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Inequality, the welfare system and satisfaction with democracy in South Korea
Abstract
In an emerging democracy one of the most important components of democratic consolidation is the public’s attitude toward democracy. In this regard, emerging democracies in the East Asian region pose an interesting puzzle, because satisfaction with democracy is higher in authoritarian countries than in democratic countries. Scholars have praised Korean democracy as a miraculous case due to its successful democratic consolidation. Paradoxically, Korean democracy has shown weakness in dealing with rapidly increasing inequality after the International Monetary Fund economic crisis of 1997 and Korean citizens’ satisfaction with democracy has eroded. How does one explain these perplexing results? The empirical findings of this study indicate that citizens’ concerns about rapidly increasing inequality and dissatisfaction with the welfare regime were significantly related to their level of satisfaction with democracy. These results suggest that new democracies faced with similar economic challenges need to respond more competently to citizens’ demands for effective policy performance in order to achieve unwavering support for democracy.
... Class polarization and labor market flexibilization inevitably led to the exacerbation of inequality. The Gini index soared from 0.283 before the financial crisis in 1997 to 0.319 in 2001 (Im, 2011), exceeding the average for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] countries (Kang 2012b), and reached a "historic height" (Feng, 2011:7). Poverty, which was believed already resolved by dramatic economic growth in the past, resurfaced as an acute socioeconomic problem in the post-financial crisis period. ...
... Poverty, which was believed already resolved by dramatic economic growth in the past, resurfaced as an acute socioeconomic problem in the post-financial crisis period. Aggravated by a surge in the youth unemployment rate (8% in 2010) and a fast growing elderly population (12% in 2013) (Cho et al., 2012), between 2000 and 2010 nearly 10% of the population was living in poverty , and in 2008 roughly 12% of the total labor force fell into the category of the "working poor" (Kang, 2012b). The poor class whose household income was below half of the average national income level-which refers to the "relative poverty" rate-had declined in number until 1992 but began to rebound after Kim Young Sam took office, and accelerated further after the financial crisis, reaching a peak of 14.4% in 2007 (Yu, 2009). ...
... By contrast, on the issue of citizens" perception of democratic performance, different stories are told. Kang (2012b) found that between Asian Barometer Survey I (2001-03) and Survey II (2005-08), Koreans" belief in democratic efficacy dropped from 72% to 55%; the second largest decline among Asian democratizing countries after Thailand (24%). His data also showed that Koreans" support for democracy decreased from 61% to 48% over the same period, the second lowest among those countries next to the Philippines (38%). ...
Economic prosperity and equitable economic distribution under authoritarian political repression began to be upended in Korea in 1987: democratic freedom replaced autarchy with a gradual economic slowdown. The financial crisis in 1997 further increased poverty and job insecurity. Post-crisis government welfare reform policies were too cumbersome to prevent worsening poverty and polarization, and a growing share of the lower class was left unprotected and remained social outcasts. The inability of the democratic regime to deal with the economic recession and the financial crisis raised the level of public discontent with the democratic government’s performance, reducing public support for democracy. The dwindling legitimacy of democracy obviously imperiled its consolidation and sustainability. Though still devoted to democracy in principle, Koreans were deeply disillusioned with it in practice and worryingly attracted to a non-democratic mode of governance. Rising disgruntlement led to nostalgia for Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian leadership. The coexistence and parallel adoption of democratic principles and of attraction to authoritarian practice not only slowed democratic consolidation but also marred democratic legitimacy.
... The literature on SWD is vast, and demonstrates the effect of winning the elections (Bernauer & Vatter, 2012;Blais et al., 2017;Curini et al., 2012;Singh, 2014), the margin of victory (Howell & Justwan, 2013), government effectiveness (S. Dahlberg & Holmberg, 2014), ideological congruence with the government (Kim, 2009), the rule of law and corruption (Wagner et al., 2009), scandal elections (Kumlin & Esaiasson, 2012), the quality of social protection (Lühiste, 2014), congruence between the policy priorities of citizens and political elites (Reher, 2015), citizen evaluation of the public administration (Ariely, 2013), how governments solve collective action problems (Halla et al., 2013), the consumption of online news (Ceron & Memoli, 2016), income inequality (Kang, 2015), economic performance and procedural fairness (Magalhães, 2016), and the quality of formal institutions (Wagner et al., 2009). ...
... and 1 for perfect inequality. It is argued in the literature that with increasing inequality satisfaction decreases (Kang, 2015). Both GDP Per Capita and Income Inequality are taken from the year prior to when citizens were asked about how satisfied they were with democracy. ...
en The aim of this study is to understand how electoral rules affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. The focus is on the extent to which this effect is mediated by the constituency orientation of legislators and the proportionality of election results. The analysis combines data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Candidates Survey and covers 24 elections from 14 European countries. The multilevel SEM suggests two results. On the one hand, what majority and some mixed-member electoral systems gain through increasing constituency orientation, they lose to disproportional election results. On the other hand, open and flexible lists perform better in increasing satisfaction than closed ballots. Importantly, the analysis reveals a winner-loser gap in how constituency representation and proportionality affect democratic satisfaction. Both are more important for the losers of the elections when they evaluate democratic performance.
Zusammenfassung
de Die vorliegende Studie untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen Wahlgesetzen und Demokratiezufriedenheit der Bevölkerung. Im Fokus der Analyse stehen potentielle Wechselwirkungen zwischen der Wahlkreisorientierung der Abgeordneten und dem Proportionalitätsgehalt von Wahlergebnissen. Es wird erwartet, dass die Demokratiezufriedenheit steigt, wenn mehrere alternative Kandidaten unter den Bedingungen proportionaler Repräsentation zur Auswahl stehen. Für die empirische Analyse werden Daten aus dem European Social Survey und dem Comparative Candidates Survey für 24 Wahlen in 14 europäischen Ländern verknüpft. Das Mehr-Ebenen-Strukturgleichungsmodells zeigt zwei Ergebnisse. Erstens wird höhere Zufriedenheit, die mit einer erhöhten Wahlkreisorientierung unter den Bedingungen eines Mehrheits- oder personalisierten Verhältniswahlrechts einhergeht, als Folge der Disproportionalität des Wahlausgangs eingebüßt. Zweitens fördern offene und flexible Varianten einer Listenwahl die Demokratiezufriedenheit eher als geschlossene Parteilisten. Bei der Beurteilung der Demokratie im jeweiligen Land spielen Repräsentation und Responsivität allerdings eine wichtigere Rolle für die Unterstützer von Wahlverlierern.
Résumé
fr L’objectif de cette étude est de comprendre comment les règles électorales affectent la satisfaction des citoyens à l’égard de la démocratie. Au lieu d’étudier uniquement l'effet direct, l'accent est mis sur la mesure dans laquelle l'effet est médiatisé par l'orientation électorale des législateurs et la proportionnalité des résultats électoraux. Il est théorisé que les citoyens apprécient le lien entre ces deux variables: la satisfaction est plus grande lorsque les citoyens peuvent choisir entre les candidats, et sous la représentation proportionnelle. L'analyse combine les données de l'Enquête Sociale Européenne et du Comparative Candidates Survey et couvre 24 élections de 14 pays européens. Les résultats des SEM multiniveaux suggèrent, d'une part, que ce que les systèmes électoraux majoritaires et mixtes gagnent en termes de la satisfaction citoyenne par l'orientation électorale, ils le perdent à cause des résultats électoraux disproportionnés. En revanche, les listes ouvertes et flexibles sont plus efficaces pour accroître la satisfaction citoyenne que les listes fermées. Surtout, l'analyse révèle un écart gagnant-perdant dans la manière dont la représentation des électeurs et la proportionnalité affectent la satisfaction démocratique. Le lien entre les deux est plus importants pour les perdants des élections surtout lorsqu'ils évaluent la performance démocratique.
