A new political system in Armenia

Armenia held parliamentary elections on April 2, the first to be held after a series of substantial constitutional and electoral system changes largely implemented after a 2015 referendum. The changes, which were controversial owing to the disputed referendum, changed Armenia's system of government from a system of semi-presidentialism to a parliamentary system, and changed the electoral system from a mixed-member majoritarian system to an equally unique system of party-list proportional representation.

The electoral system

Armenia's experience of democracy before Soviet rule shortly after World War 1 was very much limited, and as a result it was in a similar place to much of post-Soviet Central Asia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990: left with the difficult business of building from scratch a system of democratic and constitutional government.

Many post-Soviet countries, along with various other democratising or reforming nations around that time, introduced mixed-member electoral systems. Armenia's 1995 election law provided for a 190-member legislature, with 150 members elected through a two-round system (though candidates only had to secure 25% of the votes to win in the first round). The remaining forty seats were elected through a closed-list proportional representation system, making a mixed-member majoritarian system with a remarkably low share of party-list seats.

For post-Soviet countries with new and weak political parties, independents were relatively successful in the district tier elections. In Russia's first democratic election (in 1993) independents won 48% of the district vote: similar results were, and still are, in the Ukraine.

In the district tier for Armenia at the 1995 election, independent candidates won 72 of the 150 seats, making them by far the largest party in this tier. The Republic Bloc, a party tied to incumbent President Ter-Petrosyan, won 68 district and 20 list seats, making them the largest party (an Organisation for Co-Operation and Security report stated that the President would have the support of two-thirds of the legislature, implying that many independents were actually allied to the President). No other political party won more than ten seats.

Independent candidacies, however, have waned over recent elections in the nation, as can be seen above. Part of this may be a result of the change in the share of seats allocated on the party list; the share increased at the 1999 and 2007 election. It can also be attributed to the relative dominance of the Republican Party, a party that has been the largest at every presidential and legislative election since 2003 (though they have been dogged by allegations of electoral fraud). This represents an increasing institutionalisation of the party system, as parties (a party, to be precise) becomes the key part of elections.

The new electoral system represents what will likely be a complete removal of independent candidacies from Armenian politics. The full document, passed last year, divides Armenia into thirteen electoral districts. Parties must nominate a list in each district, and a national list. When voters vote, they choose a party list, and may also cast a preference vote for a candidate on the district list.

Seats are initially allocated between using the Hare quota and largest remainders, with a threshold of 5% for parties and 7% for alliances of parties. However, after the Electoral Commission determines the seat allocation, if no party receives at least 53 seats (a majority of the 101-member Assembly; such a party would then receive a top-up to give them 54% of the total seats), and no 'stable majority' coalition (a group of parties which has been allocated at least 54% of the seats in this preliminary distribution agreeing on a Prime Minister) can be formed within three days, a second round is held three weeks later between the top two parties or coalitions. A further four seats are allocated to ethnic minorities, and there are quotas for women representation.

In the second round, new parties may join with the parties or coalitions in the top two, though seats won by parties outside the top two in the first round are apparently not altered by the second round results. The party that wins in the second round is allocated 54% of the total number of seats.

For allocation of seats to actual candidates within parties, for each party half of their seats are allocated to the candidates on the national list (which is closed). The remaining seats are allocated between the districts using the Hare quota again (based on the number of votes cast for the party in each district, so if the Republican Party were to get 20% of the vote in Yeravan District, 20% of the Republican Party's district seats would be allocated to candidates in the district). Seats are allocated to the highest polling candidates within districts. The system is similar to that passed in Italy in 2015 (see this article for details) but later ruled unconstitutional.

In this election, the Republican Party appears to have won a majority even without the special provisions. The party won 49% of the vote, equivalent to 54% of the vote amongst those parties that passed the threshold. The normal Hare distribution of the 101 seats would give them 55 seats (near-exact 54% of the Assembly).

The new Constitution

Up until a criticised 2015 referendum, the 'Yes' campaign in which was supported by the Republican Party, Armenia was a semi-presidential country. This means that it had a directly-elected fixed-term President as head of state, as well as a Prime Minister as head of government responsible to the majority of the National Assembly, who both share executive power.

The 2015 referendum, in which the proposal was approved by 66% of the vote, changed the system to one that appears to be parliamentary; where executive power is in the hands of a Prime Minister responsible to the legislature. The President is elected by the majority of the National Assembly, but it is explicitly stated that "The Government (the Prime Minister and Cabinet) shall be the highest body of the executive power".

Few discretionary powers are granted to the President, who is not even vested with the power to appoint the Prime Minister; instead, he is expected to appoint the candidate who has the support of the aforementioned guaranteed parliamentary majority. He cannot veto legislation, and the determination of policy is reserved to the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The question of whether this will increase the power of the Republican Party, and its leader (incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan) is a most interesting one. For Mr Sargysyan, at least, the change will allow him to remain in control of executive power beyond the two-term limit proscribed for the presidency under the previous semi-presidential system. 

In a more general sense, if the party system of a country is fragmented, parliamentary governments can be dependent upon shifting coalitions (for example, the Presidency of Nauru) and the parties supporting them can hold only a minority of the legislature, reducing their ability to pass legislation. When a great deal of Armenia's parliament was comprised of independents, a parliamentary government would have been weak, and the fixed-term and non-removable status of the Presidency can give the executive strength through stability.

On the other hand, under a presidential system, the possibility exists that the Presidency and legislature can be in different partisan hands, thus depriving the President of the power to pass legislation. A Prime Minister must at least have the tolerance of the legislature in order to stay in office, and the election law in Armenia actually guarantees a party a fairly comfortable parliamentary majority (this is underlined by a constitutional requirement that one party or coalition must end with 54% of the Assembly seats).

A Prime Minister with disciplined control of his majority political party can pass whatever legislation he supports, and also has control of the executive branch. If the Republican Party are able to maintain control over their members, the new electoral system and system of government will substantially increase their power.

Another constitution for Thailand?

"Though 'junta' is committee, is not really what is mean

One person's endless nightmare is to other perfect dream

Is order when are doing all just what you tell them to

And freedom of the press is freedom to agree with you!"

--this

Thailand is currently preparing for a referendum on the new constitution, scheduled for 7 August. The proposal represents the finalisation of a process of constitutional change initiated by the military government which took over in May 2014. During this period, the nation has been ruled by the military-dominated National Council for Peace and Order and the National Legislative Assembly under the interim charter; neither body is elected. 

I have written before about the military government's plans for the electoral system, some of which were put in the draft. However, the issues with the draft do go further than the issues with the electoral system. It contains provisions that appear designed to allow substantial military control over the government, and certain elements are a regression on the previous constitutional arrangements.

Thailand's constitutional problem

As I have written before on my previous Thailand post, the country has had persistent problems with political stability. Thailand has had twelve successful coups since the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1932, most of which have resulted in new constitutions.

The below image shows all the Constitutions of Thailand since the 1970s. Coups normally install interim constitutions, providing for appointed legislatures with few or no protections for human rights. Updated, democratic, constitutions are then written by the coup leaders, though often slowly.

Thai constitutions since the 1970s (own image)

This process has led to frequently interrupted civilian government, and to generally highly unstable government in the country. Up until the 1997 Constitution, an electoral system that encouraged factionalised and weak political parties also contributed to a highly unstable political system.

Following the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution, the populist, somewhat leftist Thai Rak Thai party emerged on the political scene, led by businessman Thaksin Shinawatara. It contested its first election in 2001. Partially thanks to the new electoral system, which encouraged national, broad-based parties, Thai Rak Thai secured 248 of 500 seats; by far the strongest result for a single political party in Thai political history. The party was able to build on this to win a comfortable majority of seats in the 2005 election; 375 of 500.

This has created a serious conflict between opponents of and supporters of the Thai Rak Thai party and its predecessors, and supporters of the opposition. The opposition has proved relatively unsuccessful electorally, but opponents of the government have been able to use military coups to overturn what they see as a corrupt government.

The new constitution

As has been the case for all Thailand's democratic constitutions, a parliamentary system of government is provided for. However, the Thai monarch remains as head of state, as is normal for a constitutional monarchy.

The first thing in the document is, indeed, provisions dealing with the monarch, who is to be "enthroned in a position of revered worship" and "shall not be violated". Based on the three most recent versions of the Constitution, this appears to be standard practice in Thai constitutions. This would seem to be related to controversial lese-majeste laws restricting criticism of the monarchy.

There is also a section dealing with rights and freedoms. These provide for the right to presumption of innocence, prevention of self-incrimination, and other standard rights in relation to criminal law. The provision on freedom of speech, however, has the caveat that it may be restricted "by virtue of the provisions of the law specifically enacted for the purpose of maintaining the security of the State, protecting the rights or liberties of other persons, maintaining public order or good morals of people, or safeguarding the health of the people". Provisions of this sort restricting freedom of speech are hardly unusual internationally, or in Thailand for that matter. Various other rights, such as freedom of association and travel, have similar caveats.

The 'Duties of the State' section sets out various roles that the Thai government must play. These can be quite specific: for example, the government is prohibited from selling more than half of utilities to the private sector. The government must also provide public healthcare and free education for children for twelve years.

Government provisions

The Constitution provides for a bicameral parliament, consisting of a House of Representatives and Senate. The House of Representatives is the larger, elected House, with five hundred members. It is elected using mixed-member proportional representation, as was hinted at by the drafters of the constitution. 70% of the House is elected in single-member districts using the plurality system. Voters only cast votes for the single-member districts; there is no separate party-list ballot paper, as was in place under the previous system.

The remaining members are chosen from closed party lists, in a manner designed to compensate for the disproportionality caused by the single-member plurality system. The total number of members for each party is calculated based on the votes cast for the party, and the seats each party has won in constituencies are subtracted from this figure. Remaining members are elected from the closed lists. 

While such specific details of an electoral system may seem unusual to entrench in a constitution, this also appears to be standard Thai constitutional practice. What is more unusual about the electoral system is that there is specific provision for voters to cast a vote against all candidates. If this 'against all' option receives the most votes in a district, a by-election is required in which all candidates who ran in the original election are disqualified from contesting.

