2007, Vol.5, No.2

Civil Society and NGO 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.84

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

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the institutional foundation of local party based upon new institutional rational choice theory through the case study of the Seikatsu Club movement in Kanagawa Province. This paper starts with an assumption that an institutional capital such as participatory democracy institution and social capital takes a critical role on overcoming/easing dilemmas of collective action in the process of formation and expansion of grass-roots democracy organization. Under such an assumption, this paper examines a process of establishing institutional foundation in local party by analyzing process of utilizing and accumulating institutional capital through the Seikatsu Club movement. After the analysis, the paper reaches three theoretical and practical implications: first, participatory democracy institution which predicates on basic principles, decentralization of decision making, opening to the public, civic participation, and autonomy, creates social capital facilitating people's voluntary participation. Furthermore, such social capital promotes people's participation and cooperationcapability second, leaders' political ideology affects the way of resolving dilemmas of collective action in the grass-roots democracy organization. In case of the Seikatsu Club movement in Kanagawa Province, the leaders' political ideology, which political participation is investment, not cost, is effect on path-dependent history of participatory democracy institution and third, the participatory democracy institution in local party does not guarantee ideological identity of local party or cooperative relation in-between local party and grass-roots democracy organization.

This paper analyzes and evaluates South Koreans’ multicultural citizenship base on survey research data on their attitudes towards the criteria of South Korean citizenship, naturalization, policy for immigrants from North Korea and foreign countries. Contrary to common sense, South Koreans are unlikely to have strong ethnic national identity based on kinship. Survey data supports that South Koreans have a kind of political national identity because they attach great importance to political-economic contribution, communication, and the feeling of belonging as the criteria of South Korean citizenship. However, it is not clear when their political national identity instead of ethnic national identity formed. This will be another research topic. Another finding is that South Korean multicultural citizenship is still biased in that it is open to immigrants from US and Western Europe but not to those from developing countries such as Vietnam, China, Mongol and Bangladesh. Lastly, this research shows that South Koreans are very likely to object to the affirmative action for cultural minorities as a multicultural citizenship policy.

The article is to suggest an alternative form for public sphere demanded to establish democratic legitimacy. On the one hand, reciprocity or solidarity presented at Habermas’ discourse ethics is reasonable as an internal basis of public sphere. On the other hand, Habermas’ ideal speech situation dealt with at the level of discourse is unreasonable because Habermas’ discourse presupposed to be extra-ideological and homogeneous is considered as a consequence of excessive reformation for life-world. In this context, the article is to present directship - the exclusion of discourse - as a reasonable condition for public sphere. Besides, the article is to present the political community member’s experienced life as the element of public sphere based on reciprocity or solidarity.