... And generally, research linking individual-level perceptual or attitudinal measures of inequality and SWD is limited. Kang (2015), in a study of Korean attitudes towards democracy, used an Asian barometer survey question from 2006 which asked respondents whether economic inequality causes them great concern. Kang (2015) found that Koreans who reported being concerned about economic inequality were significantly less satisfied with democracy in their country. ...
... Kang (2015), in a study of Korean attitudes towards democracy, used an Asian barometer survey question from 2006 which asked respondents whether economic inequality causes them great concern. Kang (2015) found that Koreans who reported being concerned about economic inequality were significantly less satisfied with democracy in their country. ...
Does perceived inequality shape how satisfied ordinary Africans are with how democracy is functioning in their countries? In this paper, I use the most recent round of Afrobarometer data (collected from 2016 to 2018 in 34 countries, n=45812) to test whether satisfaction with democracy (SWD) is higher among people who feel that their living conditions are equal to others' or who feel that they are better off than other people. Controlling for country-level effects, I show that feeling better off than other people increases satisfaction, and feeling worse off than other people decreases satisfaction. I contribute to the literature by demonstrating that these relative assessments are significant and comparable in effect size to widely used predictors of satisfaction with democracy found in the literature, such as economic country-level evaluations, partisanship and political interest. These results therefore should encourage future research to include individual-level comparative assessments as predictors of SWD. This paper moreover represents the most recent cross-national re-examination of predictors of SWD in Africa. My regression results are widely in line with past empirical research, both in and outside of Africa, and suggest that SWD is primarily shaped by political and economic performance evaluations. This points to the explanatory model of SWD in Africa being relatively stable across time.
... The findings of the previous studies motivated this study in two ways. First, these studies used national or international surveys conducted in the early-or mid-2000s when South Korea was still implementing market-oriented reforms and putting forth anti-corruption efforts during the process of recovering from Asian financial crises (Kang, 2015;Kim, 2010). Therefore, it is argued that whether the findings resulted from the newly established nature of the democracies as well as whether more recent survey results could provide a new perspective are unclear. ...
... To test the institutionalist argument, four performance variables were included: economy, inequality, corruption, and welfare. Poor economic performance and political corruption are critical indicators of political institutions' performance (Newton, 2001), and inequality and the welfare system are key indicators of South Koreans' satisfaction with democracy (Kang, 2015). For economic performance, respondents were asked to evaluate the country's macro-economic situation on a 10-point continuous scale. ...
The social capital theory holds that there is a positive relationship between social and political trust; however, despite the prominence of this postulation, this relationship has often been disputed among political scientists. While recent studies on advanced democracies have shown a strong positive relationship between social and political trust, studies on East Asian democracies, which previously showed a weak or negative relation, remain scant, separating these countries into their own category of new democracies. The motivation of this study is based on the importance of revisiting the relationship between social and political trust using recent data from one such country—South Korea—to determine the nature of this previously studied negative or weak relationship. The results of this study indicate that generalized social trust in South Korea is positively associated with political trust. This result is in line with recent findings in advanced democracies. While this positive relationship is consistent and significant across models, a greater portion of political trust is explained by economic and political performance, including factors such as the economy, corruption, inequality, and the welfare system, making institutional performance a critical predictor of political trust.
... Among them, there are two different approaches: the performance approach and the procedural approach (Hobolt, 2012;Hakhverdian and Mayne, 2012;Stecker and Tausendpfund, 2016). Scholars of the performance approach believe that citizens' judgments of institutional performance in a broad range of areas, such as the economy (Quaranta and Martini, 2016), inequality (Kang, 2015) and corruption (Donovan and Karp, 2017), are an important source of SWD. In contrast, scholars of the procedural approach propose that the involvement of citizens' opinions in the political process is another source of SWD (Lord and Magnette, 2004;Wang and Wart, 2007). ...
Purpose
This article explores how digital exclusion measured by citizens' occasional social media use and their skeptical social media attitude may affect their satisfaction with democracy (SWD), which is critical for public engagement and democratic stability in Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs multilevel regression to test the hypotheses proposed in the context of Europe and uses cross-level data sources. Individual-level data, including social media use frequency and attitude and SWD, come from the 2012, 2014 and 2016 Eurobarometer surveys. Country-level data are derived from multiple pre-existing datasets.
Findings
The empirical results suggest that digital exclusion measured by occasional use and skeptical attitude are negatively associated with the likelihood of SWD. Additionally, the negative effect of a skeptical attitude increases in importance over time. Finally, although government transparency can mitigate the negative effect of a skeptical attitude, its role in mitigating the negative effect of occasional use is effective only in countries with moderate or low transparency levels.
Originality/value
This study preliminarily explores the direct, changing and conditional impacts of digital exclusion in social media on SWD. It also deepens our understanding of digital exclusion by differentiating between its physical and motivational aspects, which relate to public engagement and equity and then comparing their relative importance.
... Objective levels of inequality should certainly shape citizens' satisfaction with democracy, as previous research demonstrates they do (Anderson and Singer 2008;Kang 2015). Inequality creates opportunities for wealthier individuals to exercise disproportionate political influence (Gilens 2012;Taylor-Robinson 2010), which, in turn, results in democratic outcomes that do not represent the substantive policy interests of the majority of citizens. ...
How do individuals’ fairness judgments affect their political evaluations? This article argues that when citizens perceive high levels of distributive unfairness in society, they will be less satisfied with the way democracy functions. Yet good governance—that is, impartiality in the exercise of political authority—should mitigate the negative influence of perceived distributive unfairness on satisfaction. Using a cross-national analysis of 18 Latin American countries from 2011 to 2015, this study demonstrates that individuals are significantly less satisfied with democracy when they perceive their country’s income distribution as unfair. Yet good governance significantly offsets this negative relationship, even in a region with the highest level of inequality in the world. These findings imply that policymakers can bolster democratic satisfaction, even in places where citizens perceive the income distribution as fundamentally unfair, by committing to good governance and fair democratic procedures.
... 11. Retomamos de Kang (2015) las preguntas de la tabla 1, aunque nosotros no sólo indagamos las respuestas en general sino que añadimos a las clases medias altas y altas. del Gobierno como prioritarias o no consideran como relevantes, en cuanto responsabilidad gubernamental, las políticas sociales redistributivas). ...
En este artículo se profundiza sobre preferencias de políticas sociales de organizaciones empresariales en Corea del Sur. Se pretende comprender si con las preferencias encontradas en estas organizaciones (en sus páginas web, en declaraciones a la prensa y
en entrevista realizada por el autor de este texto) se acercan o alejan de la histórica y conservadora coalición pro-crecimiento del régimen de bienestar coreano, frente a la más reciente coalición redistributiva.
