Publications
Publications
Peer Reviewed (SSCI)
Hover or tap a title below to read the abstract.
Forthcoming — "Delegating Democracy Away? Martial Law Support in South Korea."
Political Research Quarterly (accepted).
2026 — "Who Supports Martial Law in a Democracy? Lessons from South Korea."On 3 December 2024, South Korea experienced an unprecedented political crisis when the president declared martial law. While the declaration was rapidly reversed and condemned by key democratic institutions, public opinion did not converge on rejection. Instead, support for—and tolerance of—the measure persisted among a nontrivial share of citizens. Why, in a democracy with functioning institutions, are some citizens willing to accept extraordinary executive measures? Using original nationwide survey data, this research shows that public support for martial law is strongly associated with affective polarization. Individuals who express strong partisan and leader-based affective alignment with the incumbent are significantly more likely to accept martial law, while those polarized in the opposite direction overwhelmingly reject it. The findings suggest that affective polarization can align evaluations of executive overreach with partisan loyalties, weakening normative constraints even in consolidated democracies where institutional safeguards continue to function effectively.
Political Studies. DOI
2026 — "Public Satisfaction with Democracy: The Role of the Economy and Political Institutions."This study examines the relationship between economic performance and citizens' satisfaction with democracy (SWD), emphasizing the moderating role of clarity of responsibility (CoR)—the extent to which political institutions enable voters to identify who is accountable for policy outcomes. While prior research offers mixed empirical evidence on the economic determinants of SWD, we argue that this inconsistency can be explained by variation in institutional clarity. Drawing on insights from the economic voting literature, we develop a theoretical framework positing that the economy has a stronger impact on democratic satisfaction in contexts where responsibility is clearly assigned. Using cross-national data from 30 democracies over three decades, and a refined measure of CoR, we find that economic effects on SWD are significantly amplified in high-clarity systems. These findings highlight the importance of institutional context in shaping how citizens evaluate the functioning of democratic governance.
European Political Science Review, 18(2): 276–296. DOI
2026 — "Populism, Ideology, and the Endorsement of Martial Law: A Conditional Relationship."As democratic institutions around the world confront rising authoritarian pressures, the imperative to understand when and how citizens justify illiberal governance has increased. This study investigates how ideological orientations condition the relationship between populist attitudes and public support for martial law, drawing on the unprecedented 2024 declaration of martial law in South Korea as a focal case. Using original, nationally representative survey data, we find that populist attitudes do not uniformly predict support for martial law; rather, their influence is fundamentally shaped by respondents' ideological leanings. Among citizens with strong populist orientations, those on the ideological right exhibit a significantly greater propensity to endorse martial law, whereas their counterparts on the left display pronounced resistance to such authoritarian measures. These findings highlight the ideologically contingent nature of populist attitudes and show how populism can serve to either legitimize or challenge authoritarianism, depending on individuals' ideological orientations.
Government & Opposition, 61(e10): 1–26. DOI
2025 — "The Relative Economy and Political Support: The Moderating Role of Clarity of Responsibility."This paper examines how relative economic perceptions—judgements of how one's country is doing compared to others—correspond to citizens' political support. Using original survey data from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, we analyse how clarity of responsibility (CoR) conditions the relationship between relative economic evaluations and support for governing authorities. The results show that more favourable relative economic perceptions are associated with higher levels of political support, and that CoR strengthens these associations. Taken together, the findings suggest that citizens' cross-national economic benchmarks—filtered through their perceptions of governmental responsibility—serve as important cues shaping political confidence in East Asian democracies.
Political Science, 77(2–3): 244–262. DOI
2025 — "Public Support for Government and Leaders during the COVID-19 Crisis: A Comparative Study of East Asian Countries."This paper investigates how COVID-19 anxiety and public evaluations of government crisis management relate to executive approval rates and trust in government in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Contrary to expectations from previous studies, we find no significant relationship between COVID-19 anxiety and changes in trust or executive approval. However, there is a consistent positive association between citizens' evaluations of their government's crisis management and increased levels of public support across all three countries. This study broadens the geographical scope of COVID-19-related research by exploring public attitudes in East Asia, contributing to the understanding of how government responses to crises relate to public trust and evaluations of political leaders.
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 37(3): 1–22. DOI
2025 — "When do Agents Deliver the Vote? A Vote-Popularity Function in Electoral Manipulations."Existing research primarily delves into the demand side of electoral manipulation, focusing on the conditions prompting political elites to rig the process. Recent studies have shifted focus towards the supply side, employing the principal-agent approach to investigate how agents engage in election tampering based on their principals' likelihood of success. While this perspective has highlighted the role of agents in determining manipulation intensity, gaps remain in understanding how they predict their principals' victory and strategically decide on active or passive manipulation. Our argument centres on agents using the economy as a critical indicator of their principals' electoral prospects. A strong economy boosts incumbents' chances of success and their vote share, prompting agents to be more blatant in engaging in electoral misconduct, leading to heightened manipulation. Analysing 1278 multiparty elections across 94 countries since the 1900s, our findings suggest that incumbent electoral prospects correlate with economic indicators and significantly influence the scale of electoral manipulation.
