• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.67-88
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• 2009

This study aims at examining what factors have an effect on congressional voting behaviors. In particular, the study closely investigates the Whole Reform Bill on the Law of Local Educational Self-Governing because the bill attracts a lot of attentions. Above all, the bill contains direct election of superintendents of educational affairs and members of a board of education. Likewise, the education committee is converted into a standing committee of the local assembly due to the passage of the bill. The reason the study mainly focuses on the bill is because in general, bills on the floor are approved with significant high in favor; however, the bill was passed with opposition. The study examines factors having an influence on legislators' voting decision. Statistical results show that the ruling party played a significant role in passing the bill. Also, the results exhibit that legislators with high careers and proportional members were in favor of the bill compared with other legislators. Although the study examined only particular bill passed by the National Assembly, it gave an opportunity to look at voting behaviors of legislators. Hopefully, the study contributes to the understanding of congressional voting behaviors.

• American Studies
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.35-65
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• 2021

U.S. lawmakers tend to organize sub-party groups focusing on regions, ideologies, policies, and foreign affairs. Examples include the conservative Freedom Caucus loyal to Trump and the Congressional Black Caucus promoting the interests of African Americans. Then how do these legislative groups affect the making of U.S. foreign policy? Paying special attention to the Korea caucus in U.S. Congress, we have analyzed the sources and processes of congressional caucus and foreign policy and have learned that structures and activities of the caucuses differ from one another. The Korea caucus seems to be a bipartisan group that focuses on issues such as trade, travel, and troubles provoked by Pyongyang. However, the Korea caucus is not really a solid voting bloc for policy alternatives; it is instead more of a constituency-oriented legislative group that prioritizes local interests. This research underscores the need for systematic and comprehensive study of U.S. legislative politics and foreign policy.

• American Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.57-97
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• 2019

This study seeks to reveal why the U.S. House Democrats showed different levels of support in the voting of the U.S.-Morocco FTA, U.S.-Bahrain FTA, and U.S.-Oman FTA. Existing studies focusing on the constituency or members' ideology do not properly account for the variance of these three FTA voting results. All of these FTAs, however, were promoted as a part of the president's foreign policies. If so, FTA support in Congress could depend on representatives' evaluation of the presidential foreign policy. Based on this, the study analyzes how representatives' evaluation of President Bush's foreign policy changed according to the period of the three FTA votes. The vote on the FTAs has been influenced by their evaluation of the presidential foreign and national security policies.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.381-395
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• 2007

After the democratization process since 1988, the national scale voting behavior in congressional elections has changed from a rural-government party and urban-opposite party connection to a political regionalism oriented pattern. In this context, the case study with provincial border regions aims to investigate possible party identification change of the region, and to find a relationship between polling score ratio and socio-political characteristics of the candidates. As a result, Yeongdong shows a strong negation to the presumed Chungcheong local party and shows a continuous party identification with the Kyungsang local party. Muju reveals a more or less weakened identification with the Jeolla local party, on the contrary, Kimcheon shows a unchanged strong identification with the Kyungsang local party. The regional neighborhood effect was verified quite partly between the subdivision districts of the border regions. With a application of linear fitting method, it is certified that voters have attached great importance to the belonging party, native place, as well as political career of the candidates as a voting criterion.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.9
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• pp.110-142
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• 2004

This paper treated what are congressional records which are one of core fields of national records and what kind of significant records they have. The characteristics of "substantive records" of the institution among public records are as follows: firstly, their contents depend on the inherent function of the institution; secondly, their types differ by the character of basic unit(member); thirdly, their sources are determined by the character of institution. Starting from the above points of view, the contents, characteristics, main sources, and types by sources of congressional records were presented. They are summarized as follows. In Chapter 2, the substantial records, which document the intrinsic function of congress on the basis of analyses of inherent function and structural uniqueness of congress have natures of which the contents are "legislative records", "oversight records", and "political activity records" starting from the inherency of congress as the people's representation. The typical natures of congress records are related with the specialty that the basic unit of congress structure is an individual congressman as an indepent national institution and congress is a council of these congressmen. Firstly, the records of congressmen as basic member of congress are the national records with the type of personal records. Secondly, "council records" produced by the council (commettee and main conference), which have evidencial and informative value for decision making through the process of investigating, discussing and voting bill and policy (item) of the basis for national management, are very special kind of records, such as item records, decision records, journal records, and congress assistant records. Because congressmen and councils composing congress have an equal inter-relationship in the structure of congress, the main sources of congress records are an individual congressman and all the councils. In chapter 3, the contents and sorts of main records are discribed, centering around congressmen and councils as the main sources of congress records. In chapter 4, the management of records of congressmen is issued as an urgent subject for the management of congress records, instead of conclusions.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.67-101
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to examine the significant factors having an effect on voting behavior of legislators in the FTA ratification votes of the 18th and 19th National Assembly. The previous studies show that the ideology and party affiliation of lawmakers are the most important factors influencing voting decisions of legislators. The study investigates whether these factors plays a significant role in voting on the FTA ratification. Statistical results show three important findings. First of all, we expected that the influence of the party variable be the most important factor due to the strong discipline of the Korean party. However, the results show that the constituency-interest variable is the most influential factor in the all analyses. Likewise, the results show that the influence of ideology variables on voting behaviors is very strong even though its impact is different by cases and models. This indicates that in the analysis of the voting behaviors of legislators, it is necessary to examine the effect of ideological variables in depth and in various ways. In addition, the results reasonably suggest that the party variable be consistently important even though its statistical significance is not shown in some models. Because the study analyzes the voting on the free trade agreement(FTA) bill, the results may not be commonly applicable to other voting behavior of legislator. Likewise, there is a limit to discussing the general characteristics of lawmakers based on the analysis on the 5 FTA ratifications. Nevertheless, the finding of the study is very significant. This is because it comprehensively analyzed the factors having an influence on the voting behavior of the legislators on FTA ratifications submitted to the National Assembly steadily since the 16th National Assembly. In addition, the study is very meaningful because it analyzed the ideological variables of the legislators in various perspectives considering that it is not easy in measuring the ideology of the lawmakers.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.155-188
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• 2021

