Ye-Sora Kweon
Sungkyunkwan University · 社会科学
研究室紹介
Professor Ye-Sora Kweon's research lab specializes in comparative politics, with a focus on political representation, gender politics, and the intersection of identity, inequality, and institutional design. The lab investigates how electoral systems, political institutions, and social identities shape the substantive representation of marginalized groups—particularly women and working-class individuals—across different political contexts. It also explores the role of ideology, group threat perceptions, and issue framing in shaping public attitudes toward social policy and political trust, especially during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The lab employs mixed-methods approaches, including survey experiments, original legislative data, and cross-national comparative analysis, to address pressing questions in democratic governance and equity.
Research Overview
Research Output Trend
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Selected Papers
15Despite increasing efforts to implement legislative gender quotas, many countries still encounter substantial popular opposition to this policy. Previous work cannot explain why opposition to legislative gender quotas persists, particularly among young men, a group believed to be open to diversity. We develop and test a theoretical framework linking group threat to men's attitudes toward legislative gender quotas. While the salience of perceived group threat could trigger men's opposition to leg
How do electoral rules shape the substantive representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? Using an original dataset of introduced and passed bills in the Korean National Assembly, which has both single-member districts and proportional representation, we examine the extent to which institutions condition the relationship between lawmaker gender and the substantive representation of women. While women lawmakers engage in higher levels of substantive representation of women, proportion
Deservingness theory contends that spending on the elderly is widely supported across age groups because, unlike other groups such as immigrants or the unemployed, senior citizens are perceived as morally worthy of social aid. However, through a survey experiment in Japan, a prototypical aging society, this study shows that in a state with a large population of senior citizens, there is a significant age gap in policy preferences with the working-age population demonstrating stronger opposition
Why are there so few working-class women in politics? While white-collar representatives dominate legislatures in general, the deficit of working-class members is particularly pronounced among female politicians. To answer this question, this study examines the influence of class and gender in voter evaluation. Through the cross-country comparison of conjoint experiments in the U.S. and the U.K., we find that working-class backgrounds disadvantage women candidates in a way that they do not disad
Abstract Amid the COVID‐19 pandemic, people have witnessed a deluge of conspiracy theories and disinformation. As the coronavirus poses a significant threat to individuals' lives, these conspiracy theories are dangerous, as they erode public trust and undermine government efforts to fight the virus. This paper examines the political determinants of COVID‐19 conspiracy beliefs. Particularly, we analyze how government policy responses to the pandemic and individuals' ideological predispositions in
Abstract How does women's representation in politics affect working‐class women's attitudes toward political processes? Despite their increasing presence in the workforce, many women continue to concentrate in occupational sectors characterized by high economic vulnerability and low social status. This dynamic has important implications for the politics of representation. Previous studies suggest that women politicians positively affect women voters' political attitudes, but women's representati
While many studies have shown that greater trade openness affects the overall size of social spending, this study emphasizes that it also affects types of social policies that a government prioritizes. When faced with deepening trade competition, governments tend to use different policy measures to address the opportunities and challenges stemming from their economic competitiveness in the international market. Policy makers in countries with high relative labor costs are likely to privilege soc
Since old-age programmes mitigate life-course risks that are relevant to individuals across socio-economic groups in ageing societies, all parties have a political incentive to support these initiatives. Nevertheless, pre-existing partisan commitments bind the policy instruments that parties use. Cabinet-level analyses of OECD economies demonstrate that left incumbency relies more on public expenditure than right-wing governments. What is more important is that, in the context of large elderly p
Abstract Existing research often interprets the limited impact of candidate gender on vote choice as evidence of minimal gender bias in politics. However, this overlooks the dual role of candidate gender, as both a heuristic for substantive representation and a trigger for sexism in voter decision-making. These competing mechanisms can diminish the effects of each other, obscuring the true influence of gender bias in electoral behavior. Using conjoint experiments in South Korea, a context where
"What Money Can Buy: Perceived Economic Security in China" The Journal of Contemporary China
Many studies emphasize the authoritarian bargain to explain why authoritarian regimes develop social welfare in the absence of democratic accountability. Increased welfare support enhances economic security and, in turn, strengthens public support for the regime. However, few studies have empirically demonstrated the core part of the underlying mechanism that welfare support leads to reduced economic insecurity in non-democratic regimes. By analyzing survey data from China, this study examines h