EAI Governance Studies Working Paper No. 2

Author
Kon-Su Yi is a senior research fellow of the Center for Governance Research at the East Asia Institute. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Public Administration at Daegu University. He received his Ph.D in Public Administration from Daegu University and his research interests include Public Governance and Social Policy Studies. His latest concern is how to explain presidential approval in South Korea from the political-economic perspective. He published numerous articles, and his recent publications includes “Environmental Change Surrounding Local Governments and Welfare Spending,” “The Politics of GMO Regulation in the EU,” “An Analysis of the Factors influencing Presidential Approval after the First Year of the Lee Myungbak Administration,” “The Characteristics of the Local Government and the Public Social Expenditure,” “Political-economic Determinants of Public Trust in Government.”

Abstract

Presidential approval indicates public evaluation of the president’s job performance and reflects public satisfaction level on the current administration. Therefore, high presidential approval is a driving force for good governance. The primary purpose of this paper is to explore determinants of Myung-bak Lee’s presidential approval by applying a political-economic model that includes economic and non-economic variables. The findings can be summarized as follows: the economy matters for presidential approval; however, political determinants tend to have stronger influence than economic determinants on presidential approval in Korea. The results of this research suggest that when the president obtains visible economic performance recognizable to the public, presidential approval will substantially increase; Then, President Lee could be recognized as the “Economy President.”

Keywords: Presidential approval, Myung-bak Lee, Economic Perception

Introduction

Presidential approval indicates the public evaluation of a president’s job performance, and reflects the level of public satisfaction on major policies that the president promotes. In a democratic society, the public support for the president is the political foundation for steering state affairs, and at the same time it exerts a great influence on the president’s leadership. High presidential approval has positive effects on the president’s performance, whereas low approval can dampen the president’s activities and further plans (Ka 2005, 154-156). In order to resolve many contending economic and social issues that South Korea confronts, President Myung-bak Lee’s active policy drive is needed with strong public support.

Nonetheless, President Lee’s job approval rating over the first two years of his presidency has remained low with only an average of 30-40 percent. This is in stark contrast to the trends in the United States, where the former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were able to maintain their approval ratings around 50 percent even under unfavorable circumstances, such as war, scandals and economic depressions. The possible reasons for Lee’s low approval rating has been analyzed on various levels; issues regarding personnel management since his inauguration, a lack of political leadership, resistance from citizens, aggravation of the economic crisis triggered by the 2008 global financial crisis, and various disputable issues regarding the Four River Restoration Project and Sejong City. But most of them are journalistic explanations rather than academic or empirical ones (Yi 2009).

In cases of developed countries in the West, studies on presidential approval have been strongly combined with the analysis of presidential elections. However, in Korea an academic approach for presidential approval is nearly nonexistent. This may be due to the fact that a long period of authoritarianism, ideological conflict and regionalism after the democratization in the 1990s made it difficult to come up with various explanations of presidential approval. Nevertheless, many public opinion polls taken after the Roh Moo-hyun administration have demonstrated a meaningful change, that public preferences have been diversified in ideological and regional dimensions. In fact, the most significant feature of the 17th presidential election was that the focus on economic issues exceeded all the other problems, playing the critical role as a determinant of the outcome of the election. Some authors have explained the analysis of presidential elections to show that economic factors have a significant influence on voter’s choice (Jeong 2007; Kwon 2008; Lee 2008).

As a matter of fact, economic factors have been the strongest explanation for presidential approval in the United States or Western Europe after Mueller’s study in 1970 (Davis and Langley 1995). However, in developing or underdeveloped countries with fragile democratic political system and poor economic performance, political explanations have been more profoundly given than economic ones. Recently in Korea, some authors analyzed election results using an economic voting model which focuses on the voter’s perceptions of the economy, although it has not yet been widely used in explaining presidential approval. Thus, I will attempt to address to what extent economic factors have influenced presidential approval. Especially, during the presidential election campaign President Lee was primarily perceived by the public as an “Economy President” who was believed to have more potential to solve the domestic economic problems than other candidates. In this respect, it will be interesting to examine whether or not the public perception toward national economy plays a critical role in evaluating presidential performance. If this is the case, the question of to what degree economic perception does affect presidential approval needs to be adequately discussed. Consequently, the analysis of economic factors of presidential approval will be meaningful in apprehending the public support of Lee.

In this context, the objective of this study is to analyze factors that determine the presidential approval with a primary focus on economic factors. To do so, this study employed the economic voting model for analysis. The study will be conducted in the following procedure: First, I will consider whether it is possible to use economic factors to explain presidential approval, and examine non-economic factors that have been discussed in relevant literatures as potential explanatory variables. Second, based on the theoretical discussion about presidential approval, I will design an analysis model in which economic and non-economic factors are combined. Third, I will verify influencing factors for explaining presidential approval by utilizing polling data. Fourth, I will discuss practical and theoretical implications of presidential approval based on the findings.

Theoretical Discussion about Presidential Approval

Since Muller (1970)’s findings, most studies of presidential approval have been centered on aggregate trends, and in particular they have focused attention on the causal relationship among events, economy, form of media coverage, time, and other main variables (Druckman and Homes 2004). In these researches, the explanatory variables of presidential approval are mainly divided into economic and non-economic factors...(Continued)