El artículo se divide en cinco partes, además de la introducción teórica e histórica: una contextual sobre desigualdad, bienestar y élites en Corea del Sur; una segunda sobre organizaciones empresariales y bienestar en Corea del Sur: la Federation of Korean Industries y la Korea Enterprises Federation; una tercera que aborda organizaciones empresariales y bienestar en Corea del Sur: economía política y protección laboral; una cuarta acerca de organizaciones empresariales y bienestar en Corea del Sur: las políticas sociales; y una quinta con las conclusiones. En el artículo se concluye que las organizaciones empresariales estudiadas continúan con las proposiciones centrales de la coalición procrecimiento, aunque sin mostrar una visión residual de las políticas sociales.
... When scholars attempt to explain the relationship between democracy and inequality, they stress the impact of democratic rule on resource distribution rather than vice versus (Huber and Stephens 2012;Acemoglu et al. 2013). Some scholars have begun to rekindle the classics' interest pondering the extent to which levels of social inequality can be sustained within a liberal democracy (Stiglitz 2012;Bartels 2016;Jung and Sunde 2014;Kang 2015). In the most general terms, the literature maintains that inequality is hurtful to democratic governance in both developed and post-transitional political systems (Fukuyama et al. 2012). ...
Generalized trust is a critical component of liberal democratic citizenship. We evaluate the extent to which exposure to socioeconomic inequality erodes trust among Romanian youths. Using national survey data of Romanian eighth-grade and high school students, we evaluate this effect as a product of socioeconomic diversity within the classroom, controlling for the social status of the students as well as socioeconomic inequality within the community where the school is located. Our analysis shows that generalized trust is higher among older adolescents. However, despite this maturing effect, youth exposed to greater levels of socioeconomic diversity have significantly lower levels of trust. The effect is particularly acute for students in the ninth grade controlling for community diversity and polarization. The result reinforces the idea that generalized trust develops early in one’s life and is quite stable, although a major life transformation, such as entering high school, may alter trust depending on the social context.
The paper can be read at https://rdcu.be/Ojm7
... Previous studies show that SWD varies with the degree of protection against economic fluctuations (Armingeon and Guthmann, 2014;Kang, 2015;Kumlin, 2002). By strengthening the economic security, the welfare state can also stimulate SWD. ...
This article tests several hypotheses for explaining the link between welfare-state performance and satisfaction with democracy. In conducting our multilevel analysis, we combine data from the European Social Survey 2012 special module on democracy with data on contextual and institutional conditions, including those on welfare-state regimes. Our results show that a discrepancy between desired policy goals and perceived policy outcomes in connection with the welfare state (i.e. the policy deficit) influences citizens’ perceptions of how well democracy in their country works. Social policies which citizens see as reducing poverty correlate positively with satisfaction with democracy. We also find evidence that satisfaction with democracy depends on the type of welfare regime, as well as on changes in economic conditions that arise due to financial crisis.
Prior research reveals a relationship between various political system outputs and the citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD). The current study contributes to this line of inquiry and demonstrates that the perception of the district legislators’ overall performance positively correlates with the citizens’ democratic satisfaction. The multivariate analysis of Hungarian panel data from 2018 reveals that the effect is most salient in the case of the winners of the election, and less so for the losers. Results are robust to a variety of changes in the model. The findings indicate that the focus on individual politicians and their work has the potential to increase democratic satisfaction even if representative political institutions such as parties, governments and parliaments are not able to win the citizens’ trust.
In this chapter, we investigate the relatively less-explored dimension of economic democracy. The Korean paradox of authoritarian-led inclusive development in the 1960s–1980s has given way to a reverse paradox of democracy and economic insecurity since the late 1990s. Growing dissatisfaction with democracy in Korea is a serious concern for democracy’s proponents, and the acceleration of economic inequality during the recent COVID-19 pandemic may bring these concerns to a tipping point. This chapter proposes that Korean elites have embraced a thin, neoliberal version of economic democracy which fetishizes economic liberalization, and further argues that there are alternative notions of economic democracy that can usher a fair(er) social compact in Korea that aligns with strong, egalitarian notion of economic democracy.KeywordsDemocratic resilienceEconomic democracyPolitical cultureSouth Korea
To what extent do supporters of electoral losers and nonvoters maintain lower evaluations of institutions post-election? A sizable literature identifies a divergence in perceptions among winners and losers regarding democratic satisfaction, with few studies extending this to perceptions of other electoral and nonelectoral institutions nor to include nonvoters. The timing of the 2015 Asian Barometer survey in South Korea allows us to identify evaluation prior to Park Geun-Hye’s impeachment scandal. Analysis consistently finds that those who supported the losing presidential candidate in 2012 maintained lower evaluations of institutions, with inconsistent results regarding nonvoters.
A well-functioning democracy requires citizens’ support for its political institutions and procedures. While scholars have previously studied the role of contextual factors for explaining satisfaction with democracy, a rigorous focus on how the party choice set affects how satisfied citizens are with democracy is largely absent from the literature. This neglect of the impact of parties is surprising, given their central position within modern, representative democracies. In this article, a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the impact of party systems on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy is presented. Use is made of the combined data of the first four modules of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project and various measures of the party system are used to capture different aspects of the party choice set: the number of parties, their polarisation, and the congruence between public opinion and the party offer. In contrast to expectations, only scant evidence is found that having a wider choice increases citizens’ satisfaction with democracy.
Satisfaction with democracy is driven by the two mechanisms that affect citizens’ income: the market and the state. When people consider that the levels of economic growth and redistribution are sufficient, they are more satisfied with the performance of democratic institutions. This relationship is moderated by personal income: since low-income citizens are more sensitive to changes in personal economic circumstances than high-income citizens, they give more weight to economic perceptions and opinions about redistribution. In this paper evidence is found of this conditional relationship in survey data from 16 established democracies. The results offer a rich characterisation of the state and market-based mechanisms that affect satisfaction with democracy.
The moderating effect of pay dispersion on the relationship between employee share ownership (ESO) and labor productivity is examined in an unbalanced panel sample of 533 organizations (1,156 organization‐year data points) in Korea. Pay differential between job levels (vertical pay dispersion) is theorized to negatively moderate the ESO–productivity relationship. On the other hand, pay differential within a job level (horizontal pay dispersion) is theorized to positively moderate the ESO–productivity relationship. These predictions are partially supported. Consistent with the prediction, vertical pay dispersion negatively moderates the ESO–productivity relationship in that the relationship is more negative when vertical pay dispersion is high. However, we found no support for the moderating effect of horizontal pay dispersion in this relationship. The results challenge the simplistic view that pay dispersion per se can be detrimental to the ESO–productivity relationship.
Economic prosperity and equitable economic distribution under authoritarian political repression began to be upended in Korea in 1987: Democratic freedom replaced autarchy with a gradual economic slowdown. The financial crisis in 1997 further increased poverty and job insecurity. The inability of the democratic regime to deal with the economic recession and the financial crisis raised the level of public discontent with the democratic government’s performance. Though still devoted to democracy in principle, Koreans were deeply disillusioned with it in practice and worryingly attracted to a non-democratic mode of governance. The coexistence and parallel adoption of democratic principles and of attraction to authoritarian practice not only slowed democratic consolidation but also marred democratic legitimacy.