What is the value of such a provision? Well, the anti-Thai Rak Thai/Thaskinite opposition political parties often boycott elections as a protest tactic. They did this in 2006, as part of the leadup towards the coup of that year, and in 2014, which had a similar outcome. 

If there is an election boycott, under this constitution, it will be possible for districts in the South, an area that traditionally opposes the government, to constantly fail to return members of the House. As 95% of members of the House are required to convene a session, it would be theoretically possible for a boycott to render Thailand ungovernable. This has happened in the past despite the lack of this provision, though it is now entrenched and stricter than it was.

The House sits for a four-year term, though it can be dissolved by decree of the monarch early (there is no specific provision for this action being taken on the advice of the Prime Minister or Cabinet, though this is also standard Thai constitutional practice). 

One of the other unusual procedures mentioned in this constitution is the procedure of choosing a Prime Minister. Section 88 states that each party nominating candidates must put forward a list of three candidates for the post before an election. However, it is somewhat unclear as to whether this means that the Prime Minister must come from one of these lists. 

The provision on choosing the Prime Minister states that "the House of Representatives shall complete its consideration and approval of a person suitable to be appointed as Prime Minister as selected from the nominees having the qualifications and not falling under the prohibitions under Section 160 including who appear in the lists presented according to Section 88". It is not clear whether this means only people who appear on the lists are permitted to serve as Prime Minister, though later provisions suggest that this is the case.

There is an eight-year term limit on the office of Prime Minister, a relatively rare provision in parliamentary countries. The government is responsible to the House of Representatives, with 20% of MPs being required to initiate a confidence debate.

As said before, the parliament is bicameral. The other house is the Senate. With the 1997 Constitution, this house became an elected one; previous democratic constitutions providing for bicameralism had made the Senate appointed by the King. It would be elected on a non-partisan basis, however, with restrictions on political advertising.  Under the 2007 Constitution, this was changed to have half the Senate appointed, and half of it elected.

This draft goes the whole way, and provides that the entire Senate shall be appointed by the King. There is no specific provision that the Prime Minister or Cabinet should be consulted, and I am unsure whether this is standard practice for the Senators appointed prior to 1997 and following 2007. The Senate, however, only has power to delay legislation; for financial bills, forty days. Other bills may be delayed for two hundred and forty days, but the House majority retains the authority to present bills for Royal Assent after this period. Following presentation for Royal Assent, the monarch may refuse to sign the bill: he can be over-ridden by two-thirds of the members of both Houses of parliament.

Amending procedures have changed somewhat from the 2007 post-coup constitution. This Constitution could be amended, with public consultation, by a majority of both houses (apparently sitting in joint session). The draft Constitution requires that this include 20% of the members of parties without representation in the Cabinet (i.e. non-government parties), and a third of the appointed Senate. This will make amendment likely impossible without Democrat support. For a constitution with such specific provisions, and in a country where there is such a sharp partisan division, this provision appears put in place to entrench very specific laws.

Transitory provisions-the devil in the detail

The most contentious provisions of this constitution are those at the end; the so called 'transitory provisions'. These are provisions that are not meant to be permanent, but to enable the transition from military rule to democratic rule.

For a start, the unelected National Legislative Assembly will remain the national legislature until new elections are held. These elections can only be held after legislation governing a wide variety of issues is passed, including laws on the prevention of corruption, laws on criminal procedure for dealing with politicians, and laws detailing the appointment of the Ombudsman. These laws may take up to 240 days to consider. There is then a further 150 days until elections must take place.

Furthermore, the first Senate will be appointed by the King on the advice of the National Council for Peace and Order, the military junta governing the country at present. The Senate may, for its first term, force a joint sitting if the House is voting on any bill designed to acquit government employees from crimes or 2/3 of the Senate vote that a bill seriously affects the justice process.

The provisions for choosing a Prime Minister from the lists submitted before the election is somewhat confused in the transitional provisions. Apparently, the National Assembly may, with a 2/3 majority, choose a person not on the lists. This would suggest that the lists drawn up before the election are, under normal circumstances, binding on the parties and that people outside the lists may not serve as Prime Minister.

What does this mean for the future of Thailand?

This constitution has some clear advantages, at least for democratic stability, over previous iterations of the document. The new electoral system will be advantageous towards the Democrat Party, true, but only insofar as it will provide the party with more proportional representation. This may mean that the successor to the Thai Rak Thai party that will no doubt contest this election will have to form a more inclusive coalition than is normal. This may reduce the chances of a serious conflict between the government and opposition, and thus a coup. However, the closed list nature of the electoral system will prevent parties becoming weak and factionally divided.

The appointed nature of the Senate, especially its initial appointment by the junta, means that it will substantially delay action by any civilian government: important, seeing as all laws made by the junta government are considered to be constitutional by the transitory provisions. The constitution will also be much more difficult to amend than previously, partially thanks to the appointed Senate, and partially thanks to the provisions requiring opposition parties to support any change. Organic laws, those that deal with political parties, procedures of the Constitutional Court and choosing Senators (amongst other matters) must be approved by a joint sitting, giving the appointed Senate substantial control over these matters.

However, the former coup leaders having influence over future civilian governance is not unusual in Thailand. Many transitions to democracy under new constitutions have involved 'tutelage' periods, in which the democratic government shared power with the former coup leaders. And yet, this did not make the Constitutions more durable. Depressingly, this constitution may simply end up lasting only a few years.

One new provision that has been included that could potentially improve the durability of this Constitution is the introduction of local assemblies, with vaguely defined but seemingly meaningful powers. While local assemblies are not automatic (they are only to be implemented "according to the will of people in the locality"), they do have the power to "govern and provide public services and activities for the benefit of people in the locality". Furthermore, there is a responsibility on the central government to "ensure that a local government organisation has revenue of its own by organising an appropriate tax system or tax collection system".

Such provisions have the potential to reduce the winner-take-all nature of the central government, and allow areas that strongly support the opposition to make decisions over their own policies. Nonetheless, there are issues; the vague nature of determining the will of people in the locality, for example, could lead to the national government refusing to introduce any local assemblies. Previous Constitutions contained similar language in relation to local assemblies, though were more vague on provisions for the duties of said assemblies and the need for the national government to allocate taxes to them.

On August 7, the referendum will take place. The restrictive nature of laws on campaigning, combined with the fact that a rejection of the draft will only push elections back, makes it likely that the draft will be accepted. While there are some encouraging signs that the new draft will make conflict less likely, it will be very difficult to get Thailand out of coup culture. There is only so much any constitution can do alone. 

An early Japanese election?

In recent days, there has been speculation that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will call an early election for the House of Representatives of Japan, after delaying an increase in the sales tax. This would be Abe's second usage of this tactic; he called an early election in December 2014 for the same reason, which he won easily.

Abe currently has a commanding majority in the House of Representatives, which is the house of the bicameral Japanese Diet that has the power of confidence over the government. His Liberal Democratic Party has 290 seats out of 475. If you add the votes of Abe's coalition partner, the Komeito Party (a Buddhist political organisation), the government has 325 seats, or slightly more than a two-thirds majority.

In the House of Councillors, the upper house which has the power to block legislation (but can be overridden by two-thirds of the lower house), the Liberal Democrats have 116 seats (with 121 needed for a majority) and the government coalition has 126. Even if they did not have a majority in this house, Abe could still pass his legislation with his two-thirds in the Representatives.

Like Australia, the Councillors have fixed six-year terms, and half of the members are elected every three years. Unlike Australia, however, the frequency of upper house elections does not match up with the maximum length of lower house elections. While the Representatives can be dissolved at any time, the maximum term is four years.

Also unlike Australia, the Councillors cannot be dissolved as a deadlock-breaking mechanism; while the 2005 lower house election was held to break a deadlock over privatising the postal service, the goal was to win two-thirds in the lower house.

This discrepancy has meant that Representatives and Councillors elections have rarely happened at the same time. It has only happened once in the history of the post-war Constitution; in 1980, when the Liberal Democratic government was defeated on a vote of no-confidence at the same time as the Councillors election. The government won a majority in both houses, including an unexpectedly large majority in the Representatives.

The last Councillors election was in 2013, which means that an election is scheduled for this year; July, to be precise. As a result, if an early election happens this year, it would make sense for it to be in July, to reduce administration costs and to keep turnout up.

So, that being the case, would an election make sense?

Arguments for an election

It would avoid a midterm election. Midterm elections can be dangerous for governments, as they allow voters to express dissatisfaction with the government without necessarily throwing it out. While this can be embarrassing for governments if the elections are for subnational districts, it is dangerous if the election is for a house with direct control over the government.

The effects of a general election, at which the fate of the government would be at stake, would likely give the election winner (likely to be Abe's Liberal Democrats) a boost in the upper house elections, perhaps even giving the Liberal Democrats an absolute majority.

This is an especially important reason, given that a recent redistribution has increased the number of single-member districts in the Councillors. Councillors elections take place using a mixed-member majoritarian system; 78 members are elected in districts using the single non-transferable vote, and 48 members are elected using party-list proportional representation in one nationwide constituency, with open lists.

The redistribution has reduced the number of two-member districts, and increased the number of single-member districts. Two-member districts are very hard to win two seats in, as, in a hypothetical race between three candidates (one from the opposition, two from the government), the government needs two-thirds of the vote to win both seats, assuming equal vote division. This normally means that each party only nominates one candidate, and the two seats go to the top two parties.

In a single-member district, however, the largest party only needs to win the most votes to sweep all of the seats. As a result, in the districts that have become single-member, the largest party will win it all.

For that reason, a drop in support for the Liberal Democrats could lead to a more dramatic loss in seats. Abe cannot afford such a drop; losing control of the Councillors would complicate the government process, and would likely weaken his strength within the Liberal Democrats.

