President or parliament? Korea needs to pick a democratic system and stick with it.

(Anyone who slept through poli sci 101 might find this post desperately dull. So, you might want to just check in again tomorrow.)

One of the things that can quickly confuse casual observers of Korean politics (like yours truly), is the choice of terms used to describe the political structure of the Kuk Hoe (Korea's "parliament").

I remember back before the April 15 elections that Our Open Party (OOP) was referred to by the media as the "de-facto ruling party." "Ruling" because it was the party that everyone knew President Roh Moo-hyun planned to join and "de facto" because he hadn't joined it yet. The OOP was called the ruling party despite the fact that it only had something like 20% of the Kuk Hoe's seats.

There seems to be some confusion about how Korea's government is structured. In fact, I think that the people who created Korea's current government structures were confused as to what kind of system they wanted.

Now that confusion has come back to bite Roh in the butt.

First, let's come to terms

The terms ruling party, ruling coalition (or ruling camp) and opposition party are generally associated with parliamentary systems. A party which has the majority in a parliamentary system can rightly be called the ruling party because they control the legislature and select the nation's chief executive, the prime minister. New Labour is the ruling party in Britain while the Congress is the leading party in India's new ruling coalition. Paliamentary systems usually have a head of state (president or king) who serves mainly as a figurehead.

However, in a presidential system (in which the head of state is elected separately from the legislature and has real power) the divided nature of government power makes it difficult to refer to parties as "ruling" or "opposition." For most of his presidency, Democrat Bill Clinton had to work with a Republican-controlled Congress. So which was the "ruling" party; the Democrats who controlled the executive branch or the Republicans who controlled the legislature? So the terms "ruling" and "opposition" for parties don't really aplly in a presidential system and the parties are usually referred to as "majority" and "minority."

So what system does Korea have?

Here is how I believe the system works in Korea (I'm sure someone will gleefully enlighten me if I am wrong):

The legislature (Kuk Hoe) and the president are elected separately. The president can't dissolve the legislature and the president's party can't replace him. The president recommends the prime minister, who must be approved by the Kuk Hoe. In turn, the prime minister makes nominations to the cabinet. Those nominations must also be approved by the Kuk Hoe. In practice, the prime minister nominates whomever the president wants.

Let's see what we have here:

1. Separately elected president and legislature? Check
2. President's party can't replace him as head of state? Check
3. President can't dissolve the Kuk Hoe and call for new elections? Check
(BTW, item #3 is important because it distinguishes a presidential system from a hybrid system like the one in France.)

So, it would seem that Korea has a presidential system. But it is a presidential system with parliamentary window dressing. Part of the window dressing is structural, like having a prime minister nominate cabinet members for the president. Part of the window dressing in mental, like the habit in the media of referring to the president's party as "ruling" even when it has a minority in the Kuk Hoe.

So what's the problem?

But even window dressing can have consequences. Now we have this:

The Munhwa Ilbo reported Monday that Prime Minister Goh Kun has refused President Roh's request to name nominees to three cabinet posts and plans to hand in his resignation today.
Accordingly, it seems that the cabinet reshuffle, which Roh initially intended to carry out this week, will take place after the 17th National Assembly convenes and approves the appointment of a new prime minister.

In particular, the paper reported that Goh was much opposed to naming Uri Party lawmaker Kim Geun-tae as welfare minister, and with the delay in the cabinet shakeup, Roh's second administration is being put on the test table.

Goh has a point. If my understanding is correct, an outgoing prime minister (who may be resigning under duress) could nominate cabinet members that the president doesn't want. If the Kuk Hoe happened to be in opposition hands, then the president could be stuck with them, at least for a while.

The prime minister in the Korean system is basically an unnecessary additional level of bureaucracy. That is a direct consequence of trying to apply parliamentary window dressing to a presidential system. Another consequence is confusion in the media and government about how the system works, not the least of which was Roh's call for a vote of confidence on his administration last year (such things are not generally done in a presidential system).

So, I think that one of the first orders of business of the 17th National Assembly should be the structural reform of Korea's government. They need to decide what kind of system they want and make adjustments to Korea's system accordingly.

Further Reading

Here are a couple of interesting links if you are interesting in comparative democratic government structures:

This site gives a nice overview of the presidential, parliamentary and hybrid systems. It gives a link to Fred W. Riggs' home page, which as a lot of interesting articles on comparative democracy. Finally, Elections around the World gives a brief overview of the government and the latest election results from "around the world."

Comments

[KimcheeGI]

Yangban,
This is a great post. Keep up the good work.

Charlie

[KimcheeGI]

Oh,
And I forgot to mention the other thing that just makes it "window dressing" is the fact that Korea's PM isn't a member of the National Assembly. That would be the clincher, and make it a true parliamentary system.

So basically my take on this is he's President's glorified Executive Officer.

[Sperwer]

I haven't double-checked this, but I don't believe that Korea's system requires that cabinet members must be nominated by the prime minister; that's simply been a kind of tradition - part of the eyewash to try to obscure the truly frightening scope of official and unofficial power that the Korean presidency enjoys with the illusion of consensus-making.

So from a strictly legal(istic) point of view, nothing has sunk its teeth in Roh's ass.

On the other hand, assuming (as I think one ought to) that with Goh (as it were) Kun, Roh now is going to go ahead and nominate himself whom he likes to his cabinet, it's likely to elicit a new round of whingeing from the GNP and what's left of the MDP about his imperiousness.

This seems deeply ironic to me, because I believe that Roh is honestly trying to whittle the office of presidency down in size a bit - well, pretty substantially -- and, most importantly, to constrain it within the bounds of the law.

That's the reason for a lot of the unpresidential behaviour of which his critics in various quarters complain - although there's clearly been some out and out blundering.

Doubly ironically, it's also behind his much more important provocation of the impeachment by violating the election laws - in a remarkably trivial (and transparent) way, especially in comparison with the grotesque and shrouded defalcations of his predecessors, including the sainted KDJ of the bought and paid for summit/nobel. In other words, it's possible that Roh deliberately broke the law in a more or less symbolic fashion in order to provide an occasion for the Constitutional Court to make a ruling, like the US's Marbury v. Madison, that the President and his acts are subject to both the law and the power of the Court to adjudicate them.

Part of Roh's project it seems to me is to put the Korean presidency's feet back on terra firma by making it clear that the president is after all just another politician, albeit first among them for as long as he can keep his innings going.

Since even otherwise intelligent and rather cynically-experienced Koreans, e.g., the Seoul Searcher, Cho Se-Hyun, seem to be laboring under the old spell that their leaders ought to be above "mere" politics and imbued with the Mandate of Heaven, Roh would leave a great legacy if he demolished once and for all their atavistic yearning for a shaman-king.

[Paul H.]

Good and educational post for us dullsville poli sci types, particularly ones who never studied detailed Asian history and specialized poli sci in college but have a college-level general interest.

I particularly appreciate your care in being tentative about those things you're not absolutely sure of -- the sign of a honest man. Thanks Yangban.