Social Movement Tradition and the Role of Civil Societyin Japan and South Korea

Lichao He

Received: 23 December 2009 /Accepted: 31 March 2010 /Published online: 2 May 2010# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract In 1947, Japan became the first East Asian country to introducedemocracy, and it was not until four decades later that South Korea completed thedemocratic transition. Today, surprisingly, South Korea stands out among the EastAsian countries as the one that has the most vibrant and politically powerful civilsociety, whereas in Japan, the role of the nongovernmental organization (NGO)sector in political advocacy is greatly limited. Using historical institutionalism, thispaper tries to explain why the NGOs in South Korea and Japan play vastly differentroles in political advocacy. It concludes that the different social movement traditionshave played important roles in the evolution of the civil societies in Japan and SouthKorea, and led to the different levels of institutionalization within the NGO sector.

Keywords Civil society . Political advocacy . Social movement tradition .

Institutional change . Japan . South Korea

Introduction

Civil organizations in East Asian countries have witnessed profound growth sincethe 1990s and have become part of the global organizational revolution [3, p.1].Despite their state-centric tradition, since the 1990s, Japan and South Korea havewitnessed a rapid growth of citizens voluntary and nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) [59], with the number of these organizations increasing rapidly in the late1990s.1

Japan and South Korea are liberal democracies in East Asia with longauthoritarian histories. Both are deeply influenced by Confucianism, which

East Asia (2010) 27:267287DOI 10.1007/s12140-010-9113-0

1Data are from Chapter 3, number of establishments by type of legal organization, from Survey of theService Industry (2004), webpage of the National Statistics Bureau of Japan, http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/service/2004/gaiyou/z3.htm (accessed August 5, 2006).

L. He (*)Political Science Department, Baylor University, One Bear Place 97276, Waco, TX 76798, USAe-mail: Lichao_he@baylor.edu

http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/service/2004/gaiyou/z3.htmhttp://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/service/2004/gaiyou/z3.htm

emphasizes respect for authority and social conformity. Japan introducedinstitutional democracy in 1947, whereas South Korea completed its democratictransition in 1987. However, the civil societies in Japan and South Korea playdifferent roles in the political process. South Koreas civil society is very active inpolitical advocacy and the policy-making process, whereas Japans civil societyplays a limited role in political advocacy and the decision-making process of thestate. The differences between the Japanese and South Korean civil societiesdemonstrate that the establishment of democratic institutions does not necessarilylead to a politically strong civil society. Even in a long-established democracysuch as Japan, citizens groups may still be unable to assume an assertive role instate affairs.

This paper argues that the civil societies in Japan and South Korea are differentlyinstitutionalized, and this difference is rooted in the different types of socialmovement tradition. Employing path-dependency theory, this article argues thatwhile the institutional configurations of the political system profoundly influence thestate-society relations, the nature of the social movement tradition constitutes amajor factor that shapes the trajectory of the civil society development and the roleof the NGO sector in the state.

The article first presents the general background of the research, discussing thesubject of the study and the theoretical framework, then it compares the level ofinstitutionalization of the NGO sector in Japan and South Korea, followed by ananalysis of the impact of the social movement tradition on the pattern of citizensparticipation in the two countries. After looking at the trajectories of the evolution ofcivil society in Japan and South Korea, it concludes that while state-society relationsin East Asian countries have been long dominated by the state, institutional changesare possible through persistent challenges to the state authority mounted by citizensmovements.

Civil Society in East Asia

Civil Society as a Western Concept

Larry Diamond remarks: Civil society is the realm of organized social life thatis voluntary, self-generating, (largely) self-supporting, and autonomous from thestate, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules. It is distinct fromsociety in general in that it involves citizens acting collectively in a publicsphere to express their interests, passions, preferences, and ideas to exchangeinformation, to achieve collective goals, to make demands on the state, toimprove the structure and functioning of the state, and to hold state officialsaccountable [21, p. 10].

Civil society is a concept that is deeply rooted in the Western political traditionsbut the concept does have diverse intellectual origins [10, pp. 12, 5, pp. 1011].The classical-liberal Tocquevillian concept of civil society is considered the idealtype of civil society by most. To Tocqueville, civil society implies democraticgovernance and contributes to political development. Tocqueville endorses freepolitical associations on the grounds that only such freedom can prevent eitherdespotism of parties or the arbitrary rule of a prince [13, p. 39].

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The concept of civil society has two important aspects: the forming of voluntaryassociations by the citizens and the ability of those associations to check the powerof the state [55, p. 384, 18, p. 115, 21, p. 10]. In most Western democracies, civilsociety not only designates a citizens activity sphere that is independent from the statebut also emphasizes the active involvement of the citizens in the governance of the stateby allowing for participation in the decisionmaking process and by cultivating a civicculture. Schmitter and Karl [54, p. 44] also remarked that At its best, civil societyprovides an intermediate layer of governance between the individual and the state thatis capable of resolving conflicts and controlling the behavior of members withoutpublic coercion....A viable civil society can mitigate conflicts and improve the qualityof citizenshipwithout relying exclusively on the privatism of the marketplace.

