The Political Institutional Matrix—Identifying Access and Veto Opportunities

Abstract

Wereas scholars of democratic consolidation have addressed institutional change and the challenges it involves (e.g., Petras et al., 1994; Kang, 2003), analysts of the gender dynamics of democracy have tended to focus on problems of “institutional inertia” (Craske, 1999), “the return to politics as usual” (Jaquette and Wolchik, 1998), or even “masculinist politics” (Moon, 2003). Although such approaches make a valuable contribution to the democratic consolidation literature by (re)constructing citizenship as a fundamentally gendered process, they too often fail to unpack the state and provide a disaggregated analysis of the concrete problems that historically specific institutions represent.

State structures and policies that regulate and mediate gender, race, and class relations of power in society are hardly immutable … Changes in political regimes—in the institutions that structure the relationship between State and society—may open up new opportunities for some women to influence policy formulation and implementation.

Alvarez, 1990: 272

The unique characteristic of our country is that there really is no significant policy difference between the ruling and opposition parties—there are no true conservatives or progressives in Korea, even in the case of women’s policy.

Kang H., 2000 interview