A Study Of The Reationship Between The Governments' Interest Intergation And Religious Organizations' Political Involvement

Democratization is an important field in political science. Scholars in economics, sociology and political science try to explore the issue of democratization from different angles, such as economic development, cultural context, and many others. The cultural perspective is less used than the other perspectives. I believe that the cultural interpretation offers better explanatory power with regard to ideology and social development. This thesis attempts to explain that religion played a crucial role in the process of democratization. Religious groups are rare organizations in authority system for their consistency in values, integrity and strong organizational capacity for action . Whether and how authoritarian governments can intergrate the churches'major interests will determine the political involvement of these organizations, and church doctrines lead to different church interests. Specifically, this paper compares the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and Christian churches in South Korea. Since the two cases in the process of democratic transition have similar political systems, economic development level, historical and cultural background, international political environment, and the Presbyterian system of church doctrine, the main reasons why the churches in these two region had different political Involvement is due to the different level of governments'intergrating the churches'major interests and whether the government gave political offer to the churches.