| Summary/Abstract |
Establishing an effective legal framework for regulating elections is widely considered a priority for new democracies. Electoral regulation, though, can be profoundly political. I examine the politics of electoral regulation in South Korea. The country’s restrictive campaign laws stand in sharp contrast to the liberal values that many espouse. Given the vibrancy of South Korea’s civil society and the entrance of many former activists into party politics, it is surprising that laws continue to limit political discussion and participation during election campaigns. I shed light on this puzzle by examining the ways an established party elite appropriated predemocratic institutions of electoral governance. Restrictive election regulations have their origins decades before South Korea’s democratic transition began in 1987. I offer evidence from the evolution of campaign laws in order to demonstrate continuity in important portions of the restrictions and to suggest reasons why a group of influential actors have converged around the perpetuation of these restrictions. This study has implications for the subject of electoral engineering and for thinking about South Korea’s democratization
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