(Lag)acy of Developmental States: Demystifying the Electoral Underperformance of Developmentalist Parties in Singapore and South Korea
MURNI MARISA BTE MAHAT
MURNI MARISA BTE MAHAT
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Abstract
This thesis presents a comparative analysis of the electoral underperformance of both the People’s Action Party in Singapore and the Saenuri Party in South Korea, both of which are deeply entrenched developmentalist parties within their countries, during the 2011 General Elections and the 2016 Legislative elections respectively. Developmentalist parties in these two countries have consistently won elections and possess institutional means that favour their rule. This then gives rise to the main motivating question of this thesis: Why have these developmentalist parties, who are in more advantageous electoral positions, unexpectedly experienced sharp declines in voter support? I hypothesize that these parties are lagging behind their electorate in terms of democratization; these parties continue to uphold non-democratic processes while the voter's ideological preferences have shifted further towards becoming more progressive across the same period, thus resulting in protest voting on the part of the electorate.
By establishing a causal link between the legacy of the developmental states and electoral underperformance of these parties, this paper seeks to supplement the dearth of literature that expounds on the long-term fates of these developmentalist parties. Survey results and data collated from the East Asian Barometer will be analyzed to establish a shift in the voter’s ideological preferences. Essentially, this paper will explore this virgin territory, while being grounded on Chalmers Johnson’s conception of a ‘developmental state’, in hopes of contributing to present studies on developmental states.
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2018-04-02
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Thesis