This paper explores how perceptions of socioeconomic inequality, attitudes about redistribution, and experiences of social upward mobility shape the level of participation in political protests. The dramatic widening of income inequality in Korean society since the 2007 financial breakdown and the new surge of political protests has continued to attract attention. However, scholars have not clearly examined how Korean views about socioeconomic inequality and redistribution affect political activism in protests. This study reflects on the hypotheses of the grievance theory and the resource theory, and investigates survey data to explore whether dissatisfaction with inequality and attitudes about redistribution have a systematic impact on the level of political activism in protests. Using data from the 2009 South Korea Social Survey Program, this study concludes that dissatisfaction with income disparity, dissatisfaction with educational inequality, and redistributive preferences, have a systematic impact in fostering active political engagement in protests.
This study analyzes how economic inequality affects electoral winners and losers' satisfaction with democracy. We posit that both the poor and the rich have more at stake in elections when inequality is high. Electoral losers, whether they are the poor or the rich, are more likely to be dissatisfied with democratic systems when facing greater disparity in wealth. In contrast, electoral winners confronting higher inequality are more likely to express satisfaction with democracy. Employing a multilevel analysis of Comparative Study Electoral Systems (CSES) data, we find that the gap in satisfaction with democracy between electoral winners and losers widens as income inequality increases. Broadening the conventional wisdom that electoral systems mediate the effect of citizens' winner-loser status on their democratic attitudes, we demonstrate that the mediating effects of economic inequality are more critical than the institutional effects.
Extant literature on democratization documents that ordinary citizens’ unconditional support for democracy is indispensable to democratic consolidation. Yet observers of nascent democracies have repeatedly witnessed that such support often hinges upon their economic conditions. This article argues that income levels have a conditioning effect on this relationship; the Korean poor see democracy as a tool for income redistribution and are less likely than the rich to support it when economic hardships appear to close windows of opportunities for such redistribution. Using survey data from the first round of the Asian Barometer Survey on South Korea, I find strong empirical support for this argument. The implication of this finding for broader literature on democratization is that the weakening of young democracies can be attributed to the poor in times of trouble, or the “weak link.”
Why, a quarter century after democratization, are Korean citizens so nostalgic about the former authoritarian Park Chung-hee government? What are the implications of this support for Korea's democratic deepening? To answer these questions, I offer empirical analyses of selected data from the Korea Democracy Barometer 2010 survey that confirm the relevance of two dimensions of political support to authoritarian nostalgia in Korea: the life biography model and the economic performance model at the system level. The results suggest a double-sided phenomenon: on the one hand, nostalgia based on a retrospective collective memory; on the other, citizens' critical view of the performance deficits of post-Park democratic governments in dealing with inequality in Korean society. As the findings elucidate, in spite of the challenges they face, emergent democratic governments must perform more effectively if they are to win citizens' support. KEYWORDS: democratic performance, Park Chung-hee nostalgia, Korean democracy, inequality, democratic consolidation.
This study argues that South Korea is simultaneously undergoing processes of "democratic deficit" and "democratic consolidation." Though many democracy indices categorize South Korea as a consolidated democracy, its people are not satisfied with their democracy and instead have a perception that there is a democratic deficit. Democratic deficit was measured by the gap between political efficacy and evaluation of democratic governance. Statistical analysis showed that younger generations and highlyeducated people have a greater perception of democratic deficit, compared to older generations and those with lower levels of education. We also found that subjective indicators of economic wellbeing, such as "fair distribution of wealth" and "home economy," not the objective level of household income, were the most critical predictors of democratic deficit. Finally, we argue that a democracy can reach its mature stage and satisfy its people when input (individuals) and output (institutions) in a political system are well balanced.
Do political institutions affect citizen satisfaction with democracy? If so, how? Using cross-sectional survey data for eleven European democracies together with data on the type of democracy in which individuals live, we demonstrate that the nature of representative democratic institutions (measured by Arend Lijphart's consensus-majority index of democracies) mediates the relationship between a person's status as part of the political minority or majority and his or her satisfaction with the way the system works. Specifically, we find that (1) the losers of democratic competition show lower levels of satisfaction than do those in the majority and (2) losers in systems that are more consensual display higher levels of satisfaction with the way democracy works than do losers in systems with majoritarian characteristics. Conversely, winners tend to be more satisfied with democracy the more a country's political institutions approximate pure majoritarian government.
Recent years have seen increased attention to integrating what we know about individual citizens with what we know about macro-level contexts that vary across countries. This article discusses the growing literature on how people's interpretations, opinions, and actions are shaped by variable contextual parameters and provides a novel substantive application. Using surveys conducted in 20 European democracies, the authors examine the effect of income inequality on people's attitudes about the functioning of the political system and trust in public institutions. They find that citizens in countries with higher levels of income inequality express more negative attitudes toward public institutions. Moreover, they show that the negative effect of inequality on attitudes toward the political system is particularly powerful among individuals on the political left. In contrast, inequality's negative effect on people's faith in the system is muted among those on the right.
Rising levels of income inequality in almost all industrialized countries as a consequence of globalization and de-industrialization might lead one to assume that voters will demand more redistribution and exert influence on their governments to set up redistributive programmes. However, this is not always the case. Citizens do not react directly to actual levels of inequality, as research on the attitudes towards inequality and redistribution has shown. In this article the complex relation between cross-national variation of inequality and public support for redistribution is analysed. The article draws on explanations from both a political economy perspective as well as drawing on comparative welfare regime research. While the former conceives cross-national variations in support for redistribution as the aggregate effect of a demand of rational actors reacting to country context, the latter focuses on the impact of institutions and culture superimposing itself over self-interest. The empirical analysis tests the explanations of both the political economy and welfare regimes approach. Since the article focuses on the impact of context variables on individual attitudes, a multilevel analysis is adopted. Data are taken from the 1999 ‘International Social Survey Program’ and are complemented by macro-economic variables. Based on the results, a model of contingent support for redistribution is put forward, where culturally influenced definitions are embedded in economic processes.
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Comparative analysis of original survey data from Ghana, Zambia and South Africa is used here to assess the attitudes of African citizens towards democracy. Is democracy valued intrinsically (as an end in itself) or instrumentally (for example, as a means to improving material living standards)? We find as much popular support for democracy in Africa as in other Third Wave regions but less satisfaction with the performance of elected governments. The fact that Africans support democracy while being discontented with its achievements implies a measure of intrinsic support that supersedes instrumental considerations. At the same time, approval of democracy remains performance-driven; but approval hinges less on the government's capacity at delivering economic goods than its ability to guarantee basic political rights. Our findings extend recent arguments about the importance of political goods in regime consolidation and call into question the conventional wisdom that governments in new democracies legitimate themselves mainly through economic performance.
