Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea (Hoover Institution Press, 1999), now in its second printing, examines the problems and prospects of democracy in Korea a decade after the transition from authoritarian military rule. The book presents a wide-ranging and balanced account of the political, economic, and cultural factors shaping Korean democracy and of the institutional reforms that are needed to deepen and consolidate this crucial experiment with democracy in East Asia.
The authors assess the progress of democratization at every level of the political and state apparatus: political parties and elections, the workings of the national legislature, the administration of former president Kim Young Sam, and local government. They also examine the level to which democracy has penetrated economic and civil society, looking at the transformation of the news media and the continuing efforts to reform the chaebols—the huge conglomerates that have dominated Korean business. And they analyze the microlevel of Koreans' commitment to democratic ideals, showing how a new civic mobilization among the people has deepened electoral democracy and made perhaps the most important contribution to democratic change in Korea.
Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, and codirector of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, of the National Endowment for Democracy. He is also a professor of political science and sociology (by courtesy) at Stanford University and coordinator of the Democracy Program of the new Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford's Institute for International Studies.
Shin is the Endowed Chair Professor of Korean Politics at the University of Missouri at Columbia. For more than ten years he has directed the Korean Democracy Barometer surveys. He has also been engaged in the systematic monitoring of the cultural and institutional dynamics of democratization in Korea.
Contributors include Mark Andrew Abdollahian, Decision Insights; Diamond, Hoover Institution; Francis Fukuyama, Institute of Public Policy, George Mason University; Hoon Jaung, Chung-Ang University; Eun Mee Kim, Ewha Woman's University; Sunhyuk Kim, University of Southern California; Jacek Kugler, Claremont Graduate University; Sook-Jong Lee, Sejong Institute; Young Jo Lee, Kyung-Hee University; Chan Wook Park, Seoul National University; Hilton L. Root, Milken Institute; Kyung-Ryung Seong, Hallym University; Shin, University of Missouri–Columbia; and Seung-Mock Yang, Seoul National University.
Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea
edited by Larry Diamond, Hoover senior fellow, and Doh Chull Shin
ISBN: 0-8179-9692-3 $19.95 paperback
350 pages September 1999