Today, most scholars acknowledge that civil society is composed of voluntary, self-organized associations in a sphere that is independent from the state (political society), themarket, and family [18, 19, 35, 46]. For example, in South Korea, NGOs and civilsociety organizations (CSOs) [28, p.7] are the most frequently used terms to describecivil society. However, in different countries, NGOs exist in different forms and theirrelations with the government are vastly different. Talking about their findings of thecross-national study of the NGO sector, Salamon and Anheier [49, p. 364] insightfullyobserved, Perhaps the most basic empirical and theoretical point that emerges from thediscussion [of the nonprofit sector] here relates to the striking ubiquity of the nonprofitsector. Despite a common assumption that it is an essentially Western and modernphenomenon, the record reviewed here makes clear that non-profit-type institutionsexist in widely divergent cultural and social settings in virtually every part of the world.To be sure, these institutions often differ markedly from each other.

The Early Evolution of Civil Society in Japan and South Korea

The NGO sectors in Japan and South Korea share some distinctive features whencompared with their Western counterparts. Salamon and Sokolowski [50, pp. 4546]found that the civil society sector in Asian countries is considerably smaller than inthe other advanced, industrial societies, engaging only 3.3 percent of theeconomically active population on average compared to the all-country average of4.4 percent, though the overall scale is much larger in Japan than in South Korea.At the same time, the development of the NGO sector in Japan and South Korea used tobe greatly constrained by the state. Prior to the 1980s, the NGO sector in both countrieswas dominated by social service providers and business associationsand neither wasable to act as an independent political force.

From the Meiji Restoration to World War II, authoritarianism and militarismdominated Japanese society, as the state controlled and mobilized citizens to serve itspolitical agenda. After the war, although democracy was institutionalized, Japanesesociety remained dominated by a powerful state. The state-led industrialization drivefacilitated the growth of business and trade organizations. Between the 1960s and1990s, as Tsujinaka observed [59, p. 114], Japan in particular continues to display anumerical superiority in business associations, which account for approximately 40percent of all associational establishments (a plurality) and more than 40 percent ofall associational income. Unlike the American pattern, the growth of Japaneseassociations has been strongly influenced by economic growth.

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South Korea saw a similar pattern in the composition of the NGO sector under themilitary regime (ibid.). Between the 1960s and 1980s, the military governmentoutlawed all citizens voluntary organizations. Only government-controlledopposition parties in institutional politics and government-patronized organizationslike the Korean Federation of Trade Unions and the Saemaul (New Community)Movement Headquarters in civil society enjoyed free existence under militaryauthoritarianism [8]. In one phrase, state-corporatism best describes the state-society relation in Japan during the 1940s [1, p. 47] and in South Korea before the1987 democratic transition. Due to the long history of authoritarian rule, Japan andSouth Korea did not have a tradition that emphasized the ability of associational lifein general and the habits of association in particular to foster patterns of civility inthe actions of citizens in a democratic polity [13, p. 38].

Comparison of Civil Society in Japan and South Korea

Today, however, the NGO sectors in Japan and South Korea differ from each otherwith regard to participation in public affairs: NGOs in South Korea are stronger inchecking the power of the state, and therefore more capable of promoting liberaldemocracy. In contrast, Japanese civil society is much less influential in politicaladvocacy due to the paucity of large, independent and professionalized groups [44,p. 7), and is described by Robert Pekkanen as members without advocates (ibid.).

That Japan and South Korea saw the evolution of two distinctive types of civilsociety is illustrated by the indicators of the Johns Hopkins Global Civil SocietyIndex (GCSI) [50, p. 74], which empirically measures the key aspects of the NGOsector in 36 countries including Japan and South Korea (ibid., p. 72). The differentlevels of NGO participation in state affairs in Japan and South Korea can be seen inthe difference in the impact of the NGO sector on public affairs, the number of theadvocacy groups, and the proportion of volunteers in the adult population.

A. Impact

The GCSI score of impact measures the impact of the civil society organizationsby integrating four major contributions of the NGO sector: economic contribution,human service contribution, contribution to advocacy and expression, and popularcommitment and performance of key roles (ibid., p. 74). Table 12 suggests that thecivil society in South Korea is more influential than that in Japan, and its NGOsector is more sustainable than the latter. The only aspect in which South Koreancivil society is less developed than Japan is its capacity.3

2 Source: Lester M. Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Chapter 2: Measuring civil society: the JohnsHopkins Global Civil Society Index in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates(Eds.), Global Civil Society (Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector, (Bloomfield, CT: KumarianPress, [50]), p. 78. For the measurement of the indicators please refer to the content under the subject titleOperationalization: from concept to indicators in the same chapter, pp. 6675.3 For detailed information on the measurement of capacity, please see Lester M. Salamon and S.Wojciech Sokolowski, Chapter 2: Measuring civil society: the Johns Hopkins Global Civil SocietyIndex in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.), Global Civil Society(Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, [50]), pp. 6770.

