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Social Movement Tradition and the Role of Civil Society in Japan and South Korea

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Abstract

In 1947, Japan became the first East Asian country to introduce democracy, and it was not until four decades later that South Korea completed the democratic transition. Today, surprisingly, South Korea stands out among the East Asian countries as the one that has the most vibrant and politically powerful civil society, whereas in Japan, the role of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector in political advocacy is greatly limited. Using historical institutionalism, this paper tries to explain why the NGOs in South Korea and Japan play vastly different roles in political advocacy. It concludes that the different social movement traditions have played important roles in the evolution of the civil societies in Japan and South Korea, and led to the different levels of institutionalization within the NGO sector.

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Notes

  1. Data are from “Chapter 3, number of establishments by type of legal organization,” from Survey of the Service Industry (2004), webpage of the National Statistics Bureau of Japan, http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/service/2004/gaiyou/z3.htm (accessed August 5, 2006).

  2. Source: Lester M. Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski, “Chapter 2: Measuring civil society: the Johns Hopkins Global Civil Society Index” in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.), Global Civil Society (Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector, (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, [50]), p. 78. For the measurement of the indicators please refer to the content under the subject title “Operationalization: from concept to indicators” in the same chapter, pp. 66–75.

  3. For detailed information on the measurement of “capacity,” please see Lester M. Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski, “Chapter 2: Measuring civil society: the Johns Hopkins Global Civil Society Index” in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.), Global Civil Society (Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, [50]), pp. 67–70.

  4. Source: excerpt from Table 1.10. Asian industrialized pattern; Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and Regina List, “Chapter 1: Global civil society: an overview” in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.), Global Civil Society (Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, [51]), p. 46.

  5. One important component of the indicator of the impact of the NGO sector is “contribution to advocacy and expression.” The definition of expressive activities is as follows: “the scale of the human resources—paid and volunteer—that civil society organizations mobilize for expressive activities—i.e. advocacy, professional associations, labor unions, environmental protection, and culture and recreation.” Lester M. Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski, “Chapter 2: Measuring civil society: the Johns Hopkins Global Civil Society Index” in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.) Global Civil Society (Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, [50]), p. 74.

  6. Source: Based on “Table 4.3 The absolute number, composition, and density per 100,000 persons of associations, 1960-1996.” Tsujinaka Yutaka, “From developmentalism to maturity: Japan’s civil society organizations in comparative perspective,” in Frank J. Schwartz and Susan J. Pharr (Eds.) The State of Civil Society in Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [59]), pp. 92–93.

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  1. Political Science Department, Baylor University, One Bear Place 97276, Waco, TX, 76798, USA

    Lichao He

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He, L. Social Movement Tradition and the Role of Civil Society in Japan and South Korea. East Asia 27, 267–287 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-010-9113-0

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