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This research explores the influences of ideology and nationalism on education reforms in South and North Korea through a comparative historical analysis of education reforms during the transition period from Japanese colonialism to the period of US and Soviet military government control. Ideas of modern education and nationalism had already emerged among Koreans before 1945 when they achieved independence from Japanese colonization. In this sense, during the US and Soviet military regimes, education reforms were conducted in light of already existing efforts for nation-building by indigenous Korean leaders. The hopes and desires of the leaders of the two Koreas, as expressed by their adoption of new ideologies within the newly established military governments, represented a clear break from the past--be that Japanese colonialism or Confucian traditionalism--and a firm determination to change the present for the future in accordance with these ideologies. In the field of education, this change occurred with the introduction of John Dewey's liberal educational philosophy to rebuild the education system in South Korea, and with the adoption of socialist educational philosophies such as polytechnicism and collectivism in North Korea.

While the negative effect of partisanship on electoral accountability has been assumed in established Western democracies, its empirical test has been rare, especially for postcommunist democracies whose democratization processes are so distinct that their partisanship might deliver different political impacts from their Western counterparts. Through individual- and aggregate-level regressions, I find that partisanship, in general, does hurt electoral accountability at both levels. From a comparative perspective, the individual-level tests reveal that such a negative effect of partisanship has been more salient among the postcommunist voters with fewer electoral resources to rely on than among the Western voters whose abilities to hold the government accountable are stronger. At the aggregate level, however, this tendency becomes reversed as any increase in partisanship beyond its current relatively high level may induce the over-institutionalization of the Western party systems restricting electoral accountability, while it could rather help to stabilize the postcommunist party systems making it easier for voters to discern which political group is accountable for policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]