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B. Advocacy groups

Table 2 4 shows that by 2003, the proportion of expressive groups5 in the NGOworkforce in South Korea was higher than in Japan (18% as compared to 12%). Thefact is, Although the expressive component of the South Korea civil society sectoris far smaller overall than that of other countries, in the field of civic action andadvocacy, the South Korean civil society sector exceeds the all-country anddeveloping and transitional country averages by a factor of more than 1 (10 percentversus 4 percent) [42, p. 209]. In the late 1990s, NGOs in South Korea played avery active role in expressing the views of the public, and there was a significantpresence of civic and advocacy activism in the South Korean civil society (ibid., p.207). As Kim and Hwang observed [28, p. 18], What deserves greater attention isthe tremendous influence that civil society organizations can exert in the policy-making process. They also observed that civic groups and labor unions are nowimportant powerful players in the governance of South Korean society (ibid.). It isimportant to note that the overall GCSI scores for Japan and South Korea are 36 and35, respectively (in contrast, the score of the U.S. is 61), which means that the civilsocieties in Japan and South Korea are at a similar level of development. When it

4 Source: excerpt from Table 1.10. Asian industrialized pattern; Lester M. Salamon, S. WojciechSokolowski, and Regina List, Chapter 1: Global civil society: an overview in Lester M. Salamon, S.Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.), Global Civil Society (Volume 2): Dimensions of the NonprofitSector (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, [51]), p. 46.5 One important component of the indicator of the impact of the NGO sector is contribution to advocacyand expression. The definition of expressive activities is as follows: the scale of the human resourcespaid and volunteerthat civil society organizations mobilize for expressive activitiesi.e. advocacy,professional associations, labor unions, environmental protection, and culture and recreation. Lester M.Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Chapter 2: Measuring civil society: the Johns Hopkins GlobalCivil Society Index in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.) Global CivilSociety (Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, [50]), p. 74.

Table 1 Comparison of capacity, sustainability, and impact of civil society in Japan and South Korea

Global Civil Society Index Country Scores

Capacity Sustainability Impact Total

Japan 38 34 35 36

South Korea 32 38 36 35

United States 76 54 54 61

34 Countries 45 39 36 40

Anglo-Saxon 64 54 51 56

Asian industrialized 35 36 36 35

Source: Lester M. Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Chapter 2: Measuring civil society: the JohnsHopkins Global Civil Society Index in Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates(Eds.) Global Civil Society (Volume 2): Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Bloomfield, CT: KumarianPress, [50]), p. 78.

Note: For the measurement of the indicators please refer to Operationalization: from concept toindicators in the same chapter, pp. 6675.

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comes to the key indicators of the participatory performance of the NGO sector, theJapanese NGO sector is politically less active than the South Korean NGO sector.Although the percentage of civil society organization workforce as a share of theeconomically active population is higher in Japan (4.2%) than in South Korea(2.4%) [56, p. 160], civil society in South Korea enjoys a much more favorable legalenvironment and is more sustainable than its Japanese counterpart. In terms of thestrength of the NGO sector in public affairs, South Korea ranks higher than Japan,not only because it has a higher percentage of volunteers in the NGO workforce, butalso because the South Korean civil society has a larger advocacy sector and hasmore impact on state affairs. As Kim and Hwang remarked [28, pp. 67], TheSouth Korean nonprofit sector has been understood as an institutionalized and self-generating reality capable of pressing bureaucrats, politicians, and big business....and major civil society organizations develop various means and expertise thatenable them to better participate in the policy-making process (ibid.). Today thebiggest distinction between the civil societies of the two countries is in the area ofpolitical advocacy and the NGOs ability to influence government policy. TheCIVICUS Global Survey of the State of Civil Society is a project that measuresand assesses the civil society development around the world. It created the CivilSociety Index (CSI) to measure the four key dimensions of civil societystructure, values, environment, and impact. The impact dimension assesses civilsocietys role in governance and society at large [26, p. 373]. The projects 20032006 phase found that South Korea has developed a healthy civil society, and thecivil societys impact on public policy is particularly strong and evenly distributedamong the five fields examined by the CSI, with the exception of social welfarewhere civil societys role is somewhat weaker (ibid.). These findings furtherconfirm the fact that South Korean civil society has fully evolved into anindependent and powerful political force and is acting as a counterbalance to thepower of the state. Although civil society organizations in Japan rapidly acquiredlegitimacy as actors in the policy-making process in the late 1990s [59, p. 98], asPekkanen [43, p. 369] has pointed out, many civil society groups have facedconstrained independence from the state, and the potential for those groups togrow stronger and participate more extensively in the state affairs has been limited.Obviously, civil societies in Japan and South Korea play very different roles in stateaffairs.

Table 2 Comparison of the composition of the NGO work force in Japan and South Korea

Japan South Korea

Service 75% 82%

Expressive 12% 18%

Other 13% 0%

Source: excerpt from Table 1.10. Asian industrialized pattern, Lester M. Salamon, S. WojciechSokolowski, and Regina List, Chapter 1: Global civil society: an overview in Lester M. Salamon, S.Wojciech Sokolowski, and associates (Eds.) Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector(Volume Two) (Bloomfield, Connecticut: Kumarian Press, [51]), p. 46.