Taekyoon Kim is professor of public policy at Ewha Womans University, Seoul. Huck-Ju Kwon is professor at the Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. Jooha Lee is professor of public administration at Dongguk University, Seoul. Ilcheong Yi is research coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. Together with Stein Ringen, they are the authors of The Korean State and Social Policy: How South Korea Lifted Itself from Poverty and Dictatorship to Affluence and Democracy (2011), from which this article is drawn. South Korea’s developmental success has been widely praised as a remarkable, if not miraculous, achievement. Emerging from the devastation of the Korean War as an extremely poor nation, it was able to raise itself to the ranks of developed countries in just a few decades. Although its early spectacular rise took place under a military dictatorship, it was able to make a transition to democracy without losing its economic dynamism. Moreover, South Korea was able not only to reduce poverty but to keep social inequality in check during its period of rapid economic development. This is a combination of accomplishments that most other emerging economies have thus far been unable to match. How did South Korea lift itself from the ashes of war and destitution to affluence? How did a ruthlessly authoritarian regime metamorphose with relative ease in the late 1980s into a stable democratic polity? What institutions and mechanisms led to the reduction of poverty and inequality under both authoritarian and democratic rule? Looking at social policy and styles of governance during the authoritarian period as well as after the transition to democracy helps to shed light on South Korea’s developmental trajectory The credit for South Korea’s economic “miracle” typically is given to its strong state. Yet attributing the country’s economic growth to the strong state alone fails to capture the idiosyncratic nature of Korean
This paper examines on a global scale how important it is for young democracies to deliver economic welfare to win the hearts of their citizens. A decoupling of popular support for democratic form of government from economic performance is believed to be conducive to the consolidation of young democracies. We found an encouraging global pattern that clearly shows evaluations of economic condition are relatively unimportant in explaining level of popular support for democracy. However, high-income East Asian countries register a glaring exception to this global generalization, suggesting that their distinctive trajectory of regime transition has imposed on democratic regimes an additional burden of sustaining a record of miraculous economic growth of the past.
The severe economic crisis facing several countries in the region over the last couple of years has led many observers to predict a backlash against market policies and even against democracy in the region. An economic crisis of such proportions should also, in theory, have negative effects on subjective well being. Our analysis, based on the Latinobarómetro surveys from 2000–2002, finds some unexpected positive trends, as well as notable differences between those countries that suffered from crises and those that did not. Satisfaction with market policies and with the way democracy is working has decreased among all groups except the very wealthy. In contrast, support for democracy as a system of government has increased, suggesting that respondents are increasingly distinguishing between democracy as a system of government, and the manner in which particular governments are performing. We also find evidence of changing attitudes towards redistributive taxation among the wealthy.
JEL Codes . D63 (welfare economics, equity, justice, inequality); D84 (information and uncertainty, expectations); I31 (general welfare; basic needs; quality of life); J62 (mobility, unemployment, intergenerational mobility)
It is commonly assumed that socio-economic conditions strongly influence political attitudes. Since democratic rule is based on the consent of the ruled, a secure and stable democracy cannot be established and maintained without broad-based popular endorsement, which is especially important for nascent post-communist democracies. Painful economic difficulties may engender deep anti-system sentiments at the mass level, encouraging anti-regime activism at the elite level. From this perspective, democratic legitimacy is a function of regime performance. But the Bulgarian evidence fails to validate the hypothesis that system legitimacy depends on regime effectiveness or that socio-economic conditions determine mass-level political attitudes. In spite of the economic fiasco, Bulgaria's democratic regime remains capable of commanding popular support. While the economic performance deficit of catastrophic proportions has become a source of widespread popular dissatisfaction threatening regime stability, it has not led to democratic backsliding or collapse.
We assess the factors that affect judgments about the fairness of the distribution of wealth with pooled public opinion data from Latinobarometro surveys conducted in 1997, 2001, and 2002. Hypotheses are tested with a multi-level logit model that allows us to draw on both the individual responses to questions in the surveys, and data about the societies in which they live. At the individual level, we examine the effects of household wealth and class position, and respondents’ perceptions of economic circumstances and political conditions. “Country-level” variables include measures of GDP, growth, the degree of inequality, political openness, and access to information. The multi-level model, finally, also allows us to examine the interactions between individual and country-level variables.
Conventional views of African politics imply that Africans' political opinions are based either on enduring cultural values or their positions in the social structure. In contrast, we argue that Africans form attitudes to democracy based upon what they learn about what it is and does. This learning hypothesis is tested against competing cultural, institutional, and structural theories to explain citizens' demand for democracy (legitimation) and their perceived supply of democracy (institutionalization) with data from 12 Afrobarometer attitude surveys conducted between 1999 and 2001. A multilevel model that specifies and estimates the impacts of both individual- and national-level factors provides evidence of learning from three different sources. First, people learn about the content of democracy through cognitive awareness of public affairs. Second, people learn about the consequences of democracy through direct experience of the performance of governments and (to a lesser extent) the economy. Finally, people draw lessons about democracy from national political legacies.
In a general equilibrium model of a labor economy, the size of government, measured by the share of income redistributed, is determined by majority rule. Voters rationally anticipate the disincentive effects of taxation on the labor-leisure choices of their fellow citizens and take the effect into account when voting. The share of earned income redistributed depends on the voting rule and on the distribution of productivity in the economy. Under majority rule, the equilibrium tax share balances the budget and pays for the voters' choices. The principal reasons for increased size of government implied by the model are extensions of the franchise that change the position of the decisive voter in the income distribution and changes in relative productivity. An increase in mean income relative to the income of the decisive voter increases the size of government.
This arose as part of an ongoing project on ‘Visions of Governance for the Twenty‐first Century’ initiated in 1996 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which aims to explore what people want from government, the public sector, and non‐profit organizations. A first volume from the ‘Visions’ project (Why People Don’t Trust Government) was published by Harvard University Press in 1997; this second volume analyses a series of interrelated questions. The first two are diagnostic: how far are there legitimate grounds for concern about public support for democracy worldwide; and are trends towards growing cynicism found in the US evident in many established and newer democracies? The second concern is analytical: what are the main political, economic, and cultural factors driving the dynamics of support for democratic government? The final questions are prescriptive: what are the consequences of this analysis and what are the implications for strengthening democratic governance? The book brings together a distinguished group of international scholars who develop a global analysis of these issues by looking at trends in established and newer democracies towards the end of the twentieth century. Chapters draw upon the third wave (1995–1997) World Values Survey as well as using an extensive range of comparative empirical evidence.
Challenging the conventional wisdom, the book concludes that accounts of a democratic ‘crisis’ are greatly exaggerated. By the mid‐1990s most citizens worldwide shared widespread aspirations to the ideals and principles of democratic government, although at the same time there remains a marked gap between evaluations of the ideal and the practice of democracy. The publics in many newer democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America have proved deeply critical of the performance of their governing regimes, and during the 1980s many established democracies saw a decline in public confidence in the core institutions of representative democracy, including parliaments, the legal system, and political parties. The book considers the causes and consequences of the development of critical citizens in three main parts: cross‐national trends in confidence in governance; testing theories with case studies; and explanations of trends.
Social scientists have long suspected that the rise of the modern welfare state has had a deep and lasting impact on public opinion formation.1 In contrast to what was the case prior to the postwar expansion, most citizens in developed nations now have regular and direct personal experiences with one public service institution or the other. As Kaase and Newton (1995, p. 65) explain, “It is not just the scope of government that has expanded, but also the depth of its influence on the everyday lives of citizens. This combination of scope and pervasiveness gives the state its paramount significance.” The message is that a whole new arena for public opinion formation has arisen with the welfare state. Inside that arena, citizens have frequent opportunities to directly observe how the political system and its policies perform in practice.
During the closing decades of the twentieth century, much of the world witnessed a substantial increase in economic and social inequalities. Following a period of "growth with equity" that featured economic growth and social redistribution in East Asian countries shortly after World War II, a new era of "growth with inequality" has been ushered in. This leads not only to a divided society; it threatens democratic institutions and suffocates economic growth. Looking forward to the next half century, will East Asia, a major area of economic growth of the twenty-first century, become increasingly unequal economically and socially? The experience of China, a country that has seen a period of both spectacular economic growth and rapid income inequality increase, suggests that the state can serve both as an inequality creator and an equality enforcer. As equitable distribution of benefits of economic growth requires forces beyond the market alone, national policies are required to address the causes of rising inequality and create opportunities that will have beneficial long-term effects.
