A Study on Changes in Candidate Nomination Systems and Party Democratization of Korean Conservative Parties: Focusing on Nomination Conflict Cases since the 1990s

Abstract

This study asks why nomination conflicts recur in Korean conservative parties. Its central claim is that recurrence stems not from the concentration of nomination authority as such, but from the failure of routinization: formal rules never come to operate independently of the leadership's will. Four general election nominations (2004, 2012, 2016, and 2024) are compared along three dimensions -- institutional, actor-centered, and historical-structural factors. Conflict is reproduced path-dependently through the interaction of these dimensions. The relative calm of 2012 rested on charismatic leadership rather than on autonomous institutional operation, and thus became the structural foundation of later conflict. Moreover, leaders who exercised the strongest control over nominations held office for notably short periods, indicating that concentrated nomination authority does not translate into stable intra-party power. These findings suggest that reform debate should attend less to the absence of rules than to the conversion of existing rules, which are hollowed out without being formally abolished.