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Explaining the Differences

Social Movements and Institutional Change

Neither Japan nor South Korea has a tradition of separation between the state andsociety. One author remarked, Traditionally, South Korea has had a strongcentralized state authority. The modern concept of a civil society whose role wouldbe to counter the power of the state was quite foreign, and was introduced only after1945 [7, p. 202]. This is also true of Japan before World War II. After the war, thedevelopmental state model as coined by Chalmers [25] strengthened the dominantrole of the state. The model features a planned modernization drive led by a highlycentralized, hierarchical bureaucracy working closely with the business sector. Thisdevelopment strategy allowed little room for citizens initiatives in the politicalprocess. State-interventionism in economic development and state-centered politicaland social institutions not only highly depend on each other but also mutuallyenhance each other.

Thelen and Steinmo [58, p. 2] remarked, In general, historical institutionalistswork with a definition of institutions that includes both formal organizations andinformal rules and procedures that structure conduct. One of the major tasks ofhistorical institutionalism is to explain institutional changes. According to North[41], incremental institutional change is path-dependent, which means that theevolution in institutions is the result of the narrowed choices by economic orpolitical entrepreneurs. Path-dependency theory posits a lock-in effect onceinstitutions are established. In most cases, old institutions are kept because the costof change is considered too high for entrepreneurs to consider other alternatives.

The state-centric institutions in Japan and South Korea are well-established.Nevertheless, those institutions have also evolved over time and seen majorchanges. Such changes are path-dependent, and the transformation is impactedby the confrontation between the rigid institutions and various challengingforces. The power shift between the state and society in Japan and South Koreais especially shaped by the different social movement traditions in the twocountries.

In How Social Movements Matter, Charles Tilly defines a social movement as asustained challenge to power holders by means of repeated public displays of thatpopulations worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment [12, p.440]. Socialmovement is closely associated with civil society because it originates with thecitizens. Lim Hy-Sop [23, p. 5] held that all modern social movements can becalled civil social movements in that they began in the backdrop of an emerging civilsociety and strove for its growth. Armstrong [2, p. 2] also remarked that when theconcept of civil society remained dormant during much of the 20th century, Theterm was initially evoked in the popular protests against communist party-states inEastern Europe, especially the Solidarity union movement in Poland in the 1980s,but came to be part of the discourse of democratic protest and democratic theorythroughout the world. In many countries, social movements preceded the growth ofa network of civic groups and organizations. For example, Leticia Santn del Ro[52, p. 62] pointed out that Mexicos civil society started with the watershed socialmovementthe student movement of 1968.

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Social movements demanding political freedom often met with severe repressionfrom the state, which wanted to stifle the protest and deprive the citizens of the rightto form associations. For example, the 1925 Peace Preservation Act issued after theTaish democracy prohibited the Japanese people from conducting politicaldiscussions and forming societies [39, p. 29, 47, pp. 5961]. The evolution of civilsociety has been constrained by the deeply embedded, state-centric institutions.Those institutions have also been challenged, sometimes repeatedly, by the socialmovements. The current configurations of civil society in Japan and South Koreaare, to a greater extent, decided by the nature and intensity of the social movements.

Comparing Social Movement Traditions in Japan and South Korea

South Korea While most of the state-centric institutions are sticky and have beenresistant to change, persistent and intense social movements can shake thefoundation of the institutions, as is demonstrated by the regime change and thetransformation of the NGO sector in South Korea.

South Korea has a time-honored tradition of political protest that can be datedback to the period of the Japanese occupation. After the Korean War, socialmovements in South Korea were targeted at the authoritarian, military regimes.These movements represented the sentiments of the majority of the population andmounted direct confrontations against the state authority. Most importantly, they hadclearly defined political goals of achieving fundamental political changes.

In South Korea, civil society started to grow after the end of the Japaneseoccupation, and many social welfare organizations emerged during the periodimmediately following the Korean War [42, p. 206]. However, apart from thenonpolitical social welfare organizations, only...government-patronized organiza-tions enjoyed free existence [8, p. 279]. It was not until 1987 that NGOs devotedparticularly to public goods and involved in political advocacy and policy makingcame into being [28, p. 7]. The 1997 Directory of Korean NGOs shows that 56percent of the NGOs were established in 1987 and thereafter, indicating that thedemocratization movements of the 1980s and 1990s played a decisive role in theproliferation of the nations NGOs (ibid.).

Lim Hy-Sop [23, p. 7] observed that Koreas civil society movements from the1960s to the 1980s can be regarded as the general social movement that broughtabout democratization. During the period, pro-democracy, dissident social groupswere repressed by the authoritarian regime, but they acted as the leading force of thedemocratic movement. Waves of civil movements not only led to regime change butalso facilitated the growth of a politically active civil society. As some scholars haveobserved, While service functions dominate the South Korea civil society sector,civic and advocacy organizations account for an impressive 10 percent share of thecivil society organization workforce. This reflects the importance of the nationalindependence, pro-democracy, and labor movements in the formation of the moderncivil society sector in South Korea [42, p. 207].

