An Exploratory Study on the Opinion-Policy Link in South Korea

Discussions on the way representative democracy functions focus on the question of how often policy decisions are in agreement with the preferences of the mass public. However, there have been few attempts to answer this question in South Korea. The purpose of this exploratory study is to contribute to the development of empirical research on the opinion-policy link by investigating the association between public opinion and policy outcomes in South Korea. Using the results of restricted surveys conducted by the government of South Korea from 1995 through 2020, public opinion was compared with actual policy outcomes in terms of policy congruence and responsiveness. Overall, about two-thirds of the cases demonstrate that policy outcomes are consistent with majority opinion. While control of government, level of public support, and issue salience did not significantly affect the degree of policy congruence and policy responsiveness, there was some significant variation in congruence and responsiveness among policy areas. This exploratory finding that public desires are not perfectly satisfied, but the political system substantially produces policy outcomes that the public want requires future work to reveal the mechanism of the opinion-policy link as well as an in-depth discussion on the normative ideal of democracy against which the level of policy representation can be assessed.