Politicians' Contentious and Institutional Responses to Scandals in their Party: Experimental Evidence from South Korea.

How do politicians react to political crises that significantly impact the quality and image of their parties? And how does the public perceive and evaluate these different responses by politicians? This paper draws on Hirschman (1970)'s seminal concepts of exit, voice, and loyalty to examine which strategy - leaving the party or trying to fix the problem within the party - is perceived as being more responsive to the electorate. Using an experimental survey design, we explore this question in the context of the recent political scandal in South Korea surrounding former President Park Geun-hye, which has generated heterogeneous response from the ruling Saenuri Party (SP) politicians. In the aftermath of the scandal, some SP politicians voiced their concerns by participating in anti-Park protests and/or making statements that criticized Park, while others exited the SP and created a new party called the Bareun Party. The remaining SP members decided to change its party name to Liberty Korea Party to dissociate themselves from Park's corruption scandal.

In post-transition South Korea (1987-present), there is no salient cleavage and parties and party leaders hold inconsistent and often contradictory positions given the impediments to party development under military rule (1961-1988) and bigger role played by civil society (and lesser role played by the opposition parties) during the democratic transition process (Wong, 2015). Whenever these parties foresaw or experienced an electoral setback, they responded with party merges, splits, and name changes to create a new image and secure new voters. The main conservative party, which is an authoritarian successor party (Loxton, 2015), has changed its name around 10 times while the main progressive (center-left) party (currently the Minjoo Party) has changed its identity 20 times since 1955 (The Wall Street Journal, 2016). While scholars have documented the volatility of party system in South Korea (e.g., Wong 2015; Choi 2012), to our knowledge, no study as actually examined the public perceptions of such strategies. If these tactics offer an effective way for politicians to distance themselves from a party with a deteriorating brand and preserve personal reputation, then arguably voters might be providing incentives for politicians to pursue strategies that further weaken the party system.