The social movements in South Korea also had solid bases of popular support.The two major forces of the South Korean civil movements were university studentsand workers organized by the labor unions. The university students had played amajor role in promoting political changes since students were widely recognized by

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the South Korea public as a force of conscience (yangsim seryk) and morallysuperior because of their audacity [32, p. 132]. As Wood has remarked [60, p. 56],University students have been a significant catalyst for change in Korea over theyears. Indeed, it was largely because of demonstrations by students that democracywas finally achieved in Korea in the late 1980s. The Kwangju Uprising in 1980began with a mass rally by the university students and eventually led to a widespreadcivil movement that drew support from citizens from other sectors of society,especially the middle-class population that had been relatively silent during the1960s and 1970s.

The student-led civil movement had a deep impact on the evolution of the SouthKorean civil society. The tradition of the university student-led prodemocracymovement was enshrined in Korean politics and contributed to the cause ofdemocracy and pioneering in civil-society action [27, p. 277]. After the KwangjuUprising, many influential civil society organizations came into being as part of thispro-democracy movement. For example, the Youth Association for DemocratizationMovement (Minchungruyun) was established in 1983 and the Association forProgress of Democratization (Minchuhyup) was established in 1984 [28, p. 6]. Theauthor has done a content analysis on the domestic news section of the KoreanHerald (English version) and found that during the first 4 months of 1988 (January1May 1), civil movement incidents accounted for a large part of the domesticnews reporting. A total of 37 incidents of workers strikes or disputes involving thelabor union were reported. During the same period, out of the 44 reported incidentsof rallies, demonstrations, protests, or related activities, 30 incidents involveduniversity students. These figures indicate that students and labor constituted themainstay of the social movements.

Apart from the students and workers, Christian communities in South Korea haveplayed an important role in civic movements and are regarded as models of civilsociety [9, pp.187188]. Since 1945, there has been intense confrontation betweenChristians and the state, and many Christian leaders, including the Rev Kim Chejunand Pastor Pak Hynggyu, have long been involved in social activism thatdemanded limits to the state powers and upheld civil rights under the authoritarianregime (ibid.).

In addition to political goals, support bases, and frequency of occurrence, theintensity of social movements is another major factor that distinguishes the civilmovements in South Korea from those of other countries. Bond et al. studied thenature of social protests and political change between 1984 and 1994 using theKEDS/PANDA-generated event data. They found that South Korea experienced nearcontinuous antigovernment protest from 1984 through June 1987, and among thefour countries under study (China, Poland, South Korea, and Yugoslavia), thecitizens movement in South Korea was the most contentious with a mean of 0.49 [4,p. 572]. As to the other key indicator that measures the strength of the civilmovement, coerciveness (not necessarily violent), South Koreas civil movementwas more coercive than Chinas civil protest, with a mean of 0.49, as compared with0.41 for China (ibid.). The authors also found that democratization did not reducethe coerciveness or contentiousness of South Korea, which continued to be markedby significant civil conflict into the early 1990s. After the regime change, thosemovements maintained momentum and have greatly facilitated citizens participation

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in public affairs. In fact, 65% of the registered NGOs in South Korea were createdafter the 1990s [57, p. 288].

For example, after the democratic transition, labor unions continued to strugglefor a bigger role in the policy-making process. Nationwide, highly organized laborstrikes broke out in 1996 and 1997 in protest against the passage of the new laborlaws, and the national movement successfully compelled the government toacknowledge the labor unions as a new social power [31, pp. 1203] and formthe Labor-Management-Government Tripartite Council in 1998. This consultationmechanism, with the participation of the labor unions, has led some to believe thatSouth Korea is now moving toward a neo-corporatism model [30, p. 19]. Civicgroups and labor unions are now important, powerful players in the governance ofSouth Korean society [28].

The social movements have fostered the institutionalization of the civil society inSouth Korea. As a former dissident movement leader, Kim Dae Jung maintainedextensive ties with civil society organizations and made great efforts to facilitatetheir development. One scholar pointed out, The Kim Dae Jung government is fullyaware of the importance of civil society organizations. Civil society organizations inSouth Korea have been acting independently of government, collaborating with it atcertain times and opposing it at others....The government not only responds to civilsociety demands but also tries to assist civil society by offering opportunities,resources, and incentives for civic groups [28, p. 13]. He also noted that under theKim Young Sam government of 199397, there was a substantial change in state-civil society relations when the government was willing to accommodate and adoptopinions of civil society organizations (ibid., p. 12).

