지방선거와 정당참여 = 지역주의 정당경쟁과 광역의회의 활동

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The issue of party involvement in local elections depends on its political role in compositions and activities of local government. Until recent, however, the negative views on party involvement in local elections have prevailed due to moral hazards produced in the illegal nomination and campaign process. Some critics, therefore, argue that exclusion of party label in local elections will enhance autonomy of local government with strengthening its administrative status. However, the self-governance in local or provincial levels can not be confined to administrative domain. It is also a political domain, which authoritatively distributes values. In this vein, this paper examines the issue of party involvement in local electoral process, with regards to relationship between party competition under regionalism and productive capacity of local assembly. Particularly, the structure of party politics lies at the heart of this paper. That is, this paper investigates how productive capacity of local assemblies is influenced by partisan elements such as partisanship of provincial governors and mayors, the presence of independently elected members, and monopoly rate of assembly seats by regional parties. The empirical results tell us that when party competition rate is high, then the production capacity of local assembly increases, while the opposite results come out, if assembly seats are monopolized by certain regional parties. In other words, this paper finds that legislation and government-checking activities carried out by local assemblies are increased where parties are highly competitive in local political process. This result gives an important implication to party nomination system in the local campaign process. That is, we may be wrong if we try to find an alternative through normative or moral prescriptions against ill effects of party politics in local areas. Rather, this paper implies that in order to recover political normality, the regionally based party structure should be dissolved through serious efforts from both politicians and electorate.