Democratization, 32(2): 243–269. DOI
2024 — "Benchmarking the Pandemic: How do Citizens React to Domestic COVID-19 Conditions Compared to Other Countries."This study examines how relative policy performance against the spread of COVID-19 corresponds to citizens' political support. We argue that citizens form political attitude using relative COVID-19 assessments with other governments. We also examine the extent to which relative comparative assessments are likely among sophisticated voters. Using original survey data from South Korea in April 2020, we found that a relatively positive evaluation of incumbent performance corresponds to higher political support. This paper is well situated in the existing literature as it shows that voters who benchmark the performance of other countries make an informed decision regarding their political support.
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 34(2): 191–211. DOI With appendix
2023 — "How does Economic Openness affect the Relative Economic Voting?"Contrary to conventional wisdom, globalization strengthens the linkage between the economy (across-border benchmarked measures) and vote choice, thereby facilitating electoral accountability by enriching the information available to the public. In the pre-globalization era, ordinary citizens had difficulty assessing domestic economic conditions in a comparative setting, in part because they were less exposed to information concerning other countries' economic performance. However, globalization has provided citizens with excellent sources for comparisons in the form of media coverage. Moreover, openness results in a reduction in relative variance of exogenous rather than competence shocks. Using media-guided comparisons from 29 countries since the 1980s, this study finds that relative economic performance significantly affects citizens' vote choices when their economy is highly integrated into the world market.
European Political Science Review, 15(4): 561–581. DOI Supplementary
2023 — "How does a Relative Economy affect Voter Turnout?"Existing studies offer conflicting analyses of the effect of the economy on voter turnout; some studies suggest that a poor economy leads to lower turnout while other studies find the opposite, or no significant effects. One reason for this ambiguity might be rooted in a limited understanding of how voters form attitudes about economic performance. Previous research implicitly presumes that voters' economic assessments are based solely on information about the retrospective domestic economy. In contrast, this study suggests that voters compare their nation's economy with the economies of other nations. If the economy has an effect on turnout, the relative economy will affect voters' evaluations, and consequently their decision to turn out. Employing 'relative economy' variables measured by media-identified spatial reference points across elections and countries from 29 democracies since the 1980s, this paper finds that a poor relative economy leads to lower turnout, while a good relative economy appears to have no effect. The finding has significant implications for the electoral effect of turnout, and thus on democratic accountability.
Political Behavior, 45(3): 855–875. DOI Supplementary Replication
2022 — "Armed and Dangerous: Legacies of Incumbent-Military Ties and Electoral Violence in Africa."While a growing literature explores the danger that authoritarian military legacies pose for regime breakdown, there is little research on the effects of similar legacies in the context of multiparty politics. This is an important gap in the literature since in many cases the introduction of formal democratic institutions has led to neither democratic consolidation nor regime breakdown. We start exploring this lacuna by developing a theory that links the use of violent electoral tactics to the ties of the executive with the authoritarian era's military. We argue that incumbents with close ties to the authoritarian regime's military are more likely to instigate election violence. Empirical tests on a sample of 230 elections in 39 African countries since 1974 show that election violence is more prevalent in countries where such ties exist. These findings speak to several areas of study, including those on election violence, and on military legacies.
Electoral Studies, 80 (102531). DOI Appendix Replication
2020 — "Should We Talk about the Weather? How Party Competition and Coalition Participation Influence Parties' Attention to Economic Issues."Media narratives of political campaigns paint a complex picture of parties carefully selecting communication strategies in response to the current social and economic climate as well as the strategic choices made by rival parties. Current empirical efforts based on simple ordinary least squares, however, fail to honor those complexities. We argue that ignoring the spatial and temporal dynamics at play produces misleading inferences about parties' behavior. In an application of German parties' attention to economic issues in official communications, we demonstrate that once scholars test the theories with a method that honors the inherent complexity of the process, the inferences about parties' degree of responsiveness change. Indeed, proper specification of the model shows that scholars who ignore spatial dependence tend to overstate the degree to which parties are responsive to changing conditions and understate the role of other constraints. Most notably, we find that parties have varying levels of path dependence, parties emulate the strategies used by ideological neighbors, and coalition partners appear to coordinate their strategies.
Party Politics, 26(6): 730–743. DOI Replication
2019 — "Compared to What? Media-guided Reference Points & Relative Economic Voting."The idea of the relative economy, or benchmarking economic voting, has been around for a long time. However, the choice of international benchmark(s) remains underspecified, especially in cross-national and time-series studies. This paper argues that the selection process of benchmark(s) should be guided by the theory suggesting that voters benchmark countries that are similar, familiar, and connected, and that media guide voters to appreciate these reference points. Using domestic media coverage from Lexis-Nexis spanning 22 languages, 29 democracies, and over 30 years, this research identifies the unique reference points across time and space. Analysis of this novel dataset shows that voters react strongly to relative economic performance when they make vote choices. Moreover, the benchmarking effects become more pronounced with highly educated populations, but are not affected by clarity of responsibility.
