The Mass Dynamics of Democratization and Quality of Life: The Korean Experience

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9409835 Shin The past decade has seen a growth in major research efforts dedicated to the examination of popular support for democratic transformations of authoritarian rule. Teams of political scientists and sociologists have conducted national sample surveys of the mass publics of newly democratizing countries in Est Asia, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Latin America. From these surveys, much is known about levels, trends, and sources of mass support for democracy. From the surveys, however, there is little known about the dynamics of mass support for democratization. Which segments of the mass citizenry have continued supporting democratization? Which segments have discontinued their support of it? What has motivated some to modify their democratic support? Undoubtedly these questions are crucial to formulating an appropriate strategy for consolidating nascent democratic rule. Yet these questions have not been addressed adequately in the large body of literature which has recently accumulated on the mass culture of democratization. This research investigation seeks to address these questions of strategic significance from the perspective of life quality which ordinary citizens experience and envision for themselves and their country. Specifically, the study hypothesizes that individual citizens react to democratization in response to their perceptions of how it has affected the quality of their life in the past and their expectations of how it would affect the quality of their life in the future. This hypothesis will be tested with a new set of mass survey data to be collected from Korea, a country which has made considerable progress in establishing a democratic political culture over the past five years.