Economics and elections in South Korea and Taiwan

This study undertakes a two-fold task. First, I probe the relationship between economic conditions and voter turnout at the national level elections in South Korea and Taiwan after the democratic transition in the mid-1980s. Second, I investigate the association between economic conditions and electoral support in the two countries' national elections in the 1990s. This study is based on the assumption that voters in these countries are not likely to be mobilized any longer as they have been under authoritarian regimes.;Nonetheless, long lasting regional conflicts between Cholla province and Kyungsang province still have a significant impact on the decisions of who to vote for in South Korea. In Taiwan, traditional ethnic conflicts between the Taiwanese and the Mainlanders have significantly affected voters' choices. Regional and ethnic conflicts have been frequently utilized and manipulated by political leaders in maximizing their vote returns in the two nations. In this research project, I compare the effects of economic conditions on voting behavior with those of old regional (or ethnic) cleavages in each country. Also, I investigate the impacts of the socioeconomic factors, the social psychological factors, the political mobilization factors, and the party identification factors on voting behavior.;I utilize the survey data sets from the Institute for Korean Election Studies (IKES) and the National Chengchi University (NCU). The IKES provides survey data for the 1992 and 1996 National Assembly elections and the 1992 and 1997 Presidential elections. The NCU conducted surveys for the 1992 and 1995 Legislative Yuan elections and the 1996 Presidential election. South Korea's National Assembly is equivalent to Taiwan's Legislative Yuan. In analyzing the survey data, I employ probit for the two-way choices, for instance, voters' choice between vote and abstention or between two parties (or candidates). For the three-way choices, I employ multinomial logit.;The main findings of the study are as follows: First, economic conditions appear to have had nothing to do with voter turnout in South Korea and Taiwan. Second, regional and ethnic cleavages were not significant for voter participation in South Korea and Taiwan, respectively. Third, genuine economic voting was evident in the most recent elections (the 1997 South Korean race and the 1996 Taiwanese election). Fourth, regionalism was consistently significant throughout the South Korean elections under study, while ethnic cleavages did not have a consistent impact on vote returns in Taiwan.