Election plays a role of the main street to represent the rights and opinions of people as well as realize the ideal of democracy. To elect political and administrative representatives is a legal way to execute citizens' rights and an important way to participate in the national decision making process. Therefore, the election process shall be fair and the freedom of the election campaign shall be guaranteed.
Although it has already been a half century since western democracy was introduced to us, the backwardness such as illegal behaviors during the election campaign is an obstacle against national development.
In this paper, the backwardness in election culture was reviewed focusing on concurrent local elections, which are the source of grass-root democracy. It classified the factors of the backwardness as environmental, instrumental and behavioral, and analyzed them. It also proposed how to regulate illegal electoral behaviors in terms of regulative policy in order to establish a desirable election culture.
In the Second Chapter, a theoretical review on local election campaigns and regulations on illegal behaviors, local election campaign history, the methods and regulation types of election campaigns and the methods and regulation types of election campaigns in other countries were reviewed respectively, and then compared with those in Korea.
In the Third Chapter, illegal behaviors in local election campaigns were reviewed. At first, illegal behavior types were analyzed. Experiential samples including literature and survey method were used for the analysis. From the analysis results, there are still backward election behaviors such as provision of gifts and treats, criticism and black rumor during the campaign, although election culture is being improved. These illegal electoral behaviors are being performed secretly and intelligently in the real world but there are no effective regulations or prohibitions. Voters do not show their citizens I consciousness and additionally, the too regulative election campaign instrument has its own . internal problems, too.
In the Fourth Chapter, following three actions were proposed to regulate the illegal election campaigns and establish desirable election culture based on status review and evaluation results.
First of all, following are the proposals in terms of environments.
First, we need to innovate our backward election culture. To do this, we need efforts of the authority, observation of the citizens, remove sarcastic negligence (which is epidemic in our society), wrong perception and instruments that can regulate election campaigns based on localism. We need to try to make election as the field of policy competition.
Second, in order to enforce the role of election related NGOs, they shall enhance their own capabilities by securing purity, autonomy and morality and need to unite each other to respond to the agenda systematically.
Third, we need fairness, truthfulness and effectiveness of journalism. Media shall play the role of a. public discussion field where political parties. or candidates make their issues or opinions public as well as monitor illegal election campaigns. Besides, they shall provide information on candidates including their policies and public pledges so that voters can judge . them objectively.
Following are the instrumental improvement proposals.
First, we need to improve the regulative election campaign methods to rational and reasonable ones.
Second, we need to construct a monitoring and controlling system against illegal election campaigns and operate the 'Controlling Team' flexibly according to the period.
Third, to resolve problems such as localism, .overheated election and too many resignations during the election under small electoral district instrument, city and province elections shall be changed into Medium Electoral District and Gu, Si and Gun election shall be changed into Large Electoral District.
Fourth, it is the issue of political party innovation. To establish policy competition between political parties, politics by political parties should be established first. Maturity of politics by political parties is a prerequisite. to establish fair election.
Fifth, we need to establish fairness and justice with regard to regulation.
Strong' will of the president and practice of fair election, strict enforcement of prosecutors and police, enforcement of roles and functions of the Election Management Committee and effective regulation of the Justice Party are needed to guarantee the effectiveness of the law.
In the dimension of behavior, political parties, candidates. arid electoral related people shall have the law observance habit and there shall be consciousness innovation among voters based on citizenship and ownership in place.
Although it is focused on the regulation of illegal election campaigns, freedom of the campaign shall not be overly restricted. To establish a desirable election culture, strong will and practice of the regulation subject, election law observation of political parties, candidates and election related people and citizenship and ownership of the voters should be in place. In particular, election culture improvement cannot be realized with temporal and shortsighted prescription but in the comprehensive level including politics, economy, society, culture and education. Therefore it shall be considered as an important task in long term policy making.