Democratic Consolidation: Participation and Attitudes Toward Democracy in Taiwan and South Korea

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the transitions of Taiwan and South Korea to democracy. Specifically, I study why citizens in these newly democratic systems engage in conventional forms of participation as an indicator of consolidation. Using much of the existing literature on participation, I test hypotheses that frame the decisions to participate through conventional forms as a function of internal feelings of efficacy, or political engagement, mobilization by parties and social capital. I use a series of hierarchical linear models to assess Waves 2 and 3 data from the 2005–2010 Asian Barometer and find considerable support for political engagement, party attachment, and social connections in spurring on participation. In addition, while respondents offer limited support for democratic institutions, they espouse liberal attitudes; this reflects the large presence of “critical citizens” in these places (Norris 1999; Chu and Huang 2010). Though fragile, there are indications of meaningful democratic progress in Taiwan and South Korea.

Acknowledgements

Data analyzed in this article were collected by the Asian Barometer Project, which was co-directed by Professors Fu Hu and Yun-han Chu and received major funding support from Taiwan's Ministry of Education, Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University. The Asian Barometer Project Office (www.asianbarometer.org) is solely responsible for the data distribution. The author appreciates the assistance in providing data by the institutes and individuals aforementioned. The views expressed herein are the author's own.

The author would like to thank Mark Franklin and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

ORCID

Howard Sanborn http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0904-8137

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2014.996158.

Notes

1. I define efficacy, or political engagement, in detail later in the Data and Methods section of this paper.

2. The cross-sectional data I analyze in this paper make these longitudinal explanations difficult to test.

3. Of the 10,841 respondents included from these two waves, 50.5% scored 0, 26.9% scored 1, and 21.6% scored 2 or more.

4. This is well defined by the authors in an earlier conference presentation version of their paper, as well as in a separate, but relevant, piece by Chang, Chu, and Park (2007).

5. Full question wording for both sets of variables is included in the online appendix (see Supplementary material, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2014.996158).