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A different choice, a different outcome: budgetary effects of a conservative legislator in liberal local regions of South Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2021

Hoyong Jung Open the ORCID record for Hoyong Jung [Opens in a new window]
Hoyong Jung*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: ghdydwjd1@gmail.com
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Abstract

In Korean society, regionalism has deep historical roots and has had a great influence on elections. A historic event occurred in 2014 when a conservative party candidate, Lee Jung-hyun, was elected as a member of the National Assembly in Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do, where liberal parties have been in the midst of powerful political influence. This was possible because voters responded to the candidate's appeal to vote based on benefits to the local economy, that is, securing greater funding from the central government. Exploiting the synthetic control method, this article identifies how this different choice has affected the budget of the local district. The results show that the community budget has increased dramatically, and a battery of robustness checks also supports these basic results. On the basis of the empirical evidence, the study suggests the possibility of overcoming a long-standing parochial regionalism in Korean politics through economic voting and its practical benefits.

Keywords

Economic votinglocal government budgetregionalismSouth Koreasynthetic control method
Type
Research Note
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 72 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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