Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:41:36.220Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Testing legislative shirking in a new setting: the case of lame duck sessions in the Korean National Assembly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2018

Bon Sang Koo ,
Junseok Kim  and
Jun Young Choi
Bon Sang Koo
Affiliation:
Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies, Korea
Junseok Kim
Affiliation:
Dongguk University, Korea
Jun Young Choi*
Affiliation:
Inha University, Korea
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper aims to test two types of legislative shirking in a new democracy, South Korea. Using the lame-duck sessions of the Korean National Assembly, we test whether a legislator shirks in voting participation and in voting decisions. We weave two competing motivations of legislative shirking in voting participation – that to secure more leisure time and that to utilize the last, valuable voting opportunity – into a synthetic hypothesis and test it with two-part hurdle models. To test a shirking in voting participation hypothesis, we analyze legislators’ choices on bills that are supposedly related to the interests of constituents or political parties. Empirical results strongly support our shirking in voting participation claims, while only partial evidence is found on shirking in voting decisions. The findings suggest that, besides the trade-off between labor and leisure, some legislators deem the lame-duck sessions an opportunity to express their own preferences unconstrained.

Keywords

Legislative shirkinglame-duck sessionstwo-part hurdle modelsthe Korean National Assembly
Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 33 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Co-corresponding author.

References

Bender, B and Lott, J (1994) Legislator voting and shirking: a critical review of the literature. Public Choice 87, 67–100.Google Scholar
Berry, W, Golder, M and Milton, D (2012) Legislator voting and shirking. Journal of Politics 74, 653–671.Google Scholar
Brambor, T, Clark, W and Golder, M (2006) Understanding interaction models: improving empirical analysis. Political Analysis 14, 63–82.Google Scholar
Carey, J, Niemi, R, Powell, L and Moncrief, G (2006) The effects of term limits on state legislatures: a new survey of the 50 states. Legislative Studies Quarterly 31, 105–134.Google Scholar
Carson, JL, Crespin, MH, Jenkins, JA and Vander Wielen, RJ (2004) Shirking in the contemporary congress: a reappraisal. Political Analysis 12, 176–179.Google Scholar
Clark, JH and Williams, R (2014) Parties, term limits, and representation in the U.S. States. American Politics Research 42, 171–193.Google Scholar
Clark, WR, Gilligan, M and Golder, M (2006) A simple multivariate test for asymmetric hypotheses. Political Analysis 14, 311–331.Google Scholar
Elling, RC (1982) Ideological change in the U.S. Senate: time and electoral responsiveness. Legislative Studies Quarterly 7, 75–92.Google Scholar
Farbmacher, H (2011) Estimation of hurdle models for overdispersed count data. Stata Journal 11, 82–94.Google Scholar
Fukumoto, K and Matsuo, A (2015) The effects of election proximity on participatory shirking: the staggered-term chamber as a laboratory. Legislative Studies Quarterly 40, 599–625.Google Scholar
Goodman, C and Nokken, TP (2004) Lame duck legislators and consideration of the ship subsidy bill of 1922. American Political Research 32, 465–489.Google Scholar
Hilbe, JM (2011) Negative Binomial Regression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hix, S and Jun, H (2009) Party behaviour in the parliamentary arena: the case of the Korean national assembly. Party Politics 15, 667–694.Google Scholar
Jenkins, JA and Nokken, TP (2008 a) Legislative shirking in the pre-twentieth amendment era: presidential influence, party power, and lame-duck sessions of congress, 1877-1933. Studies in American Political Development 22, 111–140.Google Scholar
Jenkins, JA and Nokken, TP (2008 b) Partisanship, the electoral connection, and lame-duck sessions of congress, 1877-2006. Journal of Politics 70, 450–465.Google Scholar
Jenkins, JA, Crespin, MH and Carson, JL (2005) Parties as procedural coalitions in congress: an examination of differing career tracks. Legislative Studies Quarterly 30, 365–389.Google Scholar
Jeon, J (2010) Party cohesion of the 18th national assembly. Korean Party Studies Review 9, 119–139 (in Korean).Google Scholar
