During the early years of South Korea’s transition to democracy, expanding popular rule and deepening individual rights went hand-in-hand. But Roh Moo Hyun’s presidency has exposed rifts between majority rule and constitutionalism that the country’s judiciary is struggling to bridge.
About the Authors
Hahm Chaihark
Hahm Chaihark is assistant professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University, where he also chairs the Korean Studies Program. He is coeditor (with Daniel A. Bell) of The Politics of Affective Relations: East Asia and Beyond (2004).
The decaying trajectory of democratization in South Africa represents a kind of settlement failure, resulting for the main parties in the transition having come to the table with incompatible cultural…
Democratic consolidation in the East will face the most difficulties in the cultural sphere. Democracy’s fate will depend on how the West handles its own sociocultural problems.
The 2010 presidential election shows that Ukraine is both a surprisingly stable electoral democracy and a disturbingly corrupt one. The corruption, moreover, may have a lot to do with the…