It would strengthen Abe's leadership. Japan has a tendency towards revolving-door Prime Ministers; the 2009-2012 Democrat term in government had three Prime Ministers, and the preceding 2005-2009 Liberal Democrat government had four Prime Ministers. Abe's three-year Prime Ministership looks exceptionally long.

Perhaps this speculation of an election has come about because of unease within the Liberal Democrats as Abe's leadership. An election is a powerful tool for party unity; no faction would dare undermine the leader during an election, an election could allow Abe to attempt to get rid of his factional enemies, and an election would provide Abe with a personal mandate, which would make him harder to get rid of.

Arguments against an election

Unusual opposition unity. From the formation of the Liberal Democrats in 1955, until about 2000, Japan had a 'dominant-party' system, with the Liberal Democrats winning around half the votes and somewhat more than half of the seats, and the remaining seats going to the opposition parties; the Socialists, Communists, Komeito, and the centre-left Democratic Socialists. The Liberal Democratic government was dominant, because there was no alternative government; while the Socialists were the largest opposition party, they did not have enough seats to present the possibility of forming the government.

In 1993, the first non-Liberal Democratic government since the formation of the party was formed. It was a broad coalition of the traditional opposition Socialists, Komeito and Democratic Socialists, as well as a number of parties formed by Liberal Democratic dissidents. While it did not last especially long, one of its key achievements was the replacement of Japan's single non-transferable vote in 3-5 member districts with a mixed-member majoritarian system, in which 300 members would be elected in single-member districts and 200 (later 180) members elected in 11 multi-member districts using party-list proportional representation.

This electoral system was meant to create a two-party system, and encourage more competitive elections, as the opposition parties would be encouraged to merge by the majoritarian effects of the new electoral system. While it took a while, in 1998 the Democratic Party of Japan was formed, as a centre to centre-left party comprising social democrats, conservatives and liberals. The Komeito Party formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and what remained of the Socialists renamed themselves the Social Democratic Party. The Communists remained independent.

At the DPJ's first election in 2000,  the top two parties received 53.5% of the party list vote and 75% of the seats. This jumped to 72% of the vote and 86% of the seats in 2003, and was 69% of the vote and 89% of the seats by the time of the 2009 election, which was the year of the DPJ landslide. 

However, the DPJ's time in government exposed internal splits. The number of government MPs collapsed from 308 to 230, with those that left joining the anti-nuclear People's Life, Tax Cuts and Kizuna parties to the left and the nationalist Japan Restoration Party to the right (a much rarer move). While the anti-nuclear party did not perform so well at the 2012 election, the nationalists polled strongly, reducing the support for the top two parties to 43% of the vote and 73% of the seats. 

Since this election, there have been more party splits, with the Restoration Party splitting into two. This has made presenting an alternative government to the Liberal Democrats a difficult task, as there is little chance of them winning a majority.

However, in recent months the major nationalist party, the Japan Innovation Party, has decided to merge with the Democratic Party of Japan. The party formed is called the Democratic Party, and will be led by DPJ leader Katsuya Okada. It will also be joined by members of the tiny Visions for Reform party, which will give it nearly 100 seats in the Representatives and 71% of non-government seats. This would be enough to present a convincing alternative government.

It is worth noting that such an alliance may not necessarily be long-lasting. And this is a key disadvantage of an early election; it does not give this new party time to have factional conflicts, and potentially split. Abe would be going to an election at the time at which the opposition would be most unified, a courageous decision to be sure.

The stakes would be very high. As stated before, an early election would see Abe facing a more unified opposition. If the election is just for the Councillors, he could afford to lose this and continue to pass legislation. However, if his popularity wanes before a Representatives and Councillors election, the government could end up losing both its Councillors majority and its two-thirds Representatives majority, which would almost certainly lead to the end of Abe's party leadership.

So, what will happen?

In my view, it would not make sense for Shinzo Abe to call such an early election. Such an election would be a high-stakes poll that, if it goes poorly, could lead to Abe losing control of the Diet, which would almost certainly mean the end of his Prime Ministership. As for the consumption tax, an increase could be delayed until after the Councillors election, which could give him a boost.

However, speculation of an election is likely to stick around for longer, since Abe may need the threat of an election to keep members of his party in line, as talk of a consumption tax increase leads to a drop in his approval ratings. For this reason, if Abe is sensible, there will be no election, but there will be talk about it.

Why does the Thai junta want MMP?.

Thailand is currently under the rule of a military junta, following a coup in 2014 against the government of Yingluck Shintawara. The coup is nothing especially unusual for Thailand, which has had 19 attempted coups, 13 of which have been successful.

The military government has said that they intend to return Thailand to democracy eventually: although they have not provided an exact date, it is expected that it will happen later this year, or next year. One of the key tasks that the junta has stated needs to take place before democracy is introduced is writing a new constitution.

Since the constitutional monarchy was introduced in 1932, Thailand has had seventeen constitutions and charters. Charters are documents set up to provide a basis to temporary military governments, and normally have been used for two or three years at a time. Constitutions have been more permanent, but none have lasted especially long.

The current constitution was drawn up and promulgated in 2007, following a coup in 2006. It provides, like all the other democratic constitutions, for a parliamentary system of government with a constitutional monarchy. A bicameral system was established, as had existed in the previous Constitution; however, the Senate was not able to remove ministers, and half of it was appointed. The House of Representatives was the premier house; it was directly elected, through a mixed-member majoritarian electoral system. Oddly, the exact provisions of the electoral law are enshrined in the Constitution.

Formally, the Prime Minister and the remainder of the Cabinet are appointed by the King; however, a no-confidence motion from the House can remove Ministers. This is similar to other constitutional monarchies, such as Australia and the United Kingdom. However, for various reasons (including the popularity of the King, and lese-majeste laws banning criticism of him) the King has had a more influential role than other constitutional monarchies.

The key factor in the two recent coups has been the governments of Thaksin Shinawatra and his sucessor and sister Yingluck Shinawatra (many female leaders in Asia have been related to former male leaders, such as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India or President Park Geun-hye).

Thaksin came to power following the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s. He was an influential businessman, and formed a political party called Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais). At the 2001 election, his party won 248 seats in the 500 member House of Representatives, a near majority, off 40.6% of the vote. This result was part of a growing trend of Thai politics towards consolidation of the party system, as the below graph shows.

As you can see, the 2001 election represented the largest share of the votes for the top two parties since vote shares became available, and probably before that. This is off the back of three subsequent increases.

Exactly why this is the case is unclear. However, Thailand's usage of a different electoral system may account for some of this. Just before the 2001 election, Thailand switched from a pure multiple non-transferable vote system to a mixed-member majoritarian system, with first-past-the-post used in the local districts. 

Shugart and Carey (1995) provides a rank-ordering of electoral systems based on the importance of the personal vote. The issue with this is that the rank-ordering places substantial emphasis on how parties nominate candidates and the ease of getting on the ballot, and information on this factor is unavailable. 

As a result, the switch to MMM would be likely to reduce the incentive to cultivate a personal vote. This could be expected to lead to party labels becoming more important in elections, and thus could be expected to lead to stronger, more disciplined parties. I do not have many cases to directly compare the Thai experience to, seeing as the MNTV system is relatively rare. However, the replacement of Taiwan's MMM system, which used the single non-transferable vote in multi-member districts for the local tier, with a MMM system that used single-member plurality in the local tier led to what was a multi-party system consolidating into a two-party system.

After the election, the Thai Rak Thai party merged with the New Aspiration Party, which had won 36 seats. This gave Thai Rak Thai a majority in the House of Representatives. Thaksin was thus able to implement a populist electoral platform, introducing subsidies for health care and petrol, constructing large amounts of new infrastructure, and low-interest loans for farmers.

Thaskin's policies proved popular, and he won a landslide victory at the 2005 election. His party won 377 seats, and approximately 62% of the vote. Thai Rak Thai dominated in the north and northeast of the country; this area is populated with poorer farmers, who would be most responsive to Thaskin's handouts. The infrastructure projects funded by his government allowed Thai Rak Thai to poll strongly in wealthier Bangkok. However, the south of the country was still dominated by the opposition centre-right Democratic Party. This region gave the Democrats half of their seats in the single-member districts alone.

The Thai Rak Thai majority was the first for any party in Thai history. The election also represented a peak of political consolidation, as 85% of votes were cast for the top two parties. Thaskin had been the first elected Thai prime minister to serve a full term in office.

However, all was not smooth for Thaskin. He faced allegations of corruption after his family sold shares in a telecommunications company following legislative changes that allowed the shares to be sold to a foreign owner. He denied claims of corruption, but, after protests against his government began, he decided to call an election in order to test his support.

While the election was called, the major opposition parties decided to boycott it, claiming that they were unfair and that Thailand needed constitutional reform before a fair election could be held. As a result, the elections were only contested by the Thai Rak Thai party, and a number of small unidentified parties.

In normal cases, election boycotts involve electors not turning up at the polls at all. However, Thailand gives voters the option of voting for 'no candidate' by ticking a box at the bottom of their ballot paper. In cases where only one candidate ran for election, the election would still be run, and a candidate would need support from 20% of registered voters. This would not be such a dramatic threshold for Thai Rak Thai MPs to win in most parts of the country. However, in the south, there were seven constituencies where Thai Rak Thai did not win 20% of the vote, and a further fourteen where the Thai Rak Thai candidate won less than 25%.

In these constituencies, the election boycott could be expected to lead to the Thai Rak Thai candidate not reaching the threshold. On election day, however, Thai Rak Thai lost forty seats, which had to be filled through by-elections. Even after these by-elections had been held, in which candidates alleged to be Thai Rak Thai 'dummies' filed in most seats in order to avoid the 20% absolute support threshold, another fourteen by-elections were needed.

However, at this point, the Constitutional Court upheld a complaint by the opposition that the elections were unconstitutional. Thaskin's cabinet decided not to contest this, and called elections for October of that year; just one month away. Democracy in Thailand would not last that long.

In the night of the 21st of September, military forces entered Bangkok and took control over the institutions of government. Thaskin was in New York at the time, intending to give a speech to the United Nations. The military government introduced new, strict security measures, but promised that democracy would be re-introduced 'in a year'.

