K-Coup and its Limits: Popular Sovereignty, Civic Virtue, and Political Science Blind Spots
When abrupt, consequential political events happen, we tend to have recourse to the general to explain the particular. That is, we use models and heuristics as tools for understanding a novel, often unexpected phenomenon. In politics especially, we employ theories for this purpose. This is both necessary—theory is unavoidable, as it allows us to construct a framework for what is perceived as relevant information/data deserving attention—and valuable for comprehending mechanisms of events. If X is often correlated with Y in context Z, and there occurs a series of new events similar to X in a situation resembling Z, then exploring the potential role of something like Y in those new events is warranted.
Beyond hot takes and description of the facts, much analysis of the December 3 martial law declaration (and its aftermath) by South Korean president Yoon Seok Yul has been a textbook application of general theoretical principles to help understand the particular situation and events in South Korea. For instance, scholars have applied theories of self-coups, the psychology of leaders in isolated information bubbles, and democratic resilience as frameworks for understanding what happened on December 3 and during the ensuing political chaos. Perhaps the best of this approach has been from Aurel Croissant, who astutely analyzes South Korea’s “reactive” versus “preventive” democratic resilience. Inter alia, he concludes that South Korea demonstrates high levels of citizen activism to “re-equilibrate” democracy after it breaks down, while the country’s mechanisms for preventing democratic backsliding are weak and dysfunctional.
Certainly this is valuable work, but as important as it is to understand a particular event through the application of general theoretical principles, it is also important to go in the opposite analytical direction. That is, the facts of a particular case should be analyzed to help us update or modify our concepts and theoretical models. In the case of South Korea, Yoon’s self-coup attempt and the reaction to it may have something to contribute to our understanding of important notions in political science. There are numerous possibilities, but two stand out. First, Yoon’s attempted self-coup provides a data point about the concept of sovereignty, namely that authoritarian efforts to subvert popular sovereignty may increasingly rely on mimicking liberal rhetoric and co-opting or sidelining the legislature (rather than the military, as is more traditionally the case). And second, Yoon’s black swan decision to decree martial law illustrates how political science has weaknesses in terms of factoring the behavior of individuals (especially outliers), rather than systemic variables, into its models.
Rule of Law or Godwin’s Law? Yoon Suk Schmitt, Sovereignty, and the State of Exception
First, Yoon’s self-coup attempt clarifies some things about the contestation of sovereignty—one of the oldest political concepts—in the contemporary era. Beyond Yoon’s formal decree of martial law in the service of a self-coup lies something more profound: a usurpation of sovereignty. The foundation of both the power and legitimacy of democracy—regardless of variant of regime, government, election system, etc.—is popular sovereignty. In fact, this notion is inherent in the word democracy: in Greek, “demos” means “people” and “kratos” translates as “power.” Despite his rhetoric justifying martial law as a restoration of liberal democratic sovereignty, Yoon in fact subverted democracy by appealing to a different, illiberal form of sovereignty, one defined more than a century ago by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. In response to the question “Who is the sovereign?” Schmitt (in)famously answered: “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception.”[1]
Yoon’s martial law declaration, ostensibly on the basis of national emergency, was precisely a decision to announce the imposition of a “state of exception,” the annulment of constitutional processes and protections, suspension of the power of the legislature, and arrogation to himself (and the military under his command) of all political and executive power for a period of his determination. Fundamentally, Yoon tried to make himself the sovereign in South Korea. That he failed to do so was the result of contestation, the re-assertion of popular sovereignty as the rejection of Yoon’s state of exception and the demand to the return of constitutional order. This re-assertion of popular sovereignty occurred through mobilization of both citizen masses (on the streets) and their legislative representatives in the National Assembly, who refused the forceful suspension of the legislature and convened to overturn the martial law decree.
So, what might the particular South Korean experience of the state of exception tell us about sovereignty more generally? At least three things seem possible. First, leader efforts at self-coups—the suspension of popular sovereignty—may increasingly be based on populist rhetoric and disingenuous ideological appeal to upholding liberal values. This was precisely Yoon’s rhetoric, which invoked “legislative dictatorship,” anti-liberal (and pro-North Korea) communist forces, and supposed election fraud as justifications for martial law. It is noteworthy that US president Donald Trump’s January 6 self-coup attempt (via overturning the 2020 presidential election, and thus thwarting popular sovereignty as expressed through voting) was based on supposed election fraud as well. Deploying liberal rhetoric to legitimate a self-coup driven by a state of exception to cause a shift from popular sovereignty to autocratic sovereignty is an innovation, as more classically this shift is justified through fear (often of outside threats) and appeals to a need for the supposed higher good of state security that the autocrat can provide.
Second, the contestation of sovereignty—popular versus autocratic—in the contemporary world may heavily involve the role of the legislature. This is in contrast to how we typically think of the state institutions involved in contested coups and self-coups: historically the primary actor supporting or hindering the coup leader is usually the military (or paramilitary), and the main determinate of success is whether or not armed forces are sufficiently unified in supporting the overturning of the status quo. Certainly, the military played an important role in Yoon’s self-coup (with elements both supporting and undermining Yoon), but in the case of South Korea, the National Assembly managed to convene to revoke the martial law order before it was blocked from doing so, and thus overcame the state of exception and maintained the popular nature of sovereignty. Again, it is noteworthy the significant role played by the legislature during the January 6 self-coup attempt by Trump (which was unorthodox in featuring no military role at all). It was US Congress that Trump encouraged to invalidate the presidential election results, and it was Congress that refused and instead voted to uphold the Electoral College result confirming Joe Biden as president-elect.
