Crafting and dismantling the egalitarian social contract: The changing state-society relations in Korea's educational policymaking

This study investigates the changing dynamics between the Korean state and society in the field of educational policymaking. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Korean developmental state implemented a series of drastic egalitarian educational policies to address serious educational crises that were mainly driven by Korea's affluent middle class. Although these egalitarian policies were quite draconian and authoritarian in their implementations, they disciplined the education fever of the middle classes effectively, while garnering a wide range of support from the general population. As a result, these policies provided the basis of a de facto egalitarian social contract between the state and society on the country's educational policymaking for the past three decades. Since the 1990s, however, Korea's post-developmental state has begun to dismantle the egalitarian social contract through the drastic implementation of neoliberal educational reforms that resonate with the upper segments of the middle classes rather than with the needs of the general population. Although Korea's post-developmental state maintains a high degree of autonomy vis-a-vis society, the growing intimacy between Korea's post-developmental state and the upper segments of the middle classes suggests that the Korean state's once strong nexus with the general population is being replaced by an increasingly narrow base of social support.