The junta did, actually, keep their promise. After a year of heavily restricted political activity, a referendum was held in August 2007 on a new constitution. The patterns of voting followed traditional Thai patterns, with the South voting yes, and the North voting mostly no. 58% voted Yes, thus meaning parliamentary elections could be held later that year. Some changes were made to the electoral law; multi-member constituencies, elected using the multiple non-transferable vote, were used for some of the district tier seats. The number of party-list seats was reduced to eighty, and they were elected in ten-member districts.

Elections to the Representatives were scheduled for December. Thai Rak Thai had been banned, along with Thaskin from the country, so those who supported it needed a new political party. The new party formed was called the People Power Party, and was led by former Governor of Bangkok Samak Sundaravej. The Democrats were not dissolved, and contested the election. No other major forces entered the race, thus meaning that, to some extent, Thailand was back to where it started.

In the end, People Power won the election, securing 233 seats in the 480 member assembly; slightly short of a majority, but it would be expected that they would form the government. The Democrats won 165 seats, the conservative Thai Nation Party won 37 seats, and the moderate Motherland Party won 24. No other parties won more than ten seats.

What is interesting about this election is that the party vote was actually very close. Statistics conflict, but the People Power-Democrat gap was very narrow either way. The large lead for People Power in the seat totals was due to their substantial lead in the district seats, where the People Power vote was mostly the same; however, the opposition was more heavily split. There were only eighty proportional seats. This will become important later.

People Power formed the government, and Sundaravej became Prime Minister. However, he was opposed by the military, which still held substantial sway in Thai politics. In September 2008, he was found guilty of accepting payment from the private sector while in the office of Prime Minister: he hosted a number of cooking shows, for which he was paid. He was replaced by Somchai Wongsawat, a relation of Thaskin. 

However, his term was also short-lived. In December 2008, the People Power Party was banned for vote-buying and other corruption. At the time, there were massive public protests against the government, and protests for the government. Following the banning, the coalition partners of the People Power Party and some dissident People Power MPs formed a coalition with the Democrats, allowing Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajjva to become Prime Minister.

Vejjajjva's government was opposed by the newly formed Pheu Thai Party, which was led by former Prime Minister Wongsawat. This group had the support of the 'National Front for Democracy against Dictatorship', also known as the Red Shirts, which led protests against the Vejjajjva government calling for new elections.

One of the actions of the Vejjajjva government was a change to the electoral law. The number of party-list proportional representation seats was increased to 125, out of a 500 member legislature. Allocation was also changed to a nationwide level. The district tier was changed to single-member plurality only. These changes could be expected to advantage the Democratic Party, which had been substantially stronger in the party-list tier than in the districts.

The House was dissolved in 2011, and elections were called for July. Pheu Thai were led into this election by Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of Thaskin. Vejjajva stayed as Democrat leader. Thai polls, as rare as they were, gave Pheu Thai a comfortable lead over the Democrats.

On the day, Pheu Thai won 265 seats in the 500 member House, a fairly comfortable majority. They won 48% of the party list vote, fairly close to a majority. The Democrats won 159 seats, and 39.6% of the party list vote; the electoral system still disadvantaged them, as this was only 31.8% of the seats. This was probably due to them only getting 32.3% of the district vote.

Oddly, the smaller parties were less represented in the proportional tier than in the districts. The Thai Pride Party, a populist party formed by former Thai Rak Thai members, received 11% of the vote in the single-member districts, and 29 out of 375 seats. However, they won only 3.9% in the party-list tier, and five seats. The National Development Party won 15 seats in the districts and 4.6% of the district vote, but only 2.8% of the party-list vote.

Following the election, Yingluck was appointed Prime Minister, after forming a (seemingly unnecessary) coalition with the Thai Pride and National Development parties. Her government followed similar policies to the previous Thai Rak Thai/People Power governments, and, unsurprisingly, faced the same protests that those same governments had faced.

One of the most controversial initiatives of Yingluck's government was an attempted amendment to the 2007 constitution. As constitutions go, the Thai one was at that time was relatively easy to amend. It required only an absolute majority vote of both houses, and a public hearing. Yingluck wanted to bring back a fully elected Senate, and passed it through the normal process. However, the Constitutional Court found that the reform was unconstitutional, on the basis that it had been changed while it was passing through the legislature.

2014 saw more political violence, as activists from both sides of politics sparred over the government's record. Political figures from both sides of the divide were killed and injured, and Yingluck, desperate to regain control over the situation, called an election in February 2014. However, this did not go so well. As in 2007, the opposition boycotted the election, but this time the security situation had deteriorated to the extent that the Electoral Commission was unable to hold the election at all in a substantial number of constituencies, and that in some seats, candidates did not nominate at all.

The election was invalidated by the Constitutional Court, however, as it had not been held on the same day in all areas. Weeks later, Yingluck was stripped of her office as Prime Minister over the transfer of a military official, and was replaced by the Deputy Prime Minister.

At this point, the military decided to take control over the government. On 22 May 2014, the military held meetings between the leaders of  the civilian parties. When the talks failed, General Prayut Chanocha informed the meeting that he had to seize power, and ordered the military to once again take control over government.

Once again, the military said that their control over government would be purely temporary, and that they would restore democracy at some point. They introduced a new interim constitution, which starts by saying that Thailand has a "democratic regime of government" before enshrining an appointed legislature and giving the poetically named "National Council for Peace and Order", the executive under the new regime, the power to decree anything they wished. Decrees would immediately become constitutional upon introduction.

So, what does this have to do with MMP?

For those of you who are desperate to hear about MMP, this is the part where it becomes important. The Constitution Drafting Committee has been working on a new constitution since the coup, and one of the things that they have suggested is a new electoral system for Thailand.

The option that has been most mentioned is a mixed member proportional representation system. Now, there is nothing unusual about this electoral system, and it has been proposed for many nations recently during electoral reform processes. However, your author cannot help but be a bit suspicious of the proposal when it comes from a military junta. So, the question is, what would be in it for the military if the MMP proposal was introduced?

The military are clearly no fans of the Thaskinite governments. As a result, it would make sense for the military to introduce an electoral system that disadvantaged these parties. While the Democrats deny such a connection, it is generally considered that they are closer to the military than the Thaskinites. It would also be an asset to the military government if the new electoral system would advantage the Democrats.

Below are the results of the 2011 election under various forms of MMP. From left to right; all parties with 5% of the vote allowed to win proportional representation seats, all parties with 5% or one constituency seat, all parties with 3%, and all parties with 3% or one constituency seat. The final column is the actual results of the election.

Click on the image for a larger size

My careful readers will note that the total number of seats is higher under all of the MMP systems. This is because of a feature of MMP called 'overhang'. Under most versions of MMP, a party which wins more seats in the districts than it is entitled to by the party-list calculation keeps those district seats, and the legislature is enlarged to compensate. With a 5% threshold, only Pheu Thai and the Democrats are entitled to the proportional representation seats, and therefore all 56 districts won by parties outside these two are overhang.

There is one consistent trend, if you look at the percentages. The Democrats always have a higher percentage of seats under a MMP system, because of their higher share of the party-list proportional representation vote. This gain mostly comes from the smaller parties, which are no longer able to boost their seat totals through the PR tier.

It is evident that the Democrats perform better in a nationwide ballot, so it is evidently clear that increasing the importance of the party-list ballots through mixed-member proportional representation would be good for them.

Another key advantage of MMP for the military is a likely increase in political fragmentation, and a weakening of the party system. MMP would make it easier for small parties with nationwide support to enter the House of Representatives. This would likely lead to a fragmented party system, as there would be less incentive for parties to merge.

An increase in political fragmentation would be advantageous to the military for one key reason; it would weaken the influence of civilian governments against the military, as they would be less stable without regular parliamentary majorities. It could be said that this is a good thing, as it means that the populists need to look for consensus more. However, it is clear what the military gets out of the arrangement.

All of this does not mean that mixed-member proportional representation would not necessarily be a good idea for Thailand. In my view, it would be a good idea to encourage consensus in what is evidently a heavily divided political culture. However, it is also evidently clear that the advantages for the military are very clear in implementing MMP, and the specific proposal will warrant very close examination in the context of the other constitutional features.

Hong Kong 2015-a tale of two incentives

Hong Kong has a long political history of semi-democracy. Until 1997, it was a British colony, governed by a bewildering mix of appointed and elected councils and officials. The main elected body was the Municipal Council, which had only four elected members elected with strict qualifications (the number increased over time, and from 1956 half of the Council was elected). However, this council had very limited roles in serious governance, and elections to it had poor turnout anyway. Most power resided with the Governor, who was appointed by the Queen on the advice of the British Prime Minister, and the Legislative Council, half of which was appointed by the Governor and half of which was comprised of government officials.

As Hong Kong (or, at least parts of it) had been leased from China for 99 years, it was due for return in 1997. The details of this were complicated by the Communist takeover of China after the Civil War, but in 1983 an agreement was signed between the two countries. It stated that Hong Kong would be handed back to China in 1997, but that China would give it substantial autonomy.

The first elections to the Legislative Council took place in 1985. 24 seats were actually elected. 12 of these were elected by professional associations; chambers of commerce, trade unions and the like. The other 12 were indirectly elected, in twelve single-member districts, by local councils (looking at the 1988 White Paper, it appears that an exhaustive ballot system was used, where, if one candidate did not have a majority, the lowest polling candidate would be excluded, and the voters would vote again. This process would be repeated until one candidate had a majority). These local councils were partially elected through universal suffrage and partially appointed.

Similar arrangements were in place for the next election (held in 1988), despite plans being put out for direct elections that year. The number of appointed seats was reduced by two, though, and the British made it clear that direct elections would be on the cards for future elections. A number of changes were made to the electoral system, including the introduction of preferential voting for the seats elected by local councils.

The first direct elections took place, as promised, in 1991. 18 seats were directly elected, 21 were 'functional constituencies', 18 were directly appointed by the Governor, and three seats were reserved for officials (again, British appointed). The directly elected seats were elected in two-member districts, with voters having two votes.

