Political Learning and Democratic Consolidation

Abstract

Although the concept of political learning is recognized as a key to understanding the success of democratic consolidation, it has been difficult to operationalize it. The author argues that if we use as an independent variable the messages with which actors update their beliefs, we can develop a theory of democratic consolidation based on political learning. In the Korean case, political learning took place among workers who had to decide whether to use illegal means to protest the rules of the game. Because of their weak electoral power, Korean workers had to resort to their market power to contest the labor laws outside of electoral and legislative arenas. If the rules of the game had been contested in a less confrontational manner, the process of political learning may have been less protracted.