This article examines how the institutions of interest representation have affected the welfare state in post-democratization Korea. The characteristics of welfare politics in Korea since democratization are quite different from those of advanced welfare states. The argument here is that these characteristics are related to the flawed institutions of interest representation in Korea's newly created democratic system. The interest articulation and aggregation of welfare issues have been severely limited, since political parties do not represent socioeconomic interests in civil society appropriately and the social dialogue is paralyzed. These flawed institutions of representation have hindered the development of a comprehensive welfare state.
Many fear that democracies are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. This book focuses on ‘democratic deficits’, reflecting how far the perceived democratic performance of any state diverges from public expectations. Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era. The book diagnoses the reasons behind the democratic deficit, including demand (rising public aspirations for democracy), information (negative news about government) and supply (the performance and structure of democratic regimes). Finally, Norris examines the consequences for active citizenship, for governance and, ultimately, for democratization. This book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of comparative politics, public opinion, political culture, political behavior, democratic governance, political psychology, political communications, public policymaking, comparative sociology, cross-national survey analysis and the dynamics of the democratization process.
Explanations of cross-national variation in levels of popular support for democracy can be distinguished by the relative emphasis they place on the importance of economic and political factors. ‘First generation’ theorists emphasized economic variables, including levels of economic development and rising expectations. In contrast, ‘second generation’ writers have focused on the role of political factors, including the mode of the transition to democracy itself and the effectiveness of the institutions and electoral processes which emerge. This article uses national probability samples from Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine to examine potential influences on support for democratic processes in postcommunist Europe. These influences include evaluations of electoral and market performance, experience of economic well-being in the recent past and the near future, and indicators of the perceived responsiveness of the electoral system. Although both political and economic factors are found to be significant, multivariate analysis indicates that political experience is of greater weight than is economic. Moreover, when support for marketization is controlled for, there is very little link from economic experience to support for democracy.
Claude Ake considers the unique features of African democracy. He explains why its development must stem from the ordinary people of Africa and from their concept of participation.
How does economic performance affect support for democracy in emergent democracies? Government approval studies do not directly evaluate this. Recent literature suggests using separate assessments: Citizens in emergent democracies—through political trust—distinguish between government approval and democratic support. This article directly assesses the question for Asia’s democratizing nations of Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines. Two results are relevant: First, economic performance explains government approval over time and across these democratizing nations. This result accords with findings from other regions to lend to the accumulation of knowledge from extending study to Asia. Second, economic performance does not explain democratic support; instead, political trust is statistically related to democratic support. Specifically, although political trust and economic performance both explain government approval, political trust outweighs economic conditions in explaining democratic support. These results show that by building political trust in the democratizing system, citizens may hold officials accountable while remaining committed to democratic development. Theoretically, then, this article synthesizes diverse findings in the literature to enrich theory building.
Worldwide, there is substantial popular support for the ideal of democracy but, on the other hand, there is considerable dissatisfaction with democracy within democracies. Democracies are inhabited by many so-called ‘dissatisfied democrats’: citizens who are strong supporters of the democratic ideal, but are unhappy with the way democracy is working in their country. It is not clear how to explain this phenomenon, but based on a review of the existing literature, two different approaches can be distinguished: an optimistic and a pessimistic one. Subsequently, this article investigates why some people are dissatisfied democrats while others are not in eight African democracies – Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Lesotho, Mali, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa. The empirical evidence seems to support the complex mix of both the optimistic and pessimistic approaches: to be sure, dissatisfied democrats are critical citizens compared with dissatisfied non-democrats, but they are not more politically active than the rest of the population. Future studies need to find out whether dissatisfied democrats can be seen either as a democratic danger or as a democratic defence, but the first findings in this article suggest that a growing group of dissatisfied democrats are a sign of democracy in decline.
Koreans have worked hard to improve the quality of their democracy. They have promoted the rule of law, accountability, control of corruption, freedom, and responsiveness, and made an effort to make government more effective. They are also committed to economic freedom. In relation to the rule of law, significant attention has been devoted to reducing terrorism and violence, making government more effective, and enhancing regulatory quality. However, with regard to accountability, control of corruption, and transparency, Korea has still a long way to go. The analysis of democratization and improvements in the quality of democracy to date suggest that Korea has adapted to the changing economic environment and is sustaining its economic growth. This has been accompanied by social and economic polarization and a consequent demand for more and better welfare services.
This article analyzes the importance of system-level features, such as political and economic development, and individual-level factors for the support of liberal democracy. Using multilevel modeling, the study explicitly distinguishes between the role of subjective evaluations at the individual level and objective facts at the system level. The findings obtained using a sample of 36 countries indicate that objective economic performance is the most important system-level factor for system support. Improvements in the degree of democracy do not affect public support. Individual subjective perception is predominant for determining specific support. Contrary to previous studies, there is no evidence that the liberal-democratic society reaches a degree of acceptance that immunizes it from economic developments. Nor is there evidence that citizens of non-democratic regime types will urge for democratic change when the regime performs well in economic terms.
Over the past quarter century, an unprecedented and often unanticipated wave of democratization has spread over large parts of the world. While some skepticism is reasonable regarding both the level and durability of many of the new experiments of democratization, the direction and scope of these developments are largely beyond dispute. The main goal of this essay is to use an unprecedented body of comparative survey research to map patterns and forms of political support across a wide range of political conditions. While the goal is primarily descriptive, in the course of the descriptions interesting themes emerge, such as the finding that there are no major trends suggesting a decline in support for democracy as a form of government, neither de jure nor de facto, or that the fact of dissatisfaction does not imply danger to the persistence or furtherance of democracy. -- Die vorliegende Analyse soll den Grad der politischen Unterstützung der Bürger in globaler Perspektive beschreiben. Es wird nachgewiesen, daß die Bürger Einstellungen zur politischen Gemeinschaft, zur Demokratie als Regierungsform und zur Performanz der Demokratie voneinander trennen können. Die Verteilung dieser Einstellungen Mitte der neunziger Jahre wird für 38 Länder berichtet. Für eine kleinere Gruppe von Ländern können diese Einstellungen mit Daten aus dem Jahre 1990 verglichen werden. Als Ergebnis kann festgehalten werden, daß in den meisten Ländern ein relativ hohes Maß an Zustimmung zur Demokratie als Regierungsform festzustellen ist. Gleichzeit wird aber die Performanz der Demokratie negativ beurteilt. Es wird spekuliert, daß von der Gruppe der unzufriedenen Demokraten zukünftig Impulse für die Weiterentwicklung der Demokratie zu erwarten sind. Die Zeitvergleiche zeigen keine einheitlichen Trends an. Sie weisen vielmehr auf Entwicklungen hin, die in den unterschiedlichen Ländern in sehr unterschiedlicher Weise verlaufen.
