Trends in Attitudes Toward Democracy inKorea and Taiwan

Chong-Min Park and Yun-han Chu

Introduction

In East Asia, new democracies began to emerge immediately after thepeople's power revolution in the Philippines overthrew the long-standingdictatorship in 1986. First, South Korea (Korea hereafter) embarked ondemocratic transition by adopting a democratic constitution and holdinga free and open election for president in 1987. Then Taiwan started itsdemocratic transition by lifting martial law in 1987 and then successivelyholding its first parliamentary election in 1992 and its first popular electionfor president in 1996. In 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet Union,Mongolia made a quick transition to democracy by abolishing its one-partyCommunist rule and holding its first multiparty parliamentary election inmore than sixty years. With the emergence of these three new democracies,Japan was no longer the only democracy in East Asia.

Korea and Taiwan are widely recognized as the two most successful third-wavedemocracies in Asia. For nearly two decades, these young democracieshave regularly held free and competitive elections at all levels of government.Both nationally and locally, citizens choose the heads of governmentand the members of the parliament and councils through periodic electoralcontests. More important, unlike many of their peers in the region, theyhave peacefully undergone two power rotations, passing "the two-turnovertest" for democratic consolidation. There is little doubt that the politicalregimes in Korea and Taiwan fully meet the minimum requirements of democracy,such as free and fair elections, universal adult suffrage, and multipartycompetition.

Various international assessments of democracy confirm the two Asiantigers' steady institutional progress toward liberal democracy. The Polity IVProject evaluates regime authority characteristics on a 21-point scale rangingfrom -10 (hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy). In eachof the first ten years after the transition, Korea received a Polity score of+6. In each of twelve years from 1998 to 2010, it received a score of +8, twonotches below the maximum score. Taiwan performs better in democratizingthe authority structure. Before 1992, it received a score of -1; thereafterit was accorded a score of +7 or higher. Since 2005, Taiwan's Polity score hasbeen raised to the maximum, +10. The political regimes in both countriesare rated either consolidated or nearly consolidated democracies.

The political systems in both Korea and Taiwan are judged as havingprogressed beyond electoral democracy. Freedom House assesses the conditionof political rights and civil liberties on a 7-point scale with 1 (most free)to 7 (least free). Korea received an average combined score of 2.5 in eachof the first five years after the transition (1988–1992); a score of 2.0 in eachof the next eleven years (1993–2003); and a score of 1.5 in every year since2004. Taiwan received an average combined score of 3.0 between 1992 and1996. It received a score of 2.0 between 1996 and 2000, and after 2001 itsscore was upgraded to 1.5, the same as that in Korea. These young democraciesnow rank with long-lasting advanced democracies in the West.

The World Bank reports the quality of state governance in six dimensions:voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence,government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control ofcorruption. The values of these Worldwide Governance Indicators rangefrom -2.5 to +2.5. In every year since 1996, Korea received positive ratingsin all six dimensions. Taiwan also has received positive ratings in all thedimensions since 1996. In 2011, Korea received higher percentile rankingon every dimension except for political stability and absence of violence,on which it was a middling performer. In contrast, Taiwan was a highperformer on every dimension. Although the indicators lack comparabilityover time, the pattern of the ratings suggests that political institutionsand practices in both countries have made progress toward high-qualitydemocratic governance.

Do the people's views of democracy in Korea and Taiwan reflect suchexpert-based assessments of democracy? How do ordinary Koreans and Taiwaneseview democracy as an idea? Do they believe in the legitimacy ofdemocracy? How supportive are they of liberal norms and democratic institutions?Meanwhile, how do they evaluate the performance of their regimein-practice?How do they perceive the democratic quality of their prevailingsystem of government? How much confidence do they have in existingpolitical institutions? Has their support for democracy and evaluation ofregime performance changed? If so, does the change reflect the influence ofgenerational replacement or the effects of events that occurred during theperiod surveyed? By addressing these and other related questions, we seek toprovide a comprehensive account of the trends in popular attitudes towarddemocracy in these most successful third-wave democracies in Asia.

For this purpose, we rely on three public opinion survey series—theKorea Democracy Barometer (hereafter KDB), the Asian Barometer Survey(hereafter ABS), and the Taiwan Election and Democracy Survey (hereafterTEDS). For the Korean case, we use five surveys (1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,and 2001) of the KDB series and three surveys (2003, 2006, and 2011) of theABS series. For the Taiwanese case, we employ three surveys (2001, 2005,and 2010) from the ABS series and one survey (1998) from the TEDS series.It should be noted that the earliest survey data analyzed here were...