How well ordinary citizens understand democracy: the case of the South Korean electorate

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.     

转型时期我国社会治安综合治理的新视角

建构中国的市民社会,是我国社会结构转型的终极目标,成熟的市民社会对国家的社会治安与社会稳定起着非常重要的作用。一个成熟的市民社会与民主的权威政治国家构成了一种良性的平衡力量,使社会与政府之间形成了一种良性的互动机制,释放各种有利于社会稳定的因素,市民社会也有一种很好的自我调节功能,通过这种自我调节功能的发挥,有效地协调由于政治国家权威的退出而形成的各种关系。对社会稳定起到了积极作用。     

Revisiting the role of civic organizations in Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan: Confidence,membership, and democratic practice

In many emerging and authoritarian countries, civil society organizations that focus on political or sensitive policy issues are being cracked down upon, while service-oriented ones are given a relatively greater ability to operate. What might the consequence of this be for democratic practice given the important role civic organizations play in this process? We examine this question by considering whether the absence of confidence in a country's governing institutions is related to membership in service-rather than governance-focused civic organizations, and how such membership is associated with elite-challenging, political activities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. We find that individuals who have no confidence in state institutions are less likely to seek membership in governance-focused civic organizations, but not necessarily in service-focused ones. At the same time, membership in both types of civic organizations is associated with participation in political activities, while beliefs that a country is run democratically decreases it. This suggests that a variety of civic organizational types, even those without an explicit governance-focus, contingent on perceptions of democratic governance and other covariates held constant, enhance democratic practice.     

Overwhelmed and Immobilized: Raising the Consciousness of Privileged Young Adults about World Hunger and Poverty

In this study, I compared the shifts in worldview of affluent young adults participating in a course on social justice issues to a control group of similar young adults. In this course, participating students learned about the size, scope, causes, and impact of world hunger and global poverty. However, an analysis of pre- and postsurvey data revealed that the young adults participating in the social justice course experienced a decline over the course of the semester in their support for humanitarian aid in comparison to the control group. Interviews with these young adults, and analyses of their student work, revealed that the manner in which they learned about world hunger and poverty led them to become overwhelmed by the size and scope of these global problems and convinced of their intractability.     

Group Homes for Problem Youth:

No abstract available for this article.     

Social Skills Training with Adolescents:

No abstract available for this article.     

Chapter 6: Essential Orientations and Practices

SUMMARY

In civic youth wouth work program staff focus on larger outcomes and do not often attend to the importance of seemingly mundane and simple tasks. Young people talk about how these simple tasks have powerful meaning for them and their work even as adult volunteers talked about the challenges of working democratically with young people. To integrate these perspectives there are some practices that describe how this work is done: co-creation, contributory, interrogatory, contextual, caring-for-the-world, processual, open, invitational, and a commitment to more than the self.     

Chapter 8: The “Citizen” in Youth Civic Engagement

SUMMARY

The concept of citizenship is a central, necessary, and defining feature of youth civic engagement. Any effort to educate young people for citizenship entails an implicit idea of what a “good citizen” is. There are a number of different and sometimes competing versions of what is a “good citizen.” This chapter reviews “standard” accounts of citizenship in political theory and offers lived citizen as a critical expansion and bridging dimension to current discourses of citizenship. We develop this idea through our readings of the three initiatives in conversation with the writing of Hannah Arendt and John Dewey. Our reading of Arendt and Dewey provides a grounded, embodied, and fluid understanding of the relationship between doing citizen activities (PA, YIG, YSC), becoming citizen (learning through interaction), and being citizen.     

Social Capital,Civic Engagement,and Economics in a Transitioning Economy: The Case of Vietnam Provinces

Social capitalist assert that civic engagement and participation yield significant economic gains for a county but, generally focus on democratic governed societies. The objective of this research is to determine if social capital transitions to Vietnam, a single-party governed country. This analysis first identifies factors that impact civic engagement and participation. Then it analyzes the relationship between civic engagement, participation, and economics. Using the 2012 Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index, we find human capital is a stronger predictor of economics in Vietnam. We conclude by offering policy implications for understanding social capital in single-party, transitioning economy countries.     

从公民社会视角谈政府民主治理

改革开放以后,随着我国市场经济体制和政治体制改革的逐步深入,整个社会日益呈现出开放、宽松、活跃的氛围,各种各样的民间组织日益涌现,以个人权利为基础,以民间组织为主要特征的公民社会逐渐兴起。公民社会的本质就是民主社会,它尊重公民资格,保障公民权利,认为公民参与政治生活是公民社会的最重要的政治内涵。这就意味着政府必须通过健全民主制度,丰富民主的形式来保证公共权力在全体公民的同意、监督和制约下规范地运行,并最终来保障公民的权利和利益。