In the 21st century, South Korea civil society has become a well-establishedinstitution independent of the state and business. After the democratic transition, theNGO sector in South Korea became less confrontational and radical, and nowadays,civic advocacy groups are becoming increasingly effective and sophisticated, anddedicated to the promotion of open democratic process by building a moretransparent government, preventing fraud in elections, promoting freedom ofinformation, and eradicating corruption [26, p. 372, 42, p. 207]. The candlelightprotest in Seoul against the resumption of U.S. beef imports, beginning on May 2,2008, was the most impressive wave of protests since the democratic transition in1987 [33]. This event strongly testified to the strength of the civic movement inSouth Korea and suggested that civil society has become increasingly powerfulin influencing the major policies of South Korea government.

Japan Unlike in South Korea, Japanese democracy was established as the result ofthe American occupation, which did not bring about fundamental changes to thestate-centrist political norms and social structure. As Herzog pointed out [22, p. 18],the country remains a paternalistic society dominated by an elite, the politicians, thebureaucracy and the business leadership, working inside and through their groups,the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the ministries and the Keidanren (Federation ofEconomic Organizations). The people are conformist, disciplined and compliant,with only rare outbursts of opposition to the leadership.

Japans democracy is built upon a state-centric power structure dominated by thepredominant Liberal Democratic Party [1, p. 28, 45, p. 1]. The LDP stayed in power

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from 1955 to 1993, a fact that, according to many, explained why the state andsociety were so closely intertwined [39, p. 219]. In this party system, the oppositionparties stand little or no chance of gaining power...and it is extremely difficult todevelop a second competing party so long as a single ruling party controls nationalpolitical life and with it the national economy [6, p. 171]. The LDPs authority hasseldom been challenged by smaller parties or interest groups. Although thepredominant party system does not hamper the civil liberties of the people, it canlimit the participation of other interest groups in state affairs. Pempel pointed out, ...long-term rule [by the LDP] involves more than simply electoral victories; it providesone political party with a continuous opportunity to pursue its historical agenda. ...Inaddition, the longer a party remains in power the more compelling the pressures forsocial groups, even those initially hostile to the party, to accommodate to its seeminglyunshakable control [45, pp. 67]. Pekkanen [44, p. 197] also remarked that the LDPfavored heavy bureaucratic supervisory powers, opposed tax benefits, and wantedmost new groups to be volunteer-based. Some scholars have also argued that theone-party dominance with a weak organizational base and strong bureaucracy tendsto structure interest group relations in a nonpluralistic way [38, pp. 28788].

In contrast to Japans institutional settings that exclude the smaller parties andcitizens groups in the policy-making process, the democratic transition in SouthKorea successfully created an opening for the emergence of political parties, interestgroups, and civil society organizations. Although South Koreas competitive partysystem is weak and unstable, as one author has pointed out, Given the limited roleof parties in political life, civil society groups have increased their role in Koreanpolitics [20, p.6].

The social movements in Japan started to gain momentum in the 1960s. The mostsignificant movements in the 1960s include the opposition against renewing the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, the public struggle against the reassertion of capitalistcontrol over the economy [37, pp. 21112], environmental movements opposing theconstruction of large development projects, and community movements that led tothe flourishing of the neighborhood associations [21, p. 41].

Most of those social movements were aimed at ameliorating the existing system,rather than achieving fundamental changes in political institutions. The intrinsicproblems of the developmental state and the iron-triangle of the LDP, business,and bureaucracy have prompted civic activism. A number of major environmentaldisasters occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, but the government and the industries didnot take action immediately. Even the labor unions did not pay enough attention tothe issue [17, p. 134]. The governments reaction instigated nationwide environ-mental and consumer movements in the late 1960s.

Since the 1980s, information has become more accessible to the general public.Many public interests groups have begun to address a large variety of issues,including environmental conservation, consumer protection, and the elimination ofdiscrimination on the basis of gender and physical disability [1, p. 50]. One of themajor concerns of the public is prevalent corruption, which is rooted in the cronyismembedded in Japanese political institutions. The notorious Recruit Scandal in 1988,the incompetence of the government in the disaster relief after the Kobe Earthquakein 1995, and the 1996 tainted blood scandal [15, p. 8] are some of the major eventsthat led to the major wave of civil movements in the 1990s.

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Japan has seen a rapid growth of the NGOs in the 1990s, a time, according toKingston, when Japanese society was in tumult, and [knew it had] gone terriblywrong and [was] groping for new solutions and paradigms [29, p. 71]. The crisisopened up new space for civic movements, and this time, policy reforms were notmerely imposed from above, since the sense of impending national doom hasprovided unprecedented opportunities for broader public input on setting the agendaof change and policy reforms (ibid.). For example, the Information Clearing HouseJapan (ICJ), the Citizen Ombudsmen Organization, and Information DisclosureCitizens Center (Joho Kokai Shimin Center) were established in the late 1990s topromote citizens rights to supervise the government. The ICJ is a Tokyo-basedNGO devoted to promoting broad information disclosure and citizen participation inpublic policy-making. As some authors have remarked, since the 1990s, onenoticeable change in citizen participation has been the increased involvement ofJapanese volunteers in non-profit organizations (NPOs) [37, p. 213]. It was also atthe time when the political advocacy groups started to expand and a shift fromproducer to social service sector occurred [59, p. 107].