The result was a landslide for the liberal pro-democratic parties. Off a low turnout, broadly pro-democratic parties won 16 out of 18 seats, and 58% of the vote. Two other candidates were elected. One of these was Tai Chin-wah, a pro-Beijing candidate, who was later discovered to have falsified his legal credentials. The by-election to replace him was won by a pro-democracy candidate. The other independent was Andrew Wong, and, while the paper on the election lists him as independent, he seems to have been recognised as a pro-democracy candidate later in his career.

However, this win was balanced out by a strong result for conservative and pro-British and Beijing candidates in the functional constituencies. The pro-democrats won only four seats out of 21, and the remaining seats were apparently mostly won by pro-establishment conservative businessmen.

As a result, direct elections did not change the majority in the legislative council. However, they did draw the dividing lines for the future of Hong Kong's political competition; pro-democracy versus pro-Beijing parties.

The next elections, in 1995, saw a change in the electoral system. Instead of two-member districts, single-member plurality districts were used. Twenty members were elected in these districts. Thirty were elected in functional constituencies (28 single-member districts, and ten were elected by members of an Election Committee, elected from local councils. Election Committee seats used the single-transferable vote (electronically counted).

As in the last election, pro-democratic candidates made a near sweep of the directly elected seats. They won 17 of the 20 seats, with the Democratic Party, the largest party in the pro-democratic group, winning 12 of these seats and 42% of the vote. The other five seats were won by independents and by the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihoods (ADPL), a slightly more economically leftist group. The pro-Beijing parties won three seats; two by the more pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) and one by the Liberal Party (a more pro-business group).

The DAB victories in their districts were all very narrow. The DAB won New Territories North by only 48 votes, while they won Kowloon North-East by a more comfortable margin of 5.5%. The Liberal was elected in New Territories North-East with 35% to 28% for a DAB opponent, and 26% and 11% for two democrats. The competition patterns were quite interesting. Most seats saw competition between one pro-democrat and one pro-Beijing candidate. However, in some seats, there was more than one candidate from one of these groups. These seats were mostly safe ones, and there were no cases where strategic nomination would have made a difference.

In the functional constituencies, the Liberal Party dominated. Their pro-business stance allowed them to win many of the seats. Most of the others were won by Beijing-aligned independents, although pan-democrats were elected in the Construction district (a case where strategic nomination might have made the difference; the Democrat was elected with 38% against a field of three pro-Beijing candidates). Most other pro-democrat victories in the functional constituencies were more clear-cut, and it does not appear that nomination was a very big factor.

The Election Committee seats split 6-4 in favour of the pro-Beijing candidates, thus meaning that the overall Legislative Council was controlled 31-29 by pro-democrats. Beijing was obviously not happy with this, and before the handover, decided to handpick a Selection Committee to elect a new Legislative Council, that would sit until elections could be held. As you can imagine, this committee was dominated by pro-Beijing members, and most of the pro-democrats did not contest. The ADPL won two seats. The remaining seats were won by pro-Beijing parties and independents.

Following the handover, a new electoral system was put in place. Twenty seats would be directly elected, using party-list proportional representation and the Hare quota, with an average district magnitude of four. The goal of this appeared to be to prevent the pro-democrats sweeping all the directly elected seats, as they had done under the British.

Thirty seats would be elected in functional constituencies, which, as under the British, were elected by various businesses and trade unions. A further ten seats were elected by the Election Committee (despite the commitment to proportionality demonstrated in the direct constituencies, these seats were elected by the multiple non-transferable vote). Unlike under the British, this was a body elected in a similar manner to the functional constituencies; from various sectors of business and society. Members of the Legislative Council were eligible to sit in the Election Committee, too. The Committee also elects the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, who sits as the equivalent of a British colonial Governor; he signs legislation from the Council, appoints judges, and can issue decrees.

The result of the election was a win for the pro-Beijing group. In the direct constituenices, however, pro-democracy parties won 66% of the votes and 15 seats, with the pro-Beijing parties winning 5 seats and 30% of the vote. The pro-Beijing parties won a landslide victory in the functional constituency, with 25 seats, and they won all the Election Committee seats. This meant that the pro-Beijing parties controlled the Legislative Council 40-20.

A similar pattern was followed in 2000, although thanks to the Electoral Committee losing four seats which were transferred into the directly elected constituencies (thus increasing the average district magnitude to 4.8), the pro-democrats gained an extra seat overall despite losing about 6% of the vote.

The 2000 election was notable for the first use of a tactic not uncommon in party-list systems which use quotas. It involves running more than one list in a district, and then dividing your vote amongst the lists. Why is this an advantage? Let's look at the below table for an example, from the 2012 election in the seven member district of Hong Kong Island.

As you can see, in this heavily fragmented election the Civic Party was the only one to win two seats, very narrowly. However, this is not how the election worked. Instead, the DAB ran two lists, each headed by a different politician (one by Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang, and one by Christopher Chung), and split their votes roughly between the two lists. This was the result.

So, the DAB comfortably won more seats than Civic, despite winning slightly fewer votes. How did they manage that? Well, when you run one list if you have support levels like the DAB, one quota is tied up, thus meaning a smaller share of the vote is left over to compete after the quota is used to win a seat. Therefore, it makes sense for a party with substantially more than a quota's worth of to spread its votes amongst multiple lists.

A similar system was used in Colombia up until 2006. While it was nominally party-list with the Hare quota, the ability for parties to nominate multiple candidates meant that it was effectively single non-transferable vote. The lower house had an average magnitude of 4.8 (lower than Hong Kong's current average of 6.7), but the upper house used a single national district with a magnitude of 100. The highest polling list in this election got 2.2% of the vote (enough to secure two seats, though) and the lowest polling list to win a seat got 0.4% (full results here).

Hong Kong took some time to adapt to this system, with early elections being more conventional party-list. The Democrats were the first to try the system, running some multiple lists in 2000, with mixed results (in some cases, it would have made a difference, in some cases not). Indeed, they were the only party to do it up to 2012. At this point, the Democrats had lost support dramatically, as a result of their support for a controversial electoral reform package. This dramatically fragmented the pro-democrat vote, as a large number of Democrat voters switched to existing more radical democratic parties and new radical democratic parties. At this election, the DAB also tried running multiple lists.

The result of this was that, for the first time ever, no list elected more than one member. For most of the parties, this was not a deliberate strategic move. Very few of them had the support for more than one seat in each district, and so the running of one list made perfect sense. However, as the above example shows, the DAB's running of multiple lists meant that they were able to win more seats.

The election also demonstrate another factor in the multiple-list strategy; it requires tactical calculation. The Democrats ran two lists in New Territories West, for example, and very effectively divided the vote between them. However, they only won 11.8% of the vote in the district, and this meant that both lists went down to defeat, while parties with much smaller overall support that had not run multiple lists won seats.

In the same election, as demonstrated above, the Civic Party's failure to use multiple lists cost them seats. The Civic Party tried running single lists in districts where they had multiple incumbents, but this backfired on them, as described above, and they lost a few seats due to their failure to run multiple lists.

The main message here is that under an electoral system such as this, it is vitally important that parties learn to evaluate their electoral support, and the main way of doing this is through opinion polling. Hard, certainly, in certain countries where few people have phones, or where people are geographically spread. However, this is surely not the case in Hong Kong. While the accuracy of some polling is questionable (although this is not too great a sin in an area with many parties, and where small numbers of votes can have a dramatic impact on the result), it seems rather odd that the parties did not better evaluate their support.

District Councils, and why they matter

Like most countries, Hong Kong has multiple tiers of governance. There are eighteen districts of Hong Kong, and they all have local councils called District Councils. These councils provide certain public services, and spend grants from the Hong Kong-wide government. As far as I can tell, they do not levy taxes. Elections to these bodies are partisan.

The interesting thing about these council is their electoral system. The councils use single-member plurality/first-past-the-post (voters have one vote, the candidate with the most votes wins). This is a very different system from the single non-transferable vote, and has a practically opposite incentive. Under single-member plurality, having large numbers of parties is usually rare. As Duverger's Law states, plurality systems of any sort will lead to a two-party system, as minor parties with weak support will not be able to win seats. Given that that will lead to their votes being 'wasted', so to speak, their votes will head to larger parties with similar ideologies, in order to avoid opposing parties being elected.

Now, obviously there are exceptions to Duverger's Law. Nations like India, for example, have large numbers of parties despite using single-member plurality. However, in most of these countries, there is great regional variation in terms of party systems, and individual districts mostly have two-party competition. Hong Kong does not have this.

This means that there are two very different electoral systems in Hong Kong. One, in the Legislative Council, that encourages parties to split their vote between different candidates and encourages the formation of new parties. The other encourages small numbers of large and broad-based political parties. This creates an interesting conflict.

There are a number of ways parties and broader political groups could manage this conflict. They could hold internal primaries, they could agree on running a candidate from a party that had high support in the area, or they could decouple the LegCo party system from the District Council party system.

Now, I have had trouble finding the data available for District Council elections. However, a cursory look at the data available suggests that independents are a key fixture of these elections. 22% of pro-democrat votes were cast for independent candidates and 30% of pro-Beijing votes were cast for independents. This suggests a degree of decoupling between the LegCo and District Council electoral systems, as very few independents are normally elected in the geographic constituencies of the Legislative Council.

The other ideas for how is something that needs to be looked into further. However, a vaguely cursory look suggests that seats have a relatively low number of candidates. Overall statistics suggest this too; apparently, the pro-Beijing group runs 1.13 candidates to each seat, while the pro-democracy group only runs 0.77 candidates to each seat. This suggests a highly restrained nomination strategy by the pro-democrats (as well as some seats going uncontested), and a fairly restrained strategy by the pro-Beijing group.

While I don't have enough data to provide a proper analysis of these elections, it is very interesting to see these two electoral systems operating in parallel. The elections, however, seem to have sufficiently different vote shares, which makes any comparison rather hard and perhaps flawed.

