The Democratic Breakout in South Korea: An Informal Game-Theoretic Account

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ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 17, No. 2, Fall-Winter 1993, pp. 39-70 THE DEMOCRATIC BREAKOUT IN SOUTH KOREA: AN INFORMAL GAME-THEORETIC ACCOUNT* Larry L. Wade and SungJin Kang Game theory is applicable to the study of those social phe­ nomena in which there are agents striving for their own advantage but not in control of all the variables on which the outcome depends (Morgenstern, 1968: 68). The introduction of more legitimate and democratic politi­ cal and social institutions and practices (minjuhua) in the Republic of Korea received dramatic impetus over the period 1987-1992 as the old governing elites' control over segments of society and polity greatly weakened. The process was multi­ faceted, involving the emergence of civil society organizations on a significant scale, the advent of a vigorous and questioning mass media, the relaxation of governmental control of the econ­ omy, and—the primary focus of this article—major changes in electoral systems, political parties and competition, and politi­ cal outcomes (Lee, 1992). The importance of these and related developments for the vitality and stability of Korean democracy are widely recognized, although an understanding of their full significance must await further scholarly investigation. * The first author would like to acknowledge the institutional and collegial support received from the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam Univer­ sity through its Summer Fellowship Program. 40 Larry L. Wade & SungJin Kang The aim of this article is to offer a systematic but necessarily schematic explanation of conflict and cooperation between gov­ ernment and opposition in the Korean polity from Liberation to the presidential election of 1992 and to assess their conse­ quences for democratic development. Our treatment of these matters is quite different from those dominant in the literature (Henderson, 1968; Hahmn, 1975: 321-355), which tend to assume that Korean politics is derivative of cultural and histori­ cal particularities. We acknowledge the importance of these often sophisticated studies, but suggest that much can also be learned from adopting quite dissimilar (on in some cases more explicit) assumptions about political behavior. Theoretical Perspective We adopt an informal game-theoretic approach in analyz­ ing certain critical events which for many years stalemated and later cumulatively transformed the Korean political system.1 It differs not only from cultural approaches but from the few other rational-choice efforts that have been made to explain selected aspects of recent developments.2 Specifically, we pro­ pose that games with different properties, payoffs, and connec­ tions were played at pivotal decision points. We suggest further that Korean politics prior to 1987 can be understood in great part as a series of repetitive single-shot games in which the 1. We have termed our's an informal interpretation since an explicit account with fully-articulated game trees is not yet possible, particularly for the more recent period. In time, memoirs or interviews with principal players or knowl­ edgeable observers of the events discussed here may yield more insight into the nature and content of the games to which we refer. Korean politics is verv subtle, if not uniquely so, and no insistent explication of certain events under discussion, game-theoretic or otherwise, can be accepted uncritically, at least until more confessional material is available and historians have done their work. 2. To be sure, the assumption of rationality is not essential to game theory (Morgenstern, 1968: 62; Axelrod, 1984: 18), since strategies may be derived from any source, thinking or otherwise, e.g., from conventions, instincts, or unreflective emotions. Tsebelis (1990: 17-47), however, makes a persuasive argument for its analytical utility, and this would seem especially apt when the focus is on sophisticated politicians interacting over time within institutions. The Democratic Breakout in South Korea 41 potential mutual gains from iterated games within institutions and their implications for democratic practice went generally unrealized. From 1987 to 1992, however, we view the first-order or "main" games of Korean politics not as single-shots, but as iterated or extensive games, which made possible their transfor­ mation by means of contingent or correlated strategies into dif­ ferent types of games with variable payoffs. We conclude that games of mutual cooperation began to replace the zero-sum games that had previously...