Developmental citizenship in perspective: the South Korean case and beyond: Chang Kyung- Sup

Abstract

European industrial democracies. In most of the imported democracies of nonWestern regions, however, the historical process of political evolution or democratic deepening could not be imported as well. Specifically, unlike the civil and political rights of citizens (which are usually considered the definitional components of democracy), social rights have rarely been systematically incorporated into the political ideology and administrative goal of the ruling governments.3 In reality, the predominant concern of both the state elite and grassroots citizens rests with economic development and material livelihood. What is often dubbed ‘developmental politics’ takes precedence in the everyday political process of most of non-Western late-developing nations.4 Furthermore, the exigency of (rapid) national economic development is often considered to legitimate the distortion or stoppage of democracy. This phenomenon of developmental authoritarianism has not only been a widespread historical reality but also has given birth to an influential functionalist theory on authoritarian politics in Third World countries (Huntington 1968). In nations ruled by developmentalist – democratic or not – regimes the practically observable rights and duties of citizens in regards to their state have predominantly revolved around national economic development and individualized material livelihood. What I propose to call developmental citizenship has served as a basic framework for state-society (citizen) relationship in these nations. The state is expected to concentrate on economic development so that its citizens can benefit as private economic players in the market system – be workers, industrialists or self-employed entrepreneurs. These issues have not been on the center stage of Western politics and thus are not directly codified in terms of constitutional provisions and major policy agenda, so the imported democracies in nonWestern regions lack a systematic legal and/or theoretical representation of developmental politics. In these societies, the developmental politics as a mode of state governance and its citizenship ramifications mostly exist as everyday political culture. Most countries asserting a supposedly distinct political paradigm centered on national development have failed to sustain it as legitimate and viable. A brief conceptual note is in order. I follow Bryan Turner’s (1993: 2) definition of citizenship, namely: ‘[a] set of practices (juridical, political, economic, and cultural)’ which allows us ‘to avoid a state and juridical definition of citizenship as merely a collection of rights and obligations’ and ‘to understand the dynamic social construction of citizenship which changes historically as a consequence of political struggles.’ On my part I have attempted here and in other works to explain how citizenship – developmental citizenship in particular – in South Korea has been conceived, protracted, and habitually renewed amid the dynamic interplay between political democratization and capitalist economic development and what social practices have constituted such historical constructions and reconstructions of (developmental) citizenship. More specifically, I suggest developmental citizenship as a mode of political culture which forcefully shapes the nature of state-citizen relations.