Electoral Systems of the world-South Korea (Part 2 of 2)

Korea's first 27 years of democracy were highly eventful. Three distinctly different constitutions had been tried and replaced; the first for creating a dictatorial presidency, the second for creating a weak government, and now a third for being too democratic for the likings of President Park.

The Yushin Constitution

President Park decided to write up a totally new constitution, which he described as the Yushin, or Revitalisation constitution. Given that he had almost complete control over the process, it would be no surprise that he decided to write himself some sweeping new powers. 

Under the new law, the President would be elected for a six-year term, up from four. This is a long term for a President, but does not necessarily preclude a democratic system. However, as you may have guessed, there was a small catch; the President would be elected not directly, but by the 'National Conference for Unification', a nice term to describe an assembly of 2,359 people (but which could increase to a massive 5,000) who could basically be replaced by a smartphone, some speakers and a MP3 file of applause. While the NCU was technically elected, Park effectively controlled who was elected, thus meaning he had complete control over the body. 

The President had wide-ranging appointment powers. He could appoint the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, and members of the committee that decided the constitutionality of laws. It was fairly easy for him to take emergency powers, which would give him virtually all power in the country.

The National Assembly was still there, but its already limited powers over the executive were curtailed. In addition, a new electoral system was introduced. Two-thirds of the 219 member assembly was elected by the single-transferable vote in two-member districts, while one-third was elected by the National Conference for Unification. Given that the NCU was completely controlled by the President, this gave Park's Democratic Republican Party an effective one-third bonus. It also meant that in order to win a majority, any party opposed by the president would have to win 75% of the elected seats.

The single-non transferable vote would make that task extremely hard. Under this system, a party needs 33.4% of the vote in a district in order to win 50% of the seats. This meant that the Democratic Republicans would only need to win at least 33.4% to win 50% of the nationwide seats, which would be more than enough to guarantee them a majority.

The rationale for this new consolidation of powers with the President was in order to provide a united front for South Korea in potential talks with the North. While to some extent this was true, it seems awfully convenient that the only way to discuss with the North, according to Park, was to give Park more powers.

This document was approved by a referendum in 1972, when according to official figures, 92.3% voted Yes. This seems rather improbable, but it is unknown whether there was any fraud. 

Elections under Yushin

The first election to take place under the new constitution was the presidential election, held in the National Conference for Unification. Out of the 2,359 delegates, 2,357 voted to re-elect President Park, with two delegates casting informal votes (presumably they stayed in bed on election day). This election was utterly predictable, but a more interesting contest would take place in the next year.

In February 1973, the National Assembly went to an election. While it was almost impossible that the opposition would win a majority, it would be an interesting test of the government's support. Rather oddly for a Korean election, both parties retained their names from the previous election. However, a change had taken place in the electoral law; candidates were permitted to run as independents. This change was designed to weaken political parties; an obvious benefit for President Park, who wanted opposition to his government to be splintered as much as possible.

With the economy performing strongly, 38.7% of voters backed the Democratic Republicans (Park's party). This gave them 73, or half the elected seats in the country. When the 73 appointed seats were added on, the government held 146 seats in the National Assembly; a two-thirds majority. The New Democrats, weakened by the presence of independent candidates and by the newly formed Democratic Unification Party, won just 32.5% and 52 seats. The aforementioned Democratic Unification Party won 10.9% of the vote, but the electoral system meant that they could only win two seats. Independent candidates won 18.6%, and 19 independents were elected. This election ensured that President Park would have a compliant National Assembly, even if he didn't need one.

One of the more surprising sagas of 1973 was the kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung. Those who have read the previous post would know that Kim was the New Democratic candidate for the 1971 presidential elections. During the 1971 National Assembly campaign, Kim was 'acccidentally'  hit by a car. Fearing for his life, he fled to Japan, where he led international activist groups against Park.

In August 1973, Kim went to see the leader of the Democratic Unification Party in a Japanese hotel. When he left the meeting, he was abducted, drugged, placed in a hotel room, and moved to Osaka. The kidnappers then put him on a boat, which they took out into the Eastern Sea. Kim was tied up, and a weight was tied to him (presumably, you can see where this is going). However, US Ambassador to South Korea Philip Habib had heard about the intention to kill Kim, and had attempted to put pressure on the Korean government not to kill him. 

In the end, the boat carrying Kim was pursued by a Japanese patrol boat, and Kim's kidnappers decided to take him to the port city of Busan instead of throwing him into the sea. He was banned from participating in political activity, thus leaving the New Democrats without one of their most skilled politicians.

The next five years saw significant economic growth and industrialisation, but also increases in income disparity and inflation, and as the 1970s ended, economic growth began to slow. This made Park less popular, and in the 1978 presidential election, the National Conference for Unification responded to this increasing dissent by voting for him almost unanimously (only one delegate voted informally this time).

However, the legislative election was much less lopsided. New Democrats won 32.8% of the vote, but only 61 seats out of 231. Despite winning fewer votes (31.7%), the Democratic Republicans won 68 seats, while the Democratic Unification Party lost votes, falling to 7.4%, but gained a seat, thus ending up with three. Independent candidates won 28.1% and 22 seats. With the 77 presidential appointments, the Democratic Republicans retained a majority, but without popular support.

There are a myriad of reasons why the Democratic Republicans won the most seats. Campaigning was heavily restricted, which played to the advantage of the Democratic Republicans, who were the best known party. The single non-transferable vote also allowed the party to win seats in city areas where the Democratic Republicans polled poorly. Urban areas were also somewhat under-represented-Seoul had around 22% of the population of Korea, but only 14% of the elected seats.

The end of Yushin

As you can expect, student protesters did not take kindly to this result, and Park became more and more unpopular. Police invaded the New Democratic headquarters, which made the party more hardline in their opposition to the government, and radical anti-government activist Kim Young-sam was elected as party leader. When Kim (but not the same Kim that was kidnapped) was removed as New Democrat leader by court order, furious New Democrats presented their resignations from the National Assembly. In October 1979, riots broke out in the province of Pusan, and Park declared martial law in the region. The protesting continued despite this, and spread to other parts of the country.

On the 26th of October, President Park was dining with Kim Jae-kyu (a different Kim from the New Democrat leader), the director of the Korean Central Intellegence Agency. Park was urging Kim to be more repressive when dealing with protesters, but Kim had been having concerns for days that Park needed to go. Kim left the room to convene with other members of the KCIA. When he returned, he shot Park through the chest.

Exactly why Kim killed Park is still unclear. Kim claimed he did it in order to bring democracy back to Korea, while others say that he did it in order to save his own power. Whatever the motivation, Kim was executed in May 1980, along with most of the other plotters.

Following Park's death, Prime Minister Choi Kyu-hah replaced him. Choi was confirmed by the National Council for Unification in a nail-biter of a result; he only won 96.7% of the vote. While this looks like a landslide, Park had been elected with 99%; some people were clearly unhappy with his ascension.

Choi attempted to roll back some of the more severe repressions of the Park era. However, he faced significant challenges from the military, especially General Chun Doo-hwan. Chun had designs on government, and was willing to resort to violence to get power.

In December of 1979, Chun Doo-hwan, backed up by rebellious regiments, invaded the military headquaters, and arrested the chief of staff and other commanders. This manoeuvre placed him in control of the South Korean military, and thus by extension the nation. While Choi remained as President, he was unable to effectively control the government.

Under Chun's effective rule, Korea was placed under martial law. This led to widespread protests, especially in the south-western city of Gwangju. In this city, the protesters took control of the municipal government buildings, which led to Chun sending in helicopter gunships and tanks in order to take control of the city. 165 protesters were killed and thousands were injured in this campaign, and to this day, Gwangu is the most liberal province in South Korea; liberal presidential candidates regularly receive >90% of the vote.

Following this event, Chun ordered the National Assembly to be dissolved and gave himself a military promotion. In August 1980, President Choi finally decided to end the charade and resigned, thus allowing Chun to ascend to the Presidency. Chun was elected with 99.99% of the vote by the National Conference for Unification (who else?), and decided to write a new constitution.

The Fourth Republican constitution had been less of a constitution and more of an attempt to legitimize dictatorial rule by Park. It was the fourth successive constitution in Korean history that had never seen a peaceful change in government (also, the fourth constitution overall-such a strange coincidence!). The excessive powers that it gave to an unaccountable president and central government, while designed to ensure economic growth, created public dissent and a government that ignored public input. Park's removal was a case of someone who lived by the sword dying by the sword, and under a democratic constitution, he would have been removed painlessly.

The new Constitution

Chun Doo-hwan was by no means interested in democracy. However, the fierce protests against Park and himself at Gwangju were signs that the Korean public were interested in having a say in their governance. As a result, he was forced to write a somewhat more democratic constitution.

Under the new constitution, the President would be elected for a single seven year term, by a new group called the Electoral College. This college was also elected, but the election was designed to give Chun a majority. The president's powers remained mostly intact, but he was no longer allowed to make decrees without the acquiescence of the National Assembly, except in times of war.

The National Assembly would no longer have one-third of its members appointed; two-thirds of the assembly would be elected through single non-transferable vote in two member districts, while one-third would be elected through proportional representation based on the shares of seats for parties. A party had to win five district seats to be eligible for list seats. However, the party that won the most seats in the districts would win two-thirds of these seats, thus giving the government an advantage.

The first elections under the new constitution took place in 1981. Chun Doo-hwan, the candidate of his own right-wing Democratic Justice Party was easily elected President by the Electoral College; he won 4755 votes to 404 for his nearest competitor, Yu Chi-song of the liberal Democratic Korea Party. Two other candidates, Kim Cheong-cheol of the conservative Korea Nationalist Party and Kim Ui-tae of the Korea Unification Party (I'll let you guess their main policy), won 81 and 26 votes respectively.

The National Assembly elections were much more interesting. Held the month after the presidentials, these elections were for 276 seats. The government were represented by the Democratic Justice Party, while the opposition were split into many groups, the major one being the Democratic Korea Party.

