Global Political Science versus Critical Political Science

Given that critical reflection on politics is a core mission of political science, we might expect the geographic expansion of the discipline to bring a wave of critical consciousness of public affairs across the world. A tension has emerged, though, between a political science that is global and one that is critical. Sources of that tension lie in a universalizing tendency within the discipline, which squeezes out local conversations, and in the standardization of academic criteria that encourages faculty to engage external, "global" discussions rather than local ones. Political science knowledge, however critical in spirit, can end up disconnected from local engagement. The particular sort of global political science that has been created gives universities, departments, and faculty members reason to spread political science in a way that limits it as a mode of engaged inquiry. We should think carefully about how we can retain political science's critical edge as the profession globalizes.N

Cynical and Celebratory Sensibilities in South Korea's 2022 Presidential Election

Why was South Korea's 2022 presidential election so close, when only a few years prior the party of the winning candidate had been out of contention? The answer can be found by situating the election against a battle between democratic and anti-democratic forces. Anti-democratic forces cynically bid for power by denigrating politics. An examination of how this cynical sensibility developed, from 2016 to 2022, but on the back of a deeper history, points both to what was at stake in this election and to the methods deployed by representatives of the anti-democratic forces that helped create parity in the vote.N

Authoritarian Legality after Authoritarianism : Legal Governance of Parties and Elections before and after Democratic Transition in South Korea

The Republic of Korea (ROK) was designed as a Cold War democracy. It started as an electoral regime with formal commitments to democratic values, but institutions designed to keep the state secure also imposed limits on domestic political struggle. From the ROK’s founding in 1948 to the political liberalization of 1987, the political system shifted between orders that might be labeled more democratic or more autocratic. A legal framework for governing party and electoral politics emerged in the country’s first fifteen years. This framework includes rights and restrictions related to formation of parties, conditions for disbanding parties, stipulations concerning party organization and activities, laws on monitoring elections, and detailed rules on election campaigns. Elections thus came with an elaborate legal structure, even as rulers – to varying degrees – deployed extra-constitutional and extralegal measures for dealing with opponents. Why were such laws developed and did they matter? What was their fate after the democratic transition? These questions point to broader themes related to authoritarian legality. Can an authoritarian regime make a commitment to rules governing electoral and party politics? Why would it make such a commitment? And why would it revoke one? What happens to that legal framework after a democratic transition?In this chapter I examine the various tools that have been used to govern the political sphere from the country’s establishment to the present. I trace the construction of the legal framework and weigh the significance of this framework versus other tools for governing parties and elections in different time periods. My main theme is a striking continuity in the legal framework guiding party and electoral politics. In particular, I point to the way legal innovations that reached their final form in 1963 under Park Chung Hee became the basis for governance of post-1987 democracy. Given the illiberal purpose of the framework, this continuity stands in sharp contrast to the liberalism that pervades many sectors of contemporary South Korean society. Through the South Korean example, this chapter points to ways that structures associated with authoritarian legality may persist beyond the political conditions in which they were created