One of the most amusing aspects of democracy in Asia is the brawling that regularly breaks out in its parliaments. Taiwan and South Korea are the worst. A recent story in Foreign Policy captured this; money quote: “a Taiwanese minister proposed that legislators be made to take a breathalyzer test before entering debate.” Hah!!
And here are a few You Tube vids that will make you laugh. Be sure not to miss the Taiwanese legislator who gets a trash can put on his head. Great stuff.
TAIWAN
SOUTH KOREA
A good question though is why this happens. We all giggle about it when we teach out here, but still it is a good empirical question that no one answers. So after so discussion with my PNU colleagues in public administration and political science, here are three hypotheses. Some enterprising grad students should test them and write this paper.
1. Institutions: Asian legislature are institutionally weak, so who cares what they do?
2. Culture: Confucianism’s strong stress on social harmony means that politics is understood as a one-shot, zero-sum game. Democracy allows losers to come back and play the game another day. Confucian desires to present public harmony mean that losers perceive their defeat to be permanent, hence they fight to the bitter end.
3. Utility: Opposition riots help discredit the government. The Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party apparently used to stage its brawls as tool to embarrass the Kuomintang.
To Koreans’ credit, when I went to the Korean Political Science Association conference in August 2009, two of the highlight speakers addressed this issue. Korean political science seems genuinely and increasingly concerned the Korean democratization seems to be stagnating. Korean parties do not appear to be maturing into stable, serious alternatives. Nor does Korean political culture seem to be moving beyond parliamentary brawling and corruption as fast as Koreans would like.
Robert E Kelly 
What with all the Asian martial arts out there, the answer may be that more Asian legislators actually know how to throw a punch, whereas most Americans don’t.
On the other hand, Harry Reid used to be a boxer. But that requires gloves. Martial arts don’t.
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You are right, exactly. They are not politicians. It would be better to push them into K-1 or UFC. “Watch out, UFC fighters. Korean politicians have no rules, they often use hammer, even saw.”
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I felt ashamed when I see those ridiculious things as one of young korean..
They just pursue their benefit of parties… I hope they know it makes to look away people’s interesting from politics.
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If I were a Korean, I woudl be embarassed too but not too much. It is somewhat amusing in its own way.
More important though is WHY Taiwanese and South Korean legislators do this. They must clearly know that brawling like this will show up on the news and get international coverage. There are obvious reputational costs to this – for Korea generally, for the Korean National Assembly, and the individual MP. So what are the benefits?
As I mention in my post, this is a great research topic for master’s thesis. I only presented a few causal possibilities.
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