Study On Path Dependence Of South Korea Political Transition

This thesis attempts to analyze Korean political transition from the perspective ofpath dependence theory. The author argues that political transition refers to the change ofpolitical system or political formation. Comparatively speaking, scholars don’t put toomuch of their effort on finding out what political transition exactly is, but focus more onthe study political transition as a phenomenon. In1950s, political development theorycame to the world. When its explanatory power weakened, political transition theory tookits place. Political transition theory is a dynamic, global theory. Democracy is one of itsmain content. Path dependence theory was born in1980s, originally used to describesome phenomenon in the technical development. Then it entered the new institutionaleconomics and other fields. In the analysis of Korean political transition process underthe framework of path dependence theory, the author mainly focuses on thedemocratization process of Korean authoritarian government. It is believed thatinstitutional change of South Korea has many intrinsic mechanisms, respectively theconstraints from the law, the culture and the vested interest groups, network externality,learning effect, ability to solve problems and random factors. These systems contributedto the South Korea’s authoritarian government’s long-time existence. It is also becausethat so many intrinsic mechanisms which are reversible exist, Korean democracymovement gained a success. By rethinking the path dependence theory, we will find thatthis theory doesn’t lay enough stress on the external and random factors. This theoryenlightens us that we should pay attention to initial conditions, positive feedbackmechanism and system-lock phenomenon.