How well ordinary citizens understand democracy

The case of the South Korean electorate

Bibliographic Data

ID6252803
AuthorsYoungho Cho (0000-0003-1274-6291, Hanyang University, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume21
Issue2
Pages195-219
Publication date2014-02-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDemocratization (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1351-0347 • E-ISSN: 1743-890X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13510347.2012.734808
OpenAlexW2070902058
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited33

How do mass citizens understand democracy? Are they capable of distinguishing it from its non-democratic alternatives? Does their understanding about democracy matter? To reveal the contours of cultural democratization in South Korea, this article addresses these questions largely overlooked in earlier survey-based studies. Analyses of the 2010 Korea Barometer survey indicate that all segments of the Korean electorate, including the young and the college-educated, are neither accurately nor fully informed about what distinguishes a democratic regime from its non-democratic alternatives. Moreover, the study provides strong evidence of democratic learning in that an increase in democratic knowledge leads to committed support for democracy. The findings together imply an urgent need to improve the quality of civic education for the development of democratic political culture in Korea and new democracies.Keywords: democratic knowledgedemocratic political culturecommitted support for democracycivic educationSouth Korea Notes on contributorYoungho Cho (PhD) is a lecturer at Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. His research includes public attitudes and understanding about democracy.Notes1. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 676.2. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 111.3. See Korea Barometer (www.koreabarometer.org); Asian Barometer Survey (www.asianbarometer.org).4. Shin and McDonough, “The Dynamics of Popular Reactions to Democratization in Korea.”5. Chu et al., How East Asians View Democracy.6. Huntington, The Third Wave; O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule.7. Delli Carpini, “The Psychology of Civic Learning”; Diamond, “Cultivating Democratic Citizenship.”8. Norris, Critical Citizens.9. Fishkin, When the People Speak.10. Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life.11. McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, Chapter 8.12. Bratton, Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi, Public Opinion, Democracy, and Market Reform in Africa, 274.13. Bacon, Meditations Sacrae and Human Philosophy.14. Delli Carpini and Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters.15. Eveland and Hively, “Political Knowledge”; Prior and Lupia, “Money, Time, and Political Knowledge.”16. Delli Carpini and Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters.17. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter.18. Lupia and McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock, Reasoning and Choice.19. Recently, scholars have distinguished two types of memories on which political knowledge is based: procedural and declarative. Procedural memory stores procedural knowledge and declarative memory holds factual and conceptual knowledge. Although some scholars use the term structural knowledge, conceptual knowledge is a popular term among learning scientists; see Eveland and Hively, “Political Knowledge”; Prior and Lupia, “Money, Time, and Political Knowledge.” For a general taxonomy of human knowledge, see Anderson et al., A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing.20. Jennings, “Political Knowledge Over Time and Across Generations.”21. Luskin, “Measuring Political Sophistication.”22. Neuman, The Paradox of Mass Politics.23. Lau and Sears, Political Cognition.24. Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.”25. Popkin and Dimock, “Political Knowledge and Citizen Competence.”26. Dahl, Polyarchy.27. The six characteristics of democracy are based on Dahl's definition of democracy. Dahl identified and elaborated six criteria of a modern representative democracy: (1) elected officials; (2) free, fair, frequent elections; (3) freedom of expression; (4) alternative sources of information; (5) associational autonomy; and (6) inclusive citizenship. The measurements of democratic knowledge for this study intend to reflect these six criteria. See Dahl, On Democracy, 85–91.28. For example, when a person answers “Don't know” (D/K) for free elections, that characteristic does not exist in his knowledge system because that reply indicates he does not know its relationship with democracy. Therefore, the person answering D/K does not recognize the relationship but is not misinformed about it. On the other hand, a person providing an incorrect answer (unessential) for the characteristic recognizes its relationship with democracy but is misinformed. This state of democratic knowledge indicates that the characteristic does exist in his knowledge system but is not correctly organized in relation to democracy. See Mondak, “Reconsidering the Measurement of Political Knowledge.”29. McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 258–60.30. Ibid., 12.31. Cho (“What People Know about Democracy and Why It Matters”) reported that Korea is not unique but is located between advanced democracies and authoritarian countries in terms of understanding about democracy. His study showed that Korean understanding about democracy is lower than those of Western advanced democracies and Taiwan. Using the latest World Values Survey, Cho examined whether citizens of 43 countries are able to discriminate civil liberties and free elections from military takeover and religious interference into politics in relation to democracy. According to his study, about half of the Koreans failed to correctly categorize these four regime characteristics, whereas only a quarter of the citizens in advanced democracies did so. It means that most of the citizens in advanced democracies are fully informed about democracy but half of the Koreans are informed, when the four questions are given to evaluate.32. Learning scientists make the same argument that conceptual knowledge constitutes the building blocks of further knowledge acquisition. See Jonassen, Beissner, and Yacci, Structural Knowledge.33. Dalton, “Communists and Democrats.”34. The percentages of the partially informed and the ignorant vary little across different social segments. So, these types were dropped and this study focused on the informed and the misinformed.35. Diamond, Developing Democracy; Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation.36. Shin, Mass Politics and Culture in Democratizing Korea; Chang, Chu, and Park, “Authoritarian Nostalgia in Asia.”37. Shin, Park, and Jang, “Assessing the Shifting Qualities of Democratic Citizenship.”38. McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 12–15.39. Zaller, “Political Awareness, Elite Opinion Leadership and Mass Survey Response.”40. Krosnick, “Is Political Psychology Sufficiently Psychological?,” 204.41. Gibson and Caldeira, Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations; Gibson, Caldeira, and Baird, “On the Legitimacy of National High Courts.”42. Gibson and Caldeira, Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations, 122.43. Inglehart, “How Solid Is Mass Support for Democracy”; Rose, Mishler, and Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives.44. The first two statements represent positive orientations for democracy over its non-democratic alternatives and Korea's past authoritarian governments and the third indicates willingness to defend democracy. As Gibson and his colleagues stressed, political support reflects more than positive and negative orientations toward political objects. Thus, this study assumes that political support for democracy becomes committed when someone expresses conative willingness to defend it from any non-democratic changes. See Gibson and Caldeira, Citizens, Courts, and Confirmation.45. Lipset, Political Man.46. Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti, Making Democracy Work.47. Mattes and Bratton, “Learning about Democracy in Africa.”48. Whitefield and Evans, “Political Culture versus Rational Choice.”49. Miller, Hesli, and Reisinger, “Conceptions of Democracy among Mass and Elite in Post-Soviet Societies.”50. Mattes and Bratton, “Learning about Democracy in Africa.”51. Rose, Mishler, and Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives.52. Shin, Mass Politics and Culture in Democratizing Korea.53. Finkel, “Can Democracy Be Taught?”54. Shin, “Globalization and the Working Class in South Korea.”55. Rose, Mishler, and Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives

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