This article suggests that institutions of violence in the international system sanction Great Power (GP) authority in this system. We argue that the degree to which Great Powers (GPs) construe various threats as challenges to their international authority informs their use of force against the sources of these threats. Serious challenges to GP authority prompt punishment not only to achieve rational and utilitarian ends (such as secession of harm or deterrence), but also to reproduce authority and reify it. We examine in this respect the US-led War on Terror and argue that the US response to the 9/11 terror attacks was largely constituted by the acute and unprecedented challenge to America’s GP authority that these attacks symbolized. We conclude by reflecting upon the dilemmas the United States now faces to its GP authority.
This arose as part of an ongoing project on ‘Visions of Governance for the Twenty‐first Century’ initiated in 1996 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which aims to explore what people want from government, the public sector, and non‐profit organizations. A first volume from the ‘Visions’ project (Why People Don’t Trust Government) was published by Harvard University Press in 1997; this second volume analyses a series of interrelated questions. The first two are diagnostic: how far are there legitimate grounds for concern about public support for democracy worldwide; and are trends towards growing cynicism found in the US evident in many established and newer democracies? The second concern is analytical: what are the main political, economic, and cultural factors driving the dynamics of support for democratic government? The final questions are prescriptive: what are the consequences of this analysis and what are the implications for strengthening democratic governance? The book brings together a distinguished group of international scholars who develop a global analysis of these issues by looking at trends in established and newer democracies towards the end of the twentieth century. Chapters draw upon the third wave (1995–1997) World Values Survey as well as using an extensive range of comparative empirical evidence.
Challenging the conventional wisdom, the book concludes that accounts of a democratic ‘crisis’ are greatly exaggerated. By the mid‐1990s most citizens worldwide shared widespread aspirations to the ideals and principles of democratic government, although at the same time there remains a marked gap between evaluations of the ideal and the practice of democracy. The publics in many newer democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America have proved deeply critical of the performance of their governing regimes, and during the 1980s many established democracies saw a decline in public confidence in the core institutions of representative democracy, including parliaments, the legal system, and political parties. The book considers the causes and consequences of the development of critical citizens in three main parts: cross‐national trends in confidence in governance; testing theories with case studies; and explanations of trends.
This arose as part of an ongoing project on ‘Visions of Governance for the Twenty‐first Century’ initiated in 1996 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which aims to explore what people want from government, the public sector, and non‐profit organizations. A first volume from the ‘Visions’ project (Why People Don’t Trust Government) was published by Harvard University Press in 1997; this second volume analyses a series of interrelated questions. The first two are diagnostic: how far are there legitimate grounds for concern about public support for democracy worldwide; and are trends towards growing cynicism found in the US evident in many established and newer democracies? The second concern is analytical: what are the main political, economic, and cultural factors driving the dynamics of support for democratic government? The final questions are prescriptive: what are the consequences of this analysis and what are the implications for strengthening democratic governance? The book brings together a distinguished group of international scholars who develop a global analysis of these issues by looking at trends in established and newer democracies towards the end of the twentieth century. Chapters draw upon the third wave (1995–1997) World Values Survey as well as using an extensive range of comparative empirical evidence.
Challenging the conventional wisdom, the book concludes that accounts of a democratic ‘crisis’ are greatly exaggerated. By the mid‐1990s most citizens worldwide shared widespread aspirations to the ideals and principles of democratic government, although at the same time there remains a marked gap between evaluations of the ideal and the practice of democracy. The publics in many newer democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America have proved deeply critical of the performance of their governing regimes, and during the 1980s many established democracies saw a decline in public confidence in the core institutions of representative democracy, including parliaments, the legal system, and political parties. The book considers the causes and consequences of the development of critical citizens in three main parts: cross‐national trends in confidence in governance; testing theories with case studies; and explanations of trends.
Despite South Korea’s messy democratic trajectory, it has miraculously achieved consolidation. Though far from perfect, South Korea’s democracy has turned obstacles into opportunities for reform and development.
It is problematic to rely on indicators carrying the "D-word" for measuring democratic legitimacy. Popular conception of the "D-word" has been so much contaminated by competing public discourses and socializing mechanisms that the word "democracy" has lost much of its conceptual clarity and semantic consistency when it travels across borders. We introduce a more reliable tool to compare the cultural foundation for liberal democracy across countries, especially between democratic and non-democratic ones. A newly developed typological analysis, which is applied to two waves of Asian Barometer Survey, enables us to differentiate the substance of democratic legitimacy from its appearance.
From Bangkok to Manila, Taipei, Seoul, and Ulaanbaatar, East Asia's third-wave democracies are in distress. Data from the first and second Asian Barometer Surveys can help us systematically to assess the extent of normative commitment to democracy that citizens feel in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Compared to levels of popular support for democracy, strength of authoritarian detachment, and satisfaction with the performance of democracy observed in other regions, our six East Asian democracies appear on a par with similarly situated societies elsewhere in the world. The lesson is that this form of government must win citizens' support through better performance.
How much progress have democracies in East Asia made toward consolidation? Approaching this question from a cultural perspective, our paper attempts to determine whether democracy has become "the only game in town" for a majority of the mass publics in six East Asian democratic countries: Japan, Korea, Mongolia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. Using data culled from the first wave of the East Asia Barometer surveys conducted in these countries during the 2002-2003 period, we find that majorities of the Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese people prefer democracy to its alternatives at the levels of both political regime and process. On the basis of this finding, we conclude that only these three East Asian democracies are well on their ways to becoming consolidated democracies.
This article explores the relationship between liberal democracy and socioeconomic equality, both on a theoretical and a practical level. It recounts both liberal and non-liberal arguments why democracies should or should not worry about de facto inequality, and then goes through a series of consequentialist arguments about why, alternatively, democracies should either worry about high persistent levels of inequality, or conversely, why attempts to remedy inequality through social policy is likely to have deleterious political or economic effects.
Across Latin America, public support for democracy has been remarkably stable and consistently higher than satisfaction with the way that democracy works. Low institutional trust reflects even lower levels of interpersonal trust.
This article employs 1976–1986 Euro-Barometer data to investigate the political economy of public attitudes toward prevailing political and social arrangements in eight Western European countries. Pooled cross-sectional time series analyses reveal that the effects of economic conditions extend beyond their impact on governing party support to influence feelings of life and democracy satisfaction and demands for radical and reformist social change. Attitudes toward democracy and social change also respond to important political events such as the occurrence and outcomes of national elections. We conclude by arguing that the political economy of attitudes toward polity and society in contemporary Western democracies is real, but limited by widely shared beliefs that have become key elements in the political cultures of these countries.Bourgeois society has been cast in a purely economic mold; its foundations, beams, and beacons are all made of economic material.Joseph Schumpeter 1942, 73Since the late 1960s, rational choice models based on economic variables have become the dominant mode of analysis, while cultural factors have been deemphasized to an unrealistic degree.Ronald Inglehart 1990, 16
Popular trust in social and political institutions is vital to the consolidation of democracy, but in post-Communist Europe, distrust is the predicted legacy of Communist rule. Contrary to expectations, however, New Democracies Barometer surveys of popular trust in fifteen institutions across nine Eastern and Central European countries indicate that skepticism, rather than distrust, predominates. Although trust varies across institutions and countries, citizens trust holistically, evaluating institutions along a single dimension. Both early life socialization experiences and contemporary performance evaluations influence levels of trust. The legacy of socialization under Communism has mostly indirect effects, whereas the effects of economic and political performance evaluations on trust are larger and more direct. Thus, skepticism reflects trade-offs between public dissatisfaction with current economic performance, optimism about future economic performance, and satisfaction with the political performance of contemporary institutions in providing greater individual liberties than in the Communist past.