Although the civil movements in Japan also exerted a major influence on theinstitutionalization of the civil society, the Japanese social movement tradition hasbeen much different from that of South Korea. Firstly, political ideology has neverbeen a major factor in the social movements. Although between 1954 and the 1960s,some major movements (i.e., the protest against the U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty)were guided by the socialist ideal and aimed to fundamentally transform society,socialist and labor movements have never been able to exert much influence onJapanese society due to the predominance of business in the institutional structure,and because conservative forces control the Diet, where socialist movements havenot prevailed [16, p. 111]. Although Japan has seen the rise of the citizensmovements, especially community movements, since the late 1960s, these move-ments did not intend to facilitate regime change; instead, they demanded socialtransformations in response to the dysfunction of the existing system. At best, theyexerted pressure on the government to push ahead changes. In a society where thepolitical institutions had constrained the participation of the citizens organizations inthe policy-making process, fragmentation of issue areas weakened the strength of thecivil society and made it difficult to keep the momentum of the social movements.Many of those movements, like the Minamata disease incident in the 1960s andthe Narita Airport riots in the 1970s, lost momentum after achieving specific goals.Hayes pointed out that the Japanese environmental protection efforts are verynarrowly focused, and in the 1980s, the momentum was gradually lost [17, p. 134].

Secondly, unlike in South Korea, where the labor unions and the students constitutedthe major forces promoting political change, in Japan, labor unions did not act as a majorpolitical force that challenged the states authority. As early as the Meiji era, laws werepromulgated to prevent the workers from forming organizations [11, p. 557], and sincethen, labor unions have long been suppressed by the state. In the post-war era, laborunions were incorporated in the developmental state and became company-unionsthat were willing to cooperate with the management. The loyalty of the Japaneseworkers to their companies prevented them from resorting to union activities to resolvethe disputes (ibid., p. 586). In Japan, the incidence of labor disruption is among thelowest of all industrialized countries. According to Hayes, The amount of time lost to

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strikes measured in thousands of workdays in 1987 was 256 in Japan, 501 in France,4,606 in Italy, 3,546 in England, and 4,469 in the United States [17, p. 173].

Similarly, although university students had actively participated in the protestsagainst the renewal of the Mutual Security Treaty in the 1960s and later indemonstrations and protests in the 1970s, these activities quickly diminished infrequency in the 1980s (ibid, p. 134). On the one hand, the promulgation of the 1969University Control Act directly led to the decline in student activism (ibid., p. 142).On the other hand, economic prosperity had diverted the young peoples attentionfrom the social movements. As Hasegawa insightfully pointed out, the mostimportant difference between Japans social movements and those of South Korea isthat people in South Korea were oppressed and had long been deprived of their civilliberties; the young people and students in South Korea maintained a strong interestin politics even in the late 1980s, whereas the Japanese young people quickly grewapolitical because of the affluence that arrived in the 1970s [16, p. 111].

The transformation of the state-society relations in Japan is the result of gradualand incremental social and economic changes. For example, Japans volunteermovements have grown significantly since the turn of the century, although theparticipation rate is lower than in the U.K. and U.S. [29, p. 77]. Scholars haveattributed the increase in volunteer participation in the NGOs to a number of factorsincluding greater affluence, a greater willingness to pursue individual andcommunity interest, and a degree of multiculturalization of Japanese society [37,p. 213]. The white paper issued by the Economic Planning Agency (EPA) shows thatvolunteerism has become popular because it helps to enhance social service and lifestyle, and also helps employees to contribute to their companies through theirengagement in those activities [29, p. 77]. This shows that Japanese civil society isfounded on the cohesion between society and established institutions, rather than theconfrontation between the two. In the 21st century, many of Japans movements arenow oriented toward proposing alternative policies and collaborating withgovernment and business, instead of merely confronting them [16, p. 120].

In contrast to the particularly confrontational civil movements in South Korea,whose primary goal is to democratize the political system, citizens movements inJapan are much less ferocious and militant. Most of the violent political protestshave been primarily leftist in nature [17, p. 131] and some even took the extremeforms of terrorism, like the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the AumShinrikyo. The threat posed by those activities to the public made the militantprotests extremely unpopular among the Japanese people.

The majority of Japanese social movements, especially the consumer movementsand the environmental movements, have been short-lived, and interest groupsarticulation has been localized and therefore unable to form a national agenda [11, p.588]. The culture of submission to authority, long-term political suppression, and theindoctrination of militarist, conservative ideologies before the end of World War IIall contributed to a politically quiescent majority in the post-war era. Thedemocratization imposed by a foreign power was not able to fundamentally changethe state-centrist tradition and institutions, and the catch-up economic strategy andpolitical system mutually enhanced each other.