Electoral Studies, 62(102085). DOI & supplementary Replication
2019 — "How do Sanctions Affect Incumbent Electoral Performance?"How do sanctions affect incumbent electoral performance during elections? Although existing literature suggests that sanctions may shorten or prolong incumbent tenure, we are less informed about their role in incumbent electoral fortunes. This research argues that sanctions hurt incumbents' vote shares because citizens are more likely to hold their elected officials accountable for sanction-induced economic hardships and political instabilities. It also argues that the electoral punishment is pronounced in less democratic countries because sanctions, together with elections, significantly limit dictator's co-optation strategy and open a greater window of opportunity for once repressed opposition groups in a repressive regime. Using 381 multiparty elections in seventy-nine countries between 1972 and 2012, this research finds that sanctions deteriorate the incumbent electoral performance, and they do so for autocratic leaders more than the democratic leaders.
Political Research Quarterly, 72(3): 744–759. DOI Supplementary Replication
2019 — "Who is Responsible? The Effect of Clarity of Responsibility on Voter Turnout?"Does voters' ability to discern who is responsible for policy outcomes affect voter turnout? Although particular institutional arrangements which influence this ability – known as clarity of responsibility – appear to affect how voters form retrospective judgements, existing literature is less informed about its role on voter turnout. This article argues that voters tend to turn out less if they cannot discern who is responsible for policy outcomes. This lack of clarity hinders the process of retrospective evaluations, makes the electoral stakes less profound, and dampens the voters' political efficacy. Using 396 elections in 34 established democracies between 1960 and 2015, it is found that lower clarity of responsibility is associated with lower voter turnout. This study highlights the importance of clarity of responsibility, as it enhances democratic accountability, not only by encouraging retrospective voting, but also by increasing political participation.
West European Politics, 42(3): 464–494. DOI Replication
2019 — "The 'Most Important Problem' Dataset (MIPD): A New Dataset on American Issue Importance."This article introduces the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD). The MIPD provides individual-level responses by Americans to "most important problem" questions from 1939 to 2015 coded into 58 different problem categories. The MIPD also contains individual-level information on demographics, economic evaluations, partisan preferences, approval and party competencies. This dataset can help answer questions about how the public prioritizes all problems, domestic and foreign, and we demonstrate how these data can shed light on how circumstances influence foreign policy attentiveness. Our exploratory analysis of foreign policy issue attention reveals some notable patterns: foreign policy issues rarely eclipse economic issues on the public's problem agenda, so diversionary efforts to shift attention from poor economic performance are unlikely to succeed in the long term, and partisan identification does not appear to motivate partisans to prioritize different problems.
Conflict Management and Peace Science, 36(3): 312–335. DOI Data
2019 — "Do the Welfare Benefits Weaken the Economic Vote? A Cross-National Analysis of the Welfare State and Economic Voting."Comparative economic voting studies have found great instability in economic voting across countries and over time. In explaining this instability, we highlight the role of welfare systems because strong welfare protection attenuates voters' incentives to base their vote on government economic performance. By analyzing 174 legislature elections in 31 OECD countries from 1980 to 2010, and by taking into account clarity of responsibility, we find that welfare protection weakens the linkage between macroeconomic outcomes and incumbent electoral fortunes. This result implies that strong welfare protection enables politicians to avoid blame for economic failures.
International Political Science Review, 40(1): 108–125. DOI
Chapter in Edited Volume
2026 — "정서적 양극화와 외교안보에 대한 유권자 인식과 태도."
국익을 설계하다: 한국형 초당외교의 모색, Ed. 서정건, 박영사.
2023 — "Economics, Politics, and Popularity Function: Past, Present and Future."
Economics and Politics Revisited: Executive Approval and the New Calculus of Support, Eds. Timothy Hellwig & Matthew M. Singer, Oxford University Press.
2017 — "The VP-Function: A Review."
The SAGE Handbook of Electoral Behaviour, 2v. Eds. Kai Arzheimer, Jocelyn Evans & Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Sage Publications. DOI
Peer Reviewed (Korean Journal)
2026 — "How does Globalization affect Democratic Accountability? Relative Economy, Executive Approval and Globalization."
Journal of Future Politics, 16(1): 1–14.
2024 — "시민예측(Citizen Forecasting)으로 본 2024 미국 대선 전망."
미국학논집, 56(2): 129–151.
2024 — "2024 미국 대선 예측 모형: 유용성과 한계."
미국학논집, 56(2): 49–74.
Best Paper Award — The American Studies Association of Korea, 2025
2021 — "The Effects of Voters' Relative Evaluations of Government Response to COVID-19 on Government Trust, Satisfaction of Democracy, and National Pride in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan."
Korean Party Studies Review, 20(52): 132–165. DOI
2019 — "Electoral Competitiveness and Perceived Election Quality: Unraveling the Mediational Role of District-level Turnout in the 2016 Korean Legislative Election."
Journal of Future Politics, 9(2): 31–61. DOI