Suchergebnisse

Armed Forces and Society recently published an article, 'Intra-Military Division and Democratization in South Korea' by Insoo Kim. In the article, Kim argues that economic development and civil society explanations for South Korea's democratization are not sufficient because conflict in the military undermined the ability of Chun's government to suppress the democracy movement, which made the transition possible. We refute Kim's argument because economic development clearly made significant contribution to South Korea's democratization by enhancing education attainment and facilitating industrialization and urbanization. Moreover, there is no clear evidence of schism in the military or among political elites, and the authoritarian leader Chun Doo-hwan agreed to change the presidential election system based on his political calculation. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society/Sage Publications Inc.]

Armed Forces and Society recently published an article, "Intra-Military Division and Democratization in South Korea" by Insoo Kim. In the article, Kim argues that economic development and civil society explanations for South Korea's democratization are not sufficient because conflict in the military undermined the ability of Chun's government to suppress the democracy movement, which made the transition possible. We refute Kim's argument because economic development clearly made significant contribution to South Korea's democratization by enhancing education attainment and facilitating industrialization and urbanization. Moreover, there is no clear evidence of schism in the military or among political elites, and the authoritarian leader Chun Doo-hwan agreed to change the presidential election system based on his political calculation.

Past studies on military expenditures in the United States have primarily focused on the extent to which guns versus butter trade-offs are prevalent without examining this relationship in the context of how other fiscal policy tools are used to pay for defense. Using annual data from 1947-2007, this study examines the relative importance of defense financing policy measures, such as guns versus butter trade-offs, tax increases, and deficit spending in paying for defense. The results show evidence of guns versus butter trade-off during the Reagan Era, but not during other periods. Both federal tax policy and deficit spending have played influential roles in funding defense spending during peacetime. This modeling strategy points to the importance of analyzing the effects of multiple fiscal policy tools when studying the forces that drive military spending in the United States since World War II. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

Past studies on military expenditures in the United States have primarily focused on the extent to which guns versus butter trade-offs are prevalent without examining this relationship in the context of how other fiscal policy tools are used to pay for defense. Using annual data from 1947–2007, this study examines the relative importance of defense financing policy measures, such as guns versus butter trade-offs, tax increases, and deficit spending in paying for defense. The results show evidence of guns versus butter trade-off during the Reagan Era, but not during other periods. Both federal tax policy and deficit spending have played influential roles in funding defense spending during peacetime. This modeling strategy points to the importance of analyzing the effects of multiple fiscal policy tools when studying the forces that drive military spending in the United States since World War II.

With the 'third wave of democratization', South Korea joined the democracy club in the late 1980s. Although electoral performance and the party system have changed since the transition to democracy, there has been little systematic examination of the changes. In this article, we conduct an empirical test after developing a theoretical argument about why democratization leads to change. Before democratization, the manipulation of electoral laws and the urban–rural cleavage dominated Korean elections. After democratization, the electoral rules stabilized and opposition parties were given a fair chance to win the election. However, the average life of political parties shortened because of regionalism and personalism. There is now reason to believe that personalism may be set to diminish, thus encouraging authentic structural cleavages to emerge and shape Korean party politics in the coming years.