
South Korea Does Impeachment Right - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-12/south-korea-does-impeachment-right
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schoen
This essay didn't seem to take a very strong position on the relative
importance of the president's unpopularity vs. violating the law vs. abuse of
power. (Is the South Korean system good because it lets _unpopular_ presidents
be removed, or because it makes credible determinations, or because it shows
that politicians aren't above the law...?)

The article does allude to the way that a lot of calls for impeachment are
strongly politically polarized from the outset. If the ultimate argument
behind the impeachment process is "we don't like this president or his or her
policies", a recall election or referendum process might be more honest.

I imagine many high officials from many different parties in many different
countries often do things that could be viewed as abusive of their power in
some way. Is impeachment a useful check on that? Would there ever be a way to
persuade partisans that it's not bad or embarrassing to have your party member
punished for official misconduct?

Maybe for a lot of people political ideology includes an idea that the other
side is inherently corrupt and untrustworthy (not just honestly mistaken,
holding different values, or representing different legitimate interests). In
that case, trying to hold people accountable for official misconduct gets
charged with an extra significance in rival political narratives: we have to
impeach this person because it will help prove how corrupt their party is, or
we can't let this person be impeached because it will wrongly taint our party
with the stigma of corruption!

I read someone's analysis that strong partisanship tends to empower
politicians to act with fewer restraints and less scrutiny. Maybe that was one
reason, because it's less plausible to get a broad consensus in a polarized
environment that a particular action was wrong.