Third, in modern democracies, rapid[2] autocratic usurpation of sovereignty from the people may be harder than in previous eras. The historical, archetypal execution of a state of exception involves (inter alia) control over information outlets, a task which is considerably more difficult in today’s internet-connected and distributed world of digital devices, variegated information platforms, and social media. South Korea on December 3 was a case in point, as both the National Assembly and general population communicated instantaneously to share information and coordinate strategies (legislative and popular, respectively) to re-assert popular sovereignty in the face of Yoon’s attempt to assert autocratic sovereignty through imposing a state of exception.
South Korean Democracy: Institutions, Civic Virtue, and the Government the People Deserve
A second major thing that South Korea’s particular martial law experience can tell us about general political concepts relates to a sub-discipline of political science known as comparative politics. Comparative politics studies the world’s political systems by comparing their various features—regime type, election methods, governance structure and output, etc. across geography and historical time. The key word in this definition is “system.” Political scientists like to examine systems—institutions, structures, decision-making processes, political norms and culture, party landscape—because they are measurable, persistent, and consistent over time. In short, these factors reduce the messy inscrutability of individual humans and outlier events.
This is understandable from a social scientific perspective, but it can also be misleading. South Korea’s K-coup experience reflects this by reminding us individuals matter. In the wake of Yoon’s self-coup attempt, South Korea has been correctly praised for the reactive resilience of some of its political institutions (National Assembly procedures for lifting martial law, constitutional impeachment process, etc.), while other political institutions (an “imperial” presidency, a corrupt and gerontocratic party landscape, partisan and toxic political media) have also been correctly criticized for their lack of resilience in preventing Yoon and his co-conspirators from nearly usurping popular sovereignty (and thus placing South Korea under the stress of needing reactive resilience in the first place). But as important as South Korea’s institutional systems are, at base the self-coup attempt by Yoon and his cabal was a product of their individual moral, psychological, intellectual/judgment, and dispositional failures.
One notes also that South Korea’s left-oriented opposition—especially Democratic Party leader Lee Jae Myung, Reform Party leader Cho Kuk, and a host of others—has also shown a massive failure of integrity and a propensity for malfeasance. Despite their important role ending martial law, they are not heroes of South Korean democracy, as international media have intimated. Cho Kuk is currently imprisoned for fraud. Lee Jae Myung—the Democratic Party favorite to run in the next presidential election unless disqualified—has been convicted of violating election law and faces numerous ongoing criminal cases for corruption. In short, there are a staggering number of unfit politicians—power hungry, venal, and corrupt—in South Korean government and politics. South Korea’s party and election systems have allowed these people to attain power, and South Koreans have voted them into office. In democracies, the people get the government they deserve.
South Korea’s K-coup experience—and its fallout—demonstrates that no system of institutions can ever be perfect, which means that politics is ultimately reliant on the civic virtue of politicians and the individual voters who elect them. This civic virtue is hard for political science to theorize, measure, and test. But developing better tools to this end is important, if political scientists want to improve understanding of and prediction about its objects of study. South Korea is the perfect exemplar of this hard truth: South Korea’s political systems and institutions are well understood, yet almost no one (and certainly not political scientists) predicted Yoon’s self-coup attempt, which will likely lead to significant consequences for inter-Korean relations, the US-South Korea alliance, and East Asian geopolitics.
Mencken, Churchill, and the Way Forward for South Korea
“Democracy,” quipped H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” For the optimist, this classic ironic statement of the travails of democratic societies pairs well with Churchill’s famous dictum that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Democratic South Korea has put itself in a frightful situation through electing Yoon Seok Yul, which is perhaps a symptom of decay as much as a cause, considering that South Korea’s democratic credentials have been weakening for nearly a decade. Political reform both of institutions—curtailing the “imperial presidency” and modifying martial law provisions; improving political party structures; preparing for a world of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and other tools for manipulating public opinion[3]; etc.—and civic virtue among individual politicians and the general public is critical to South Korea remaining strong domestically and in the face of growing threats from North Korea, China, Russia, and other malign actors.
Whether or not South Korea succeeds at this is currently an open question. If it does, perhaps political science as a discipline can learn something from South Korea’s potential positive evolution, just as it should learn something from its disastrous flirtation with the state of exception.
- [1]
Carl Schmitt. 1922. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (trans. by G. Schwab, University of Chicago Press. Chicago: 2005). The precise quote is: “Souveraen ist, wer ueber den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet.” The word “Ausnahmezustand” (“state of exception”) is noteworthy. It literally means the “state/condition of having taken out,” in this case the “state/condition of having taken [the state] out” of its regular constitutional order and into a situation of what Schmitt called “provisional dictatorship.” In the case of Yoon’s martial law decree, his actions invoked such an “Ausnahmezustand” rather than a simple state of emergency to be handled through constitutional means.
- [2]
Slow descent into democratic regression (e.g., Hungary) may be more prevalent, however.
- [3]
It is noteworthy how, increasingly, partisans on the South Korea left and right now get their political news from online and social media ecosystems that are driven by baseless conspiracy theories and the monetization of increased polarization and radicalization.