA blackballing is esti- mated 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 loyal- ties, 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 black- balled 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. 543 PARTY POLITICS 8(5) 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 candi- date fitness where the organization is viewed as non-partisan and trust- worthy. 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
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