It has been said about the United States that it is now suffering ‘a crisis of regime’. Europe, we have been told, is in little better condition: ‘all over Europe the First World War broke up the structure of society which, before 1914, had provided the necessary basis of confidence between government and governed. There no longer exists, except in a few places such as Switzerland, that general acceptance of the conduct of national affairs that adds to the vigor of government and society alike.’ ¹ These are the kinds of practical political problems to which the concept of political support, as found in systems analysis, has been directed.
Most democratic citizens today are distrustful of politicians, political parties, and political institutions. Where once democracies expected an allegiant public, citizens now question the very pillars of representative democracy. This book documents the erosion of political support in virtually all advanced industrial democracies. Assembling a large array of cross-national public opinion data, this book traces the current challenges to democracy primary to changing citizen values and rising expectations. These dissatisfied democrats are concentrated among the young, the better educated, and the politically sophisticated. At the same time, the evidence debunks claims that such trends are a function of scandals, poor performance, and other government failures. Changing public opinion is born from the successful social modernization of these nations. A creedal passion for democracy is sweeping across the Western democracies, and people now expect more of their governments. This book concludes by examining the consequences of these changing images of government. The book finds that these expectations are making governing more difficult, but also fuelling demands for political reform. The choices that democracies may in response to these challenges lead to a further expansion of the democratic process and a new relationship between citizens and their government.
Following the three welfare regimes constructed by Esping-Andersen, many scholars have addressed the question of whether there may be a further type of regime, differing from the categories of liberal, conservative and social democratic, pertaining to other parts of the world. Discussion has centred largely on East Asia and, in particular, on the notion of the developmental/productivist welfare regime. Yet these discussions have been based more on conceptual classification than empirical analysis. This article attempts to fill in the gap, with reference to the developmental characteristics of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. A set of indicators is developed for the factor and cluster analysis of countries, based on data from the s and s. The results indicate the existence of a new group, consisting of Taiwan and South Korea, which is distinct from Esping-Andersen's three regimes – unlike Japan, which remains a composite of various regime types. Regime characteristics peculiar to the cases of Taiwan and South Korea include: low/ medium social security expenditure, high social investment, more extensive gender discrimination in salary, medium/high welfare stratification, a high non-coverage rate for pensions, high individual welfare loading, and high family welfare responsibility. When compared with Esping-Andersen's three regimes, the East Asian developmental regime shows similarity with his conservative model, in respect of welfare stratification, while the non-coverage of welfare entitlements is similar to his liberal model. There is virtually no evidence of any similarity between the developmental welfare regime and Esping-Andersen's social democratic regime type.
While voluminous studies have attributed the continuing decline of institutional trust to political corruption, the link between corruption and institutional trust in Asia has yet to be explored systematically. Testing the effect of corruption on institutional trust is theoretically important and empirically challenging, since many suggest that contextual factors in Asia, such as political culture and electoral politics, might neutralize the negative impact of corruption. Utilizing data from the East Asia Barometer, we find a strong trust-eroding effect of political corruption in Asian democracies. We also find no evidence that contextual factors lessen the corruption-trust link in Asia. The trust-eroding effect holds uniformly across all countries examined in this study and remains robust even after taking into account the endogenous relationship between corruption and trust.
When the Asian financial crisis took a heavy toll on Korea in the late 1990s, policy makers responded by extending welfare policy. For many analysts, this was a paradoxical move, marking a fundamental reconfiguration of the social policy system. This article contests that interpretation. It examines the changes made to Korean social policy in recent years, and considers their impact on the Korean welfare state. It notes both that welfare extensions have been comparatively limited, and that they have often formed part of wider attempts to boost labour market flexibility. It thus concludes that limited expansion of the Korean welfare state is chiefly an attempt to bolster industrial competitiveness and economic growth. For now, Korea retains the productivist social policy orientation that has long characterised it. It also concedes, however, that in the future underlying social change, notably a rapidly ageing population, may prompt policy makers to make significant changes to the Korean welfare state.
This article attempts to explain changes and continuity in the developmental welfare states in Korea and Taiwan within the East Asian context. It first elaborates two strands of welfare developmentalism (selective vs. inclusive), and establishes that the welfare state in both countries fell into the selective category of developmental welfare states before the Asian economic crisis of 1997. The key principles of the selective strand of welfare developmentalism are productivism, selective social investment and authoritarianism; inclusive welfare development is based on productivism, universal social investment and democratic governance. The article then argues that the policy reform toward an inclusive welfare state in Korea and Taiwan was triggered by the need for structural reform in the economy. The need for economic reform, together with democratization, created institutional space in policy-making for advocacy coalitions, which made successful advances towards greater social rights. Finally, the article argues that the experiences of Korea and Taiwan counter the neo-liberal assertion that the role of social policy in economic development is minor, and emphasizes that the idea of an inclusive developmental welfare state should be explored in the wider context of economic and social development.
This paper analyses how institutional factors affect satisfaction with democracy (SWD). It employs a panel of observations from Eurobarometers in the time span 1990-2000, and thus is one of the first studies to consider the longitudinal dimension of the driving forces of SWD. We find that high-quality institutions like the rule of law, well-functioning regulation, low corruption, and other institutions that improve resource allocation have a positive effect on average satisfaction with democracy.
Much of the literature on political support is of little use to policy makers or those attempting to understand ordinary politics, because the concepts guiding research have focused attention on extreme cases of little relevance. If we are to interpret political support in terms of regime stability, then it is seldom at issue in advanced democratic societies; but if it indicates only approval for authorities, then direct measures of popularity do the job better. This paper works toward an empirical conceptualization of political support intermediate along that continuum by investigating the relationship between support orientations and the public''s evaluation of governmental policy performance. Empirical hypotheses are drawn from an elaboration of the policy-relevant aspects of political support, and of the support-relevant aspects of policy evaluations. These hypotheses are tested against the American public''s responses to the government''s management of the economy, and they reveal several patterns useful to interpreting changes in the level of political support.
The progression of prostate cancer is a slow and multiple-step process; clinically detectable prostate cancer normally manifest in aged men, although the lesions may have originated much earlier in life. Animal models that mimic the initiation, progression, and metastasis of human prostate cancer are needed to understand the etiology of prostate cancer and to develop new treatments. Recent progress in mouse genetic engineering technology has led to generation of a series of mouse models for prostate cancer research, which have been widely used for testing impacts of a single or combinations of several gene alterations on the onset, progression, and metastasis of prostate tumors, as well as for assessing the effects of environmental, clinical, and preclinical drugs for prostate cancer prevention and treatment. Although it is possible that no single "perfect" model can recapitulate every aspects of this highly heterogeneous disease, it is expected that the models mimicking certain aspects of prostate cancers will continue to provide preclinical guide to treat this prevalent disease.
The rapid economic growth of eight East Asian economies, often called the "East Asian miracle," raises two questions: What policies and other factors contributed to that growth? And can other developing countries replicate those policies to stimulate equally rapid growth? This article, based on case studies, econometric data, and economic theory, offers a list of the ingredients that contributed to that success. But it is the combination of these ingredients, many of which involve government interventions acting together, that accounts for East Asia's success. Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.