South Korea's Middle Class And Democratic Transition

The middle class, is refer to a group between the upper class and the lower labor class, it is not a specific class in the social class stucture, it contains some classes that have some similar characteristics and their incomes in the middle level of the whole society, the mainly division standard are their incomes and fortunes, at the same time, it also give attention to job, learning, living style, degree of education, social emotion and sense of worth.. The middle class is also the production of historical development and social stucture transition. Recently, along with the rapid development of the economy and social transition in East Asia countries, the middle class in East Asia developed rapidly and played a more and more important role in the scoial politics. This also made more people focus on the development of the middle class in East Asia. At the same time, democratic reformation and democratic transition became an important part of the political development in East Asia at this period. The formation and development of the middle class in South Korea can be treated as a typical represent of the middle class in East Asia, and it also can give the later developed countries some experience, so we should pay more attention on them.Specifically speaking, except the introduction this paper consists of four parts:First of all, it is the introduction. This part refers to the background and significance of the study, the present situation and the framwork of the thesis.Chapter one is the basic theories and methods of the research of South Korea's democratic transition. At present, there are three theories in the research of democratic transition, they are comparative modernization theory and structural analysis method, citizen society theory and state-society relation analysis method, strategy selection theory and tactic international analysis method. When be used to examined democratic transition, all the theories and methods have their advantage and disadvantage. These theories and methods provide us the theory foundation for the following analysis and discuss.Chapter two mainly about the creation background and development processes of the middle class in South Korea. The development of South Korea's middle class is not occasional, it is the result of lots of factors includes the certain historical backgrounds, and also affected by South Korea's certain political, economical and cultural factors. The development of South Korea's middle class is also a long and step by step process, it was not finished in a short time. The development of South Korea's middle class can be divided in three processes: germination period, growing period and rapid developing period.Chapter three is mainly about the effection of South Korea's middle class in the process of democratic transition. The process of South Korea's democratic transition can be divided in two processes: democratic transition and democratic consolidation, in these two different processes, South Korea's middle class played quite important roles, In the precess of democratic transition, South Korea's middle class pushed the transition process forward to success. In the precess of democratic consolidation, South Korea's middle class changed their strategy accoding to the change of the situation, they became more and more conservative. Actually, South Korea's middle class in the process of democratic transition played a banlancing roles.Chapter four is mainly about the limitation of South Korea's middle class in the process of democratic transition. The developing process of South Korea's middle class is not only benifited by the persistent economy development leading by the authority government, it was the productor of the government's policy, and their development also related to South Korea's social political culture movement.Consequently, the development of South Korea's middle class has its own features. In the two processes: democratic transition and democratic consolidation, South Korea's middle class had their certain limitations. This mainly expression in South Korea's middle class played a uncertain conservative role in the political transition, and this character became significance in the perion of democratic consolidation, South Korea's middle class became more and more conservative in this period. So when we discuss the effection of South Korea's middle class in the different processes of democratic transition, wo should also know the limitation of South Korea's middle class. So we can have a more comprehensive and deeper analysis in this question.