The election results were a fairly comfortable win for the Democratic Justice Party, which won 35.6% of the vote and 151 seats (or 54% of the seats). However, it is important to note that the Democratic Justice majority came from their two-thirds of the list seats; they only won 90 of the 184 district seats, and without the two-thirds mechanism they would have won only 138 seats.

If one took away the five-seat threshold, they would lose their majority, and win 136 seats, and using the vote instead of seat shares for calculating the list seats would give them 137 (with threshold) and 129 (without). Nonetheless, Chun saw this as an endorsement of his policies.

The opposition Democratic Korea Party won 21.6% and 81 seats (or 29% of the seats), a fairly low result compared to the New Democrat result in 1978. The single-non transferable system in two-member constituencies gave them an advantage, given that they were the second party. However, their weak performance showed that support for the liberals had been tempered by Chun's reforms.

The third party, the Korean Nationalists, won 13.3% of the vote and 25 seats (9% of the seats); 18 in districts and 7 in the lists. The party did not suffer too badly from being the third party; most of their district seats were won in provinces where they were the second party.

As for the others, the Civil Rights Party (a liberal outfit) won 6.7% of the vote, but only 2 seats (or 0.7% of the seats), presumably due to their inability to qualify for list seats and their support being spread throughout the country. The New Political Party, a vaguely socialist group, won 4.1% and 2 seats, while the obviously socialist Democratic Socialist Party won 2 seats off 3.2% of the vote. The tiny Democratic Farmers Party won 0.8% of the vote and 1 seat.

Chun had good reason to be happy with the results. Not only had he gained some badly needed democratic legitimacy ahead of a potential visit to the United States, he had also got the possibility of the National Assembly blocking his legislation out of the way.

Kim Dae-jung was not doing so well. He was released from house arrest under President Choi, but was locked up for sedition and conspiracy to commit treason after Chun took control. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to twenty years in prison after the United States intervened (coincidentally, Chun was fishing for an invitation to the United States at about the same time). Other former politicians of the Third and Fourth Republics had their civil rights removed during this period.

Chun's second term was relatively uneventful, with the exception of a North Korean bombing in the Burmese city of Yangon that killed several members of his cabinet. Economic growth remained fairly consistent, but democratic development didn't happen at the same pace.

By the time of the 1985 Assembly election, public pressure had grown on the Chun government to move towards democratisation. The government decided to dramatically reduce the list of people forbidden from political activity, in an attempt to satisfy this. The list was reduced by 84, but 14 names remained on it. These included influential opposition leaders Kim Dae-jung, Kim Young-sam, and Kim Jong-pil. The latter had been a powerful figure under President Park who turned democrat (also still conservative) after he was forced out of power.

Despite this, the election attracted significant public interest. Voters turned out in large numbers to listen to candidates speak, especially in the cities where anti-government feeling ran highest. The major benefactor of this was the New Korea Democratic Party, a new party formed by dissidents who had been removed from the list of people forbidden from political activities. During this campaign, a number of taboo issues were discussed, including a number of financial scandals involving Chun.

On election day, the Democratic Justice Party came first, with 35.2% of the vote and 148 seats, a loss of 0.4% of the vote and 3 seats. This wasn't a bad result for Chun, but still showed that he did not have majority support. Again, Chun's majority came from the two-thirds bonus given to the largest party; without this, the government would have only 133 seats, six short of a majority. The New Korea Democratic Party won 29.3% of the vote and 67 seats. This result was weaker than the Democratic Korea result in 1981, but that was with no opposition for the liberal vote.

The Democratic Korea Party collapsed, winning 19.7% of the vote and 35 seats, a loss of 2% of the vote and 35 seats. While their vote did not go down too much, they suffered from being a third party in an electoral system that favours the top two; they won 12.7% of the seats off 19.7% of the vote. Most members of the party bolted to join the New Korea Democratic Party after the  election. The Korea Nationalist Party won 9.2% of the seats and 20 seats; a loss of 4 seats and 4% of the vote.

The result of this election, and the collapse of the DKP, created an effective two-party system in Korea. This meant that Chun faced a somewhat stiffer opposition, and was forced to entirely dismantle the list of people banned from political activities and to meet with the New Korea Democratic Party leadership.

As the end of Chun's term approached, it became clear that,unlike his predecessors, Chun would not seek to 'amend the constitution' to give himself more time in the presidential office. However, it was also made clear that the next presidential elections would not be direct, and that he would hand-pick a successor. In June 1987, Chun revealed this successor to be Roh Tae-woo, a high-ranking military official.

This decision led to widespread protests (surely you saw that coming). In a reaction to this, Roh decided to announce a wide package of reforms. These included the freedom of the press, the release of Kim Dae-jung, and improvements in human rights. In order to do this, a new constitution had to be written, thus ushering in a Sixth Republic.

The Fifth Republic constitution was fairly similar to the Fourth Republic. However, the unwillingness  and inability of Chun to write a completely authoritarian document meant that the government did not have enough power to resist public pressure. The electoral system that gave the largest party in the districts two-thirds of the list seats was a clever invention to give the Democratic Justice Party extra seats with some democratic legitimacy, but it was not enough to keep the government alive.

The Sixth Republic

After his promises, Roh could hardly attempt to row back without massive public outrage. As a result, the constitution of the new republic was one of the most democratic constitutions in Korea's history (not much of an achievement).

The constitution established a presidential system of government, with a directly elected president elected for a five-year term. He could not be re-elected. The president had the power to appoint the cabinet, and nominated a Prime Minister and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, both of who had to be confirmed by the National Assembly. He had the power to submit a budget to the National Assembly, and veto legislation passed. He could initiate legislation.

The National Assembly would be entirely directly elected with a four-year term, and would have no less than 200 members. It had the power to pass legislation, to override presidential vetoes with two-thirds of its membership, and to approve (but not recall) the Prime Minister. They could impeach the President with two-thirds of their membership. 

Amending the constitution required a two-thirds vote of the National Assembly, approval by the President, and a 50%+1 vote in a national referendum with 50% turnout. A special provision applied to amendments dealing with presidential elections; any amendment made to the way the President was elected would not apply to the incumbent President. This was designed to ensure that presidents couldn't fiddle the constitution to give themselves more power.

This referendum was approved by a referendum with a massive margin: 94.4% voted Yes off a 78% turnout. 

The first presidential election took place in 1987. Roh ran for election as the candidate of the Democratic Justice Party, and he faced opposition from three major candidates. Kim Young-sam ran as the candidate of the centre to centre-right Democratic Reunification Party (with 45 seats in the National Assembly), Kim Dae-jung ran as the candidate of the more centrist Peace and Democracy Party, and Kim Jong-pil ran as the candidate of the New Democratic Republican Party (a throwback to Kim's old friend Park's party). 

The observant amongst you may notice that these three Kims are the three leaders of the pro-democracy movement mentioned before. Now, Korean presidential elections take place using the plurality system; the system where voters cast one vote, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Now, the opposition have three candidates, with support distributed between them and the government has one candidate, with all government support for him. This meant that the opposition vote would be split.

This is indeed what happened. On election day, Roh was re-elected with 36.6% of the vote to 28% for Kim Young-sam, 27% for Kim Dae-jung, and 8.1% for Kim Jong-pil. While opposition candidates won 63% of the vote, the opposition did not win the presidency due to this split. 

Legislative elections took place one year later. A new electoral system was used. The single-member plurality system was used to elect 224 members, while a modified party-list system was used for the remaining 75 seats. Under this list system, the largest party in the plurality districts would automatically win 50% of the list seats, and the remaining seats would be allocated between the parties based on their seat shares.

The election results were not good for the Democratic Justice Party. The party lost 21 seats from 1985, falling to 125 seats; 25 short of a majority. Kim Dae-jung's Peace and Democracy Party came second in terms of seats, winning 70 seats, but third in terms of votes, with 19.3%. This was due to the Peace and Democracy votes being dominant in Gwangju and Jeolla, meaning that these votes were more efficiently cast. Kim Young-sam's Democratic Reunification Party won 59 seats, but 23.8% of the vote. Kim Jong-pil's Democratic Republicans won 15.8% and 35 seats, thus cementing their status as the third anti-government party.

Roh pressed ahead with democratic reform, and increased Korea's prominence in the world through the Olympic Games in 1988. However, rather oddly, he did not investigate into corruption committed under the Chun era.

Another key impact of Roh's presidency was the creation of a new party. Roh merged his Democratic Justice Party into Kim Young-sam's Democratic Reunification Party and Kim Jong-pil's New Democratic Republican Party to create the Democratic Liberal Party. This merger gave Roh a majority in the National Assembly, and cemented Kim Dae-jung as the opposition leader.

In 1992, legislative and presidential elections took place. The Democratic Liberals lost 64 seats, falling to 149, which is one short of a majority, and 38.5% of the vote. The Democratic Party (the renamed Peace and Democracy Party) won 97 seats, and 29.2% of the vote. A new entrant on to the scene, the right-wing United People's Party, won 31 seats off 17% of the vote, creating a useful ally for the Democratic Liberals.

In the presidential elections of the same year, Kim Young-sam ran as the Democratic Liberal candidate, and was elected with 42% of the vote. Kim Dae-jung, as the Democrat candidate, won 33.8%. Interestingly, most of his votes came from the provinces of Gwangju and Jeolla (his home), where he won by over 90%, whereas Kim Young-sam's strongest provinces gave him only 70%. Hyundai executive Chung Ju-yung ran as the United People's Party candidate, and won 16.3%. He performed strongest in the north-eastern province of Gangwon.

After this loss, Kim Dae-jung took up a teaching position in the UK, and many thought that it was the end of his political career. However, he returned in 1995 to form a new political party, the National Congress for New Politics (joined by most of the members of the Democratic Party), in order to contest the 1996 legislative elections, presumably in order to test the water for a presidential run.

