Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Foundation For Democratic Transition: The Evolution Of Korean Civil Society 1972-1987, Sukhee Lee

Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to explain the evolutionary process of Korean civil society throughout the 1970s and 1980s as a foundation for democratization. I argue that the changing character of civil society in the mid-1980s was a necessary condition for democratic transition in 1987. Thus, this study focuses on how an ineffective civil society became sufficiently effective to be a deciding factor in Korea’s democratic transition, and seeks to define what factors led to the change. In the process of development of civil society, several factors, such as political culture, economic development, political opportunity structure, and the external environment, affected the …