This book offers an insightful view of South Korea's democratization and democracy, providing yet another buoy for scholars to navigate the country's dynamic developments. There is, of course, already a wide array of literature on the Third Wave paragon, ranging from accounts that explain its alleged “defects” by alluding to culturalist arguments of too authoritarian beliefs and norms, a simply too young democracy, and the haunting legacies dating back to the republic's beginning and its “counterrevolutionary state-building project” (p. 9). Drawing on the last strand, Mobrand directs the reader's attention to a pattern he finds most compelling in explaining South Korea's particular manifestation of postdemocracy: the political elite's continuous efforts to limit access to the institutionalized political arena under the pretext of a covertly “antiparticipatory electoral ethos” (p. 101). Mobrand pinpoints the Park Chung-hee regime (1961–79), and in particular the year 1963, as the crossroads where political elites, under the name of “Korean-style democracy,” adopted a course they have been steering since, which, Mobrand argues, is responsible for inhibiting more fundamental democratic development even today. The main features of what he calls the “1963 system” consist of “a truncated political sphere, agreement between the main parties to limit access from third parties, and an elaborate set of legal regulations,” such as “laws on campaigning and party registration, constitutional limits on political assembly, the Political Parties Act, the election commission, and the electoral system” (p. 10).

It is well known that the authoritarian leadership of the early 1960s modernized, systemized, and consolidated political institutions for efficient and effective top-down governing, and that at the turn to formal democracy in 1987, constitutional reforms were merely going back to 1963. Nevertheless, Mobrand with his book stimulates discussion of South Korea's contemporary political history by putting the focus between the “1948 system,” which stressed the legacy of the US military government in Korea's Cold War interests that concurred with those of the conservative domestic elite (i.e., former collaborators with the Japanese occupiers), and the “1987 system,” which emphasized the defining power of the political elite‘s constitutional design only at the turn to formal democracy.

The book is organized into six chapters in addition to the introduction and the conclusion. After laying out the establishment of “The 1963 System,” in chapter 2 (“De-authoritarianization”), Mobrand discusses the developments around 1987, describing how civil society forces built up sufficient pressure against the authoritarian government and eventually were excluded from the ensuing limited reforms, and how the institution of the Central Election Management Commission (CEMC) continued to promote an exclusive, antiparticipatory electoral regime.

In the next chapter (“Practicing Top-Down Democracy”), Mobrand identifies regionalist voting mobilization, party internal control through authoritarian decision-making structures (e.g., candidate selection procedures), and cartelizing legislation by political parties in parliament (e.g., the Political Party Act [PPA] and Political Office Election Act [PEA]) as major instruments of the political elites for domesticating South Korea's democracy.

Subsequent developments beginning at the dawn of the new century are described in chapter 4 as a delicate participatory turn with an emerging civic movement increasingly counterbalancing the political class's monopoly over the institutionalized political arena and attempting to break parties’ insulation from the feedback-loop input by citizens in the form of more inclusive decision-making structures (e.g., open primaries, balloting). This “Participatory Moment,” however, was indeed only a moment, and many of the innovations were quickly made ineffective again after the authoritarian “Backlash” (chapter 5), which had begun under liberal president Roh Moo-hyun around 2004: already restrictive party regulations were further tightened; parties’ grassroots organizations were abolished; a general trend of judicialization of politics set in; and party leaders started taking back control over internal balloting procedures. This rollback was again made under the pretext of making democracy more efficient (sic!), but in fact served to re-empower political elites by increasing party internal and external cartelization. Based on this critical assessment of antiparticipatory institutional design and practices, Mobrand in chapter 6 (“Rethinking Democratization”) proposes reforms of the PPA, PEA, and CEMC, as well as party internal decision-making structures, as a way of “daring more democracy” (Brandt) in South Korea.

The strength of the book, which revisits one of the most debated issues in South Korea—democratization and democracy—lies in drawing attention to the crucial factor of agency of the political elites actively insulating themselves from challenges inside and outside their power vehicles (i.e., political parties), as well as introducing quite a range of important domestic scholars’ arguments on the topic to a non-Korean speaking audience in the field. In so doing, Mobrand also contributes to demystifying Western-centric explanations for “deficiencies” in South Korea's democracy, while at the same time, he relates the context-dependent manifestations to universal patterns such as party cartelization and postdemocracy, thereby suggesting a more useful vantage point for comparing the case with other political systems.

One of the few points that a critical reader cannot help but notice and wonder about is why, for example, the issue of the “imperial presidency,”Footnote ¹ the excessively powerful president, was left out, despite it not only being one of South Korea's most characteristic and problematic elements, but also fitting neatly with the other constituting elements of the detached democracy described by Mobrand. As a minor side note, for some careful readers, it might be confusing that Article 7 (political parties) of the 1963 Constitution is misleadingly indicated as Article 13 (p. 28), while later it is correctly referred to as Article 8 (p. 118) without further explanation.

In addition, some readers might take exception to the somewhat essayistic writing style, while others will probably welcome the prose for making the text more accessible, which is further helped by short illustrative episodes on how formal and informal institutions play out in practice for those not so knowledgeable about South Korean politics. Yet the book is more for advanced scholars, or at least readers who are already acquainted with contemporary Korean history to some extent, because it presupposes basic knowledge about the country's contemporary history and zooms in for long stretches on the central strands of developments and individual actors. The upside of this, of course, is that for those familiar with the matter(s), Top-Down Democracy is quite a stimulating read that greatly contributes to the discussion on democracy in South Korea and elsewhere, and thus it should be available in any well-assorted East Asia library section.