In the same year, Kim Young-sam renamed his Democratic Liberal Party to the New Korea Party, for no obvious reason (this tends to become a pattern). The electoral system was changed; the 46 list seats were changed to party-list proportional representation based on votes cast separately from the districts. Finally, the United People's Party were renamed the United Liberal Democrats, a party with exactly the same ideology. Kim Jong-pil, who had left the New Korea Party, was made leader of this new party. So, all three political factions (centre-right, liberal, and right-wing) went into the 1996 legislative elections with fresh new names.

The results were fairly inconclusive. The New Korea Party won 139 seats, well short of the 150 needed for a majority, and 34.5% of the vote. Kim Dae-jung's National Congress won 79 seats and 25% of the vote. This was less than the Democrat total in 1992, but that was when the Democrats were the only party on the left. The remaining Democrats won 15 seats and 11.2% of the vote; they split the vote on the left and gave the New Korea Party a number of seats where the liberals had a majority. The United Liberal Democrats won 16.2% of the vote and 50 seats, a strong result that would give them an important role in the next parliament.

Despite the underwhelming result, Kim Dae-jung decided to run for president in 1997 as the candidate of the National Congress for New Politics. This turned out to be fortuitous timing indeed, as the Asian Economic Crisis occurred this year. The New Korea Party changed their name to the Grand National Party, and nominated Prime Minister Lee Hoi-chang. Lee In-je ran as the candidate of the conservative New People's Party, Cho Soon ran as the Democratic nominee, and Kim Jong-pil ran as the United Liberal Democrat candidate.

During the campaign, Kim Jong-pil withdrew in favour of Kim Dae-jung, and Cho Soon withdrew in favour of Lee Hoi-chang. This was a consequence of the plurality system; candidates feared splitting the vote and electing an opposition candidate. Despite this, Lee In-je did not pull out.

On election day, Kim Dae-jung was elected President with 40.3% of the vote to 38.7% for Lee Hoi-chang and 19.3% for Lee Hoi-chang. The result was the first peaceful and democratic transition of power in Korean history. Kim recieved a significant share of his vote from the liberal strongholds of Gwangju and Jeolla, but also comfortably won the cities of Seoul and Incheon, and the north-western province of Chungcheong, a stronghold of Kim Jong-pil.

Dae-jung formed a coalition with Kim Jong-pil in order to have a stronger position in the National Assembly. He introduced a number of economic reforms in order to satisfy the International Monetary Fund's requests, and received loans in exchange for this in order to help solve the problems caused by the Asian Economic Crisis. He arranged a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000.

He also renamed the National Congress for New Politics, calling it the Millennium Democratic Party. A number of conservative politicians joined the new party, and by the time of the 2000 election, the government had 149 seats.

At the 2000 legislative election, the three main parties were led by the same people. Dae-jung faced a somewhat divided electorate, and the results were rather confusing. The National Assembly was reduced to 276 members. The Grand National Party won 39% of the votes and 133 seats. This represented a loss of 6 from 1996, but a gain of 13 from where they had been before the election. They came very close to a majority. Dae-jung's Millennium Democratic Party won 115 seats, a gain of 16, and 36% of the vote. The big loser in the election was the United Liberal Democrats, which won 9.8% of the vote and 17 seats. The strong result for the Grand National Party created a more hostile legislative environment for Kim Dae-jung.

Kim Dae-jung could not run for re-election in 2002, and was replaced by cabinet member Roh Moo-hyun. Roh ran against Lee Hoi-chang, the Grand National candidate, and was very narrowly elected, winning 48.9% to 46.6% for Lee.

Lee's presidential term was a tumultuous one. He created a new liberal political party, the Uri Party (Our Party), composed of loyalists to his government dissatisfied with the amount of support given to Roh by the Millennium Democrats. In 2003, ahead of the National Assembly elections, the Assembly voted 193-2 (Uri members abstained) to impeach Roh for violation of the Constitution, for supporting the Uri Party in parliamentary elections (he is supposed to be impartial). A violent fight in the National Assembly ensued, but the Constitutional Court reinstated him as president.

Voters gave him support in the 2004 legislative election, giving the Uri Party 152 seats out of 299, and 38.3% of the vote. The Grand National Party, under the leadership of Park Chung-hee's daughter Park Geun-hye, won 121 seats and 35.8% of the vote, a fairly weak result. In third place was the left-wing Democratic Labour Party, which won 13% of the vote. However, since their vote was spread across the country, they only won two district seats, and won eight in the proportional tier despite the proportional tier being much smaller.

The Millennium Democratic Party collapsed. Without the backing of the government, and with liberal-minded voters angry at their support for the impeachment of Roh, they won just 7.1% of the vote and 9 seats, all either in the proportional tier or in Kim Dae-jung's home of Jeolla (and even there, they were beaten by the Uri Party).

With this boost to his support, and with control over the National Assembly, Roh introduced a number of controversial policies. The main one was the moving of the capital from Seoul to Chungcheong, which was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court. It was seen as an attempt to buy votes from the region, which voted for the Uri Party in the 2004 elections.

With closer relations with North Korea causing controversy, and the economy slowing, the Uri Party began to collapse. In 2005, the Grand National Party swept by-elections across the country. Roh's approval ratings were tanking, and he aired the possibility of a 'grand coalition' with the Grand National Party. These advances were rebuffed, and Roh was left by himself.

While all this was happening, a change was happening on the left. The Millennium Democratic Party had renamed themselves the Democratic Party (that must have taken ages to think up), and with the discrediting of the Uri Party, the party's stocks were rising. In 2007, the party came second in local elections.

In the same local elections, Uri won only the region of North Jeolla. The Democrats won Gwangju and South Jeolla, and the remaining areas fell to the Grand National Party.

These results meant that the liberals were split, which could mean a massacre at the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections. As a result, later in 2007, the two parties merged to create the even more excitingly named United New Democratic Party. This new coalition held 140 seats in the National Assembly.

In 2007, Roh's term ended. He was ineligible to run for a second term (not that he would be re-elected or re-nominated). Chung Dong-young was comfortably chosen as the United New Democrat nominee (a fairly thankless job, given that the party was heading for defeat), but a closer race took place for the Grand National nomination. Lee Myung-bak, the Mayor of Seoul, ran against Park Geun-hye. Lee was narrowly elected with 49.5% to 48.1% for Park. Lee Hoi-chang ran as an independent to the right of the Grand National Party, which concerned the right that their vote would be split.

However, the Grand Nationals had little to fear. Lee Myung-bak won 48.7% of the vote, to just 26.1% for Chung and 15% for Lee Hoi-chang. Only Jeolla was won by the left, and in Chungcheong Lee Hoi-chang came second.

The new president did not have much control over the National Assembly, but that was only a matter of time. A number of new parties were formed ahead of the election. Lee Hoi-chang formed the Liberty Forward Party, a radical right-wing group, while a group of supporters of Park Geun-hye formed the Pro-Park Coalition.

The Grand National Party won 153 seats, and 37.4% of the proportional vote. This was a comfortable victory, and enough seats to allow the president to implement his agenda. The United New Democratic Party won just 81 seats, and 25.2% of the proportional vote, a very poor result. The small right-wing Liberty Forward Party won 18 seats and 6.84% of the proportional vote, while the Pro-Park Coalition won 13.2% of the proportional vote (but only 3.7% of the district vote) and 14 seats. The good results for the minor right parties gave the Grand National Party some help in the event that they lost members in by-elections.

The Democratic Labour Party won 5.7% and 5 seats. They lost votes due to the creation of the New Progressive Party, which won 2.9% of the vote and no seats. A new liberal party, the Creative Korea Party, won 3 seats and 3.8% of the list vote. In short, the right had much to be happy about after the election. They had total control over the Assembly, and the presidency was held by them.

Lee Myung-bak entered office promising to improve US-Korea relations (which had been weak under Roh). However, he had a serious problem right at the start. In the US, a number of cows had been found with mad cow disease, and imports of US beef to Korea had been stopped. Soon after he was sworn in, imports of US beef were resumed. This met with massive protests, and Lee's approval dropped below 20%.

However, this soon blew over, and Lee returned to normal popularity after his government gained stability. He did not do so well after this, though. There were a number of scandals that reduced his popularity dramatically, and by the end of his term in 2012, the renamed Grand National Party (it was renamed to Saenuri, or New World) was forced to abandon him.

Park Geun-hye led the Saenuri Party into the 2012 legislative election. By strategically sidelining Lee, Park was able to overcome an early lead for the Democratic United Party (the renamed United New Democratic Party; South Korean party names are so wild and zany), to win 152 seats and 42.8% of the vote. The DUP dominated in Seoul and Jeolla, but the government did well across the rest of the country. In the end, the DUP ended up with 127 seats and 36% of the list vote. The United Progressive Party (the renamed Democratic Labour Party) won 10.3% and 13 seats, the strongest result for a left-wing party in Korean history. The Liberty Forward party won just 3.2% of the vote and 5 seats.

This result propelled Park to the presidential nomination for the Presidential election later that year, with 83% of the vote in the primary. National Assemblyman Moon Jae-in ran as the Democratic United Party candidate. The election was hardly close; Park consistently led throughout the campaign. On the day, Park won 51.5% of the vote to 48% for Moon.

In effect, the South Korean Sixth Republic has been a fairly stable constitution, which has been designed to balance a strong president with a consultative assembly. The fairly majoritarian electoral system for the National Assembly, and the need for cohesion in presidential elections, means that Korea has a fairly polarised two-party system. Only recently have the progressives been making inroads, and even then, concerns about the North have led to the United Progressive Party being banned recently (however, the more moderate split Justice Party still exists).

However, the one-term limit for presidents does mean that long-term thinking is harder, and it seems to have been a knee-jerk reaction to dictatorial presidents. It would be sensible for South Korea to consider changing this portion of the constitution in the future. As the Roh Moo-hyun fiasco showed, the power of impeachment needs to be brought closer to the people.

It might also be advisable for South Korea to consider a more proportional system for the National Assembly. Increasing the currently meagre 18% of list seats would help make the President more responsible to the Assembly, as it would be less likely that the President's party would win a majority in the National Assembly with a small share of the vote.