Monitoring Mass Reactions to Democratization During the East Asian Economic Crisis

最近东亚经济强国的崩溃为研究经济危机对创造经济奇迹的专制政权的民主化的影响提供了一个非常难得的机会。 本调查研究旨在从比较的角度考察东亚经济危机时期的大众文化动态。 为此，该项目在今后两年每年在韩国进行一次大规模民意调查。 根据这些年度调查，它监测和揭示了在经济危机的整个艰难过程中，民众对民主和威权政治的取向动态。 韩国大众的政治态度动态的模式和来源进行了比较和对比，观察到在中欧和东欧的专制统治带来了经济贫困，而不是繁荣。 这些研究努力为持续争论的“经济危机是否破坏新生民主国家”提供了一个新的视角。“它们还提供了一个真正的考验，检验这些民主国家的公民是否有足够的政治经验，能够区分政府业绩的质量和民主本身的合法性。 最重要的是，功能，制度学习，和民主文化变革的其他理论进行了测试，在最突出的东亚龙国家进行的一系列年度调查，以扩大和完善的文献上的第三波民主化，主要是在西方进行的研究。

The recent collapse of economic powerhouses in East Asia has generated a very rare opportunity to study the impact of economic crisis on the democratization of authoritarian regimes that produced economic miracles. The survey research project proposed here seeks to examine the dynamics of mass culture during the East Asian economic crisis in comparative perspective. To this end, the project undertakes annually a mass public opinion survey in South Korea for each of the next two years. Based on these annual surveys, it monitors and unravels the dynamics of popular orientations toward both democratic and authoritarian politics throughout the arduous process of the economic crisis. The patterns and sources of political attitudinal dynamics among the Korean mass public are compared and contrasted with what is observed in Central and Eastern Europe where authoritarian rule brought about economic poverty instead of prosperity. These research endeavors provide a new perspective on the continuing debate over whether "economic crisis undermines nascent democracies." They also provide a true test of whether citizens of those democracies are politically sophisticated enough to distinguish between the quality of governmental performance and the legitimacy of democracy itself. Most importantly, functional, institutional learning, and other theories of democratic cultural change are tested with a set of annual surveys conducted in the most prominent East Asian dragon state in order to expand and refine the literature on the third wave of democratization that builds on research conducted mostly in the West.