This study examines dynamics in election news making. It is important to understand when and how news media produce election news in order to grasp news making and voting behavior. The news media sometimes make election news by focusing on issues and policies. Often they frame elections as a game and focus on election strategies while covering elections. This article argues that as time goes by during the election period, the number of policy news tends to decrease while the frequency of strategic news is likely to increase. Also, TV's and newspapers show distinctive patterns of election news making. In order to examine the arguments, this study categorizes election news stories into policy and strategic news stories produced during the 2020 Korean congressional elections and constructs daily time-series data of them. The results of structural break and regression analyses partially support the arguments.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.147-165
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• 1992

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of elections on the Korean economy and their future ramifications. It measures the shocks to the Korean economy caused by elections by taking the average of sample forecast errors from four major elections held in the 1980s. The seven variables' Bayesian Vector Autoregression Model which includes the Monetary Base, Industrial Production, Consumption, Consumer Price, Exports, and Investment is based on the quarterly time series data starting from 1970 and is updated every quarter before forecasts are made for the next quarter. Because of this updating of coefficients, which reflects in part the rapid structural changes of the Korean economy, this study can capture the shock effect of elections, which is not possible when using election dummies with a fixed coefficient model. In past elections, especially the elections held in the 1980s, $M_2$ did not show any particular movement, but the currency and base money increased during the quarter of the election was held and the increment was partly recalled in the next quarter. The liquidity of interest rates as measured by corporate bond yields fell during the quarter the election and then rose in the following quarter, which is somewhat contrary to the general concern that interest rates will increase during election periods. Manufacturing employment fell in the quarter of the election because workers turned into campaigners. This decline in employment combined with voting holiday produce a sizeable decline in industrial production during the quarter in which elections are held, but production catches up in the next quarter and sometimes more than offsets the disruption caused during the election quarter. The major shocks to price occur in the previous quarter, reflecting the expectational effect and the relaxation of government price control before the election when we simulate the impulse responses of the VAR model, imposing the same shocks that was measured in the past elections for each election to be held in 1992 and assuming that the elections in 1992 will affect the economy in the same manner as in the 1980s elections, 1992 is expected to see a sizeable increase in monetary base due to election and prices increase pressure will be amplified substantially. On the other hand, the consumption increase due to election is expected to be relatively small and the production will not decrease. Despite increased liquidity, a large portion of liquidity in circulation being used as election funds will distort the flow of funds and aggravate the fund shortage causing investments in plant and equipment and construction activities to stagnate. These effects will be greatly amplified if elections for the head of local government are going to be held this year. If mayoral and gubernatorial elections are held after National Assembly elections, their effect on prices and investment will be approximately double what they normally will have been have only congressional and presidential elections been held. Even when mayoral and gubernatorial elections are held at the same time as congressional elections, the elections of local government heads are shown to add substantial effects to the economy for the year. The above results are based on the assumption that this year's elections will shock the economy in the same manner as in past elections. However, elections in consecutive quarters do not give the economy a chance to pause and recuperate from past elections. This year's elections may have greater effects on prices and production than shown in the model's simulations because campaigners' return to industry may be delayed. Therefore, we may not see a rapid recall of money after elections. In view of the surge in the monetary base and price escalation in the periods before and after elections, economic management in 1992 should place its first priority on controlling the monetary aggregate, in particular, stabilizing the growth of the monetary base.