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ABSTRACT
Who defends democracy? This is a question central to the literature on democratic development, and a new generation of scholars has integrated structural- and actor-centric approaches to democratization to produce generalizable insights. However, their theoretical arguments lack sufficient empirical evidence from non-Western countries. From late October 2016 to April 2017, seven million Koreans (14% of the population) raised candles and participated in anti-government rallies, which eventually halted the deconsolidation of Korean democracy. The candlelight protest is a useful case for testing the expectations of these actor-centric theories. Analysing the latest World Values Survey, this study finds that many of the protest participants were young and attentive middle-class citizens and opposition party supporters in the capital areas. Their motivations were democratically defensive and reformative rather than transformative and postmodern but differed across economic classes. These results shed fresh light on these actor-centric theories of democratization and make significant implications regarding new democracies.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to express our deep gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Since the 2000s, a new generation of scholars tend to theorize how structural conditions are translated into certain actors to demand democratic change. See Ziblatt, “How Did Europe Democratize?”; Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Ansell and Samuels, Inequality and Democratization; Welzel, Freedom Rising.
2 Cappocci and Ziblatt, “The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies.”
3 Shin, “The Deconsolidation of Liberal Democracy in Korea.”
4 Bunce and Wolchik, Defeating Authoritarian Leaders in Postcommunist Countries.
5 Beissinger et al., “Explaining Divergent Revolutionary Coalitions.”
6 Bellinger and Arce, “Protest and Democracy in Latin America’s Market Era.”
7 Lee, The Making of Minjung.
8 The Organizing Committee for People’s Candlelight Demonstration estimated the number of participants on the basis of information about the Wi-Fi signals of cellphones around Seoul and other major cities.
9 Shin and Moon, “South Korea after Impeachment.”
10 Shin, “The Deconsolidation of Liberal Democracy in Korea.”
11 Cho and Kim, “Procedural Justice and Perceived Electoral Integrity.”
12 Lee, “South Korea as a Beacon of Asian Democracy.”
13 Mounk, People vs. Democracy, 185.
14 Lee et al., Inside and Outside of the Impeachment Square; Kang, “Determinants of Unaffiliated Citizen Protests.”
15 Beissinger, “The Semblance of Democratic Revolution”; Beissinger et al., “Explaining Divergent Revolutionary Coalitions.”
16 Rosenfeld, “Reevaluating the Middle-Class Protest Paradigm.”
17 Ziblatt, “How Did Europe Democratize?”
18 Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Boix, Democracy and Redistribution.
19 Acemoglu and Robinson, “Middle Class Rising?”
20 Rueschemeyer et al., Capitalist Development and Democracy.
21 Korpi, The Democratic Class Struggle.
22 See World Inequality Database.
23 Huntington, The Third Wave, 67.
24 Ansell and Samuels, Inequality and Democratization.
25 Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.
26 Ansell and Samuels, Inequality and Democratization.
27 Ha, “Late Industrialization, the State, and Social Changes.”
28 Koo, “Middle Classes, Democratization.”
29 Shin, “The Deconsolidation of Liberal Democracy in Korea.”
30 Ibid., 108–9.
31 Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization.
32 Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy.
33 Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices; Welzel, Freedom Rising.
34 Schattschneider, Party Government, 1.
35 Teele, Forging the Franchise; Ziblatt, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy.
36 Choi, Democracy after Democratization; Shin, “Trajectory of Anti-communism in South Korea.”
37 Lee, “A Peninsula of Paradoxes.”
38 Kim et al., “Changing Cleavage Structure in New Democracies.”
39 Lakner and Milanovic, “Global Income Distribution.”
40 Beissinger, “The Semblance of Democratic Revolution”; Beissinger et al., “Explaining Divergent Revolutionary Coalitions.”
41 This result is consistent with that of the Korea National Election Studies Survey conducted right after the 2017 May presidential election, which demonstrates the external validity of the WVS. Because the WVS interviewed only citizens over 18 years of age and the Korea’s adult population is 40 million, 14% indicates that about 6 million adults participated in the candlelight protest. Given that many students and children aged 18 years or younger joined the candlelight protest with their parents, the estimate of 7 million participants is highly credible. See Lee et al., Inside and Outside of the Impeachment Square.
42 The WVS asked respondents’ monthly income and assets in Korean won, and we classified 5 income and 5 assets groups from top to bottom, respectively. We combined them to identify the upper class for the top two groups, the middle class for the next two, and the lower class for the rest.
43 Almond and Verba, Civic Culture.
44 Welzel, Freedom Rising.
45 Inglehart, “How Solid Is Mass Support for Democracy?” 51.
46 Welzel, Freedom Rising.
47 Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order.
48 Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices.
49 Beissinger et al., “Explaining Divergent Revolutionary Coalitions.”
50 International Monetary Fund, “Republic of Korea.”
51 Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy.
52 Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order.
53 Shin and Moon, “South Korea after Impeachment,” 118.
54 Beissinger, “The Semblance of Democratic Revolution”; Beissinger et al., “Explaining Divergent Revolutionary Coalitions”; Rosenfeld, “Reevaluating the Middle-Class Protest Paradigm.”
55 Kang, “Determinants of Unaffiliated Citizen Protests”; Shin and Moon, “South Korea after Impeachment.”
56 Ansell and Samuels, Inequality and Democratization; Teele, Forging the Franchise; Ziblatt, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy.
57 Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Boix, Democracy and Redistribution.
58 OECD, Government at a Glance 2015.
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Notes on contributors
Young Ho Cho
Young Ho Cho is an associate professor of political science at Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea. His research interests are comparative political culture and democratization. He has published articles in such scholarly journals as Japanese Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Social Indicators Research, Political Studies, and Asian Survey.
Injeong Hwang
Injeong Hwang is a research professor at Center for Good Democracy of Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea. She recently earned her PhD at the Political Science department of State University of New York, Albany. Her research interests include radical right political parties, social movement, and European politics.