SDF

Hannes B. Mosler received his PhD from Seoul National University, where he conducted research on the decision-making process that resulted in the abolishment of Korea’s local party chapter system. His research focuses mainly on political party and electoral systems, power structures, constitutions and constitutional reform, democratic citizenship education, democracy, populism, and the politics of memory. Major publications include “Changing Korean politics without taking power? The presidential power trap three years after impeachment”(2022), “Constitutional Court as a Facilitator of Fundamental Rights Claiming in South Korea,” (2021), <Politics of Memory in Korea>(Ed., 2021), <South Korea's Democracy Challenge>(Ed., 2020), and <The Quality of Democracy in Korea>(Eds., 2018). He is currently a professor in the Institute for East Asian Studies (IN-EAST) at Universitat Duisburg-Essen.

Democracy is at once a philosophy, a methodology, and a collective way of life by which we are able to pursue happiness. The quality of democracy in practice depends on the availability of valid political institutions and a mature civic consciousness. Accordingly, in addition to efforts to reform the political institutions that guide and shape people’s behavior and attitudes, concurrent and mutually complementary efforts must be made to cultivate and strengthen a mature civic consciousness, whereby such institutions are continuously improved, as citizens not only understand how such institutions work and but also take initiative to make the best use of them. In Korea, political party law and electoral law are two political institutions in especially urgent need of reform. Political party law is in need of reform given current constraints on party organization as well as the party-based democratic process following the abolishment of local party chapters in 2004. As for electoral law, reforms in 2019 weakened the proportional representation system. It is necessary to restore this system and implement stronger proportional representation to enable greater diversity in the legislature and strengthen their representative function.

Professor, Institute for Political Science, Institute of East Asian Studies, Universitat Duisburg-Essen
Former Professor, Graduate School for East Asian Studies (GEAS), Freie Universitat Berlin
Former Researcher, Institute for Korean Studies (IKS), Freie Universitat Berlin