2007, Vol.5, No.1

Civil Society and NGO 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.84

pISSN : 1599-8568
https://journal.kci.go.kr/civil&NGO

Approaches to explaining the political economy of international labor migration suffer from two major limitations: lack of analysis on domestic politics, social cleavage, and political coalitionin receiving states, on the one hand, and its own underdevelopment, partly due to the recent sweeping politics of identity that is not reduced to the political economy of international labor migration, on the other. This study tries to redress those setbacks by seeking answers for the following questions: what is the effect of international labor migration on domestic politics in receiving states? Does it make a difference on social cleavages? If so, what terrains of social cleavages and political coalitions would it produce? How would social cleavages and political coalitions be changed if a state takes different policies on the international labor migration? To elucidate those puzzles this article critically examines theories of international labor migration, reconstructs Ronald Rogowski’s model of political economy of the second image reversed, derived from the factor-based theory of international trade, in order to frame a new theoretical perspective on the political economy of international labor migration, and finally does with the perspective a case study of the United State by dividing it into two different periods, protective(1925-1965) and free migration period(1965-the present). Especially in the case study, this study takes a serious consideration for the politics of identity as well as the perspective of political economy, in order to make a balanced argument that the international labor migration fabricates a two-tied cleavage and coalition of class and identity, which are not reduced to each other.

Political prejudice has been an principal obstacle to scientific research on social movements for a long time. By this reason, social movements stayed outside of any serious research object of social science field. With the emerging Resource Mobilization Theory in United States, and New Social Movement Theory in Europe in the seventies, social movements became interesting object of academical discussion. Initially based on Olson's rational action model, and in pursuit of solving "Olson's paradox", Resource Mobilization Theory announce the rupture with Collective Behaviour Theory to construct his own theoretical frame and accumulate empirical studies. In the mid-eighties, Resource Mobilization Theory threw away narrowness of his model based uniquely on methodological individualism and calculative rationality to communicate New Social Movement, to rediscover a certain aspect of Collective Behaviour Theory, and to introduce Symbolic Interactionism. Which certainly enrage the horizon of research,but the problem of elaborating new theoretical frame capable of integrating diverse approaches rest still unsolved.

This study discusses both the direct democratic reform measures to supplement representative democracy and the deliberative democratic remedies to overcome some obstacles involved in direct democracy. To do this, it focuses attention on the cases of referendum and initiatives in Switzerland and California. Both cases, demonstrating some innovative alternatives to deal with both the 'democratic deficit' of representative democracy and the lack of the deliberative process of direct democracy, suggest some policy measures for Korea to launch the integration of direct, representative and deliberative democratic institutions in the process of the institutionalization of direct democracy.