Jun, H and Hix, S (2010) Electoral systems, political career paths and legislative behavior: evidence from South Korea's mixed-member system. Japanese Journal of Political Science 11, 153–171.Google Scholar
Kalt, JP and Zupan, MA (1984) Capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics. American Economic Review 74, 279–300.Google Scholar
Lawrence, CN (2007) Of shirking, outliers, and statistical artifacts: lame-duck legislators and support for impeachment. Political Research Quarterly 60, 159–162.Google Scholar
Lee, K and Lee, H (2011) Partisan influence on congressional voting: in cases of the 17th Korean national assembly. Journal of Korean Politics 20, 1–27 (in Korean).Google Scholar
Lott, J (1987) Political cheating. Public Choice 52, 169–187.Google Scholar
Lott, J (1990) Attendance rates, political shirking, and the effect of post-elective office employment. Economic Inquiry 18, 133–150.Google Scholar
Lott, J and Bronas, S (1993) Time series evidence on shirking in the U.S. House of Representatives. Public Choice 76, 125–149.Google Scholar
Lott, J and Reed, R (1989) Shirking and sorting in a political market with finite-lived politicians. Public Choice 61, 75–96.Google Scholar
Martínez-Espineira, R (2006) A box-cox double-hurdle model of wildlife valuation: the citizen's perspective. Ecological Economics 58, 192–208.Google Scholar
Min, Y and Agresti, A (2002) Modeling nonnegative data with clumping at zero: a survey. Journal of Iranian Statistical Society 1, 7–33.Google Scholar
Mullay, J (1986) Specification and testing of some modified count data models. Journal of Econometrics 33, 341–365.Google Scholar
Nemoto, K, Krauss, E and Pekkanen, R (2008) Policy dissension and party discipline: the July 2005 vote on postal privatization in Japan. British Journal of Political Science 38, 499–525.Google Scholar
Nokken, TP (2013) Uncertainty and roll-call voting in lame-duck sessions of the U.S. House, 1969–2010. Legislative Studies Quarterly 38, 571–591.Google Scholar
Nokken, TP (2014) Comparing agenda content and roll-call behaviour in regular and lame-duck sessions of the house of representatives, 1879–2010. Journal of Legislative Studies 20, 430–450.Google Scholar
Parker, GR and Choi, J (2006) Barriers to competition and the effect on political shirking. Public Choice 126, 297–315.Google Scholar
Parker, GR and Dabros, MS (2012) Last-period problems in legislatures. Public Choice 151, 789–806.Google Scholar
Peltzman, S (1984) Constituent interest and congressional voting. Journal of Law and Economics 27, 181–210.Google Scholar
Poole, K and Romer, T (1993) Ideology, ‘shirking’, and representation. Public Choice 77, 185–196.Google Scholar
Poole, K and Rosenthal, H (1997) Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rich, T (2013) Party voting cohesion in mixed member legislative systems: evidence from Korea and Taiwan. Legislative Studies Quarterly 39, 113–135.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, LS and Sanders, MS (1999) Rational abstention and the congressional vote choice. Economics and Politics 11, 311–340.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, LS and Sanders, MS (2000 a) Lame-duck politics: impeding departure and the votes on impeachment. Political Research Quarterly 53, 523–536.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, LS and Sanders, MS (2000 b) Severing the electoral connection: shirking in the contemporary congress. American Journal of Political Science 44, 316–325.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, LS and Sanders, MS (2004). Reply to shirking in the contemporary congress: a reappraisal. Political Analysis 12, 191–195.Google Scholar
Shin, J (2013) Voter demands, access to resources, and party switching: evidence from the South Korean national assembly, 1988–2008. Japanese Journal of Political Science 14, 453–472.Google Scholar
Shin, J and Lee, H (2017) Legislative voting behavior in the regional party system: an analysis of roll-call votes in the South Korean national assembly, 2008–8. Government and Opposition 52, 437–459.Google Scholar
Vanbeek, J (1991) Does the decision to retire increase the amount of political shirking? Public Finance Quarterly 19, 444–456.Google Scholar
Wright, G (2007) Do term limits affect legislative roll call voting? Representation, polarization, and participation. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 7, 256–280.Google Scholar
Yakovlev, P (2007) Ideology, shirking, and the incumbency advantage in the U.S. House of representatives. Economic Bulletin 33, 1–6.Google Scholar