During the first decade of the 21st century, Japan has seen vigorous movementthat aims at fundamentally reforming the Japanese political structure by putting an

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end to the monopoly of the LDP and weakening the bureaucracy. However, fewmeaningful changes were made due to the Japanese peoples strong attachment tothe status quo and Prime Minister Koizumis gradualist approach [36, p. 52]. Inrecent years, substantial transformation has taken place in Japanese civil society. Onthe NGO side, many younger people with expertise in advocacy have become thesource of power within those organizations. At the same time, advocacy NGOs havealso been trying to work closely with bureaucrats to get those people on thefrontlines involved, so that the NGOs would be better able to participate in thepolicy-making process (Japan Center for International Exchange [24, p. 2]).However, most support for the Japanese NGOs advocacy has come from privatefoundations overseas, and some experts believe that Japanese society is not yetready to support civil advocacy activities (ibid., p. 3).

With the watershed event of the defeat of the LDP in the 2009 parliamentaryelection, Japanese political institutions are undergoing major changes. TheDemocratic Party of Japan (DPJ) wants to bring fundamental changes to Japanesepolitics and society, and most possibly this institutional change will bring about amore vibrant civil society.

Comparing Changes in Institutions

The impact of the social movement tradition on the evolution of the NGO sectors inJapan and South Korea is demonstrated by the changes in the composition of theNGO sector. Table 36 shows that the percentage of political NGOs in Korea hasalways been higher than that of Japan; during the 3 years of the study, Japanspolitical NGOs constituted 2.3% (1986), 2.3% (1991), and 2.2% (1996) of the totalNGOs; whereas in South Korea during the same period the figures were 6.3%(1986), 15.7% (1991), and 6.3 % (1996). This also shows that in South Korea,NGOs play a bigger role in political advocacy than NGOs in Japan. Moreimportantly, although the majority of South Korean NGOs are business groups, theproportion of political advocacy groups has increased steadily since the late 1980sand the proportion of business NGOs has declined sharply from 59% in 1986 to9.4% in 1996. According to Tsujinaka [59, p. 100], in the 1990s, the composition ofthe NGO sector shifted from being mainly dominated by business associations tobeing dominated by substantially citizen-led organizations.

The effects of the social movement tradition on political institutions can also beillustrated through NGO law-making in the two countries. Laws and regulations areimportant political institutions, and changes in laws and regulations reflect how thegovernment responds to pressures from society. Japan and South Korea bothpromulgated major NGO laws in the late 1990s to redefine the role of the NGOsector. In Japan, the social movements of the 1990s eventually prompted thegovernment to recognize the civil society as a major player in public affairs. The

6 Source: Based on Table 4.3 The absolute number, composition, and density per 100,000 persons ofassociations, 1960-1996. Tsujinaka Yutaka, From developmentalism to maturity: Japans civil societyorganizations in comparative perspective, in Frank J. Schwartz and Susan J. Pharr (Eds.) The State ofCivil Society in Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [59]), pp. 9293.

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path-breaking event was the passing of the Law to Promote Specified NonprofitActivities (Tokutei hieiri Katsud sokushin h), or NPO Law, in 1998.

This event was a watershed in the history of citizens associations in Japan sincethe establishment of the Uniform Civil Code more than a hundred years earlier in1896. The Uniform Civil Code considered the establishment of a citizensorganization not as a right but as a privilege granted by the government. Permissionfor the establishment of public-interest corporations should come from thecompetent authorities, which refers to the national-level government includingthe Prime Ministers Office or the ministry with jurisdiction over the public-interestactivity of the respective corporation. If a corporation serves purposes that comeunder the jurisdiction of two or more agencies, permission must be obtained fromeach competent ministry [48, p. 201]. Since the authority for approving NGOregistration rests with the national government and the criteria for registration is verystringent, it is very difficult for the NGOs to get incorporated. In Japan, the NGOsare divided into two large groups in accordance with their legal status: incorporatedassociations (hjin) and unincorporated associations (nini dantai, commonly calledcivic groups, shimin dantai). The majority of Japanese NGOs are unincorporatedassociations that have no legal status and are not registered with the government [21,pp. 1516].

The new NPO law passed with the unanimous consent of the Diet on March 25,1998, and went into effect in December 1998. The highlight of this law is that itlowers the threshold of incorporation for nonprofit organizations that are workingfor the public good in twelve fields: Under the new law, incorporation is not muchmore than a formality for nonprofit groups that conduct most of their activities inone of twelve specified fields [53, pp. 1516].

Table 3 Business and political groups as a percentage of the total number of NGOs in Japan and SouthKorea (19601996)

Japan South Korea

1960 Business 45.4 N/A

Political 1.6 N/A

1975 Business 48.6 N/A

Political 2.6 N/A

1981 Business N/A 72.1

Political N/A 4.2

1986 Business 38.2 59

Political 2.3 6.3

1991 Business 38.2 47.4

Political 2.3 15.7

1996 Business 38.8 9.4

Political 2.2 6.3

Source: Table 4.3 The absolute number, composition, and density per 100,000 persons of associations,1960-1996, Tsujinaka Yutaka, From developmentalism to maturity: Japans civil society organizations incomparative perspective, in Frank J. Schwartz and Susan J. Pharr (Eds.) The State of Civil Society inJapan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 [59]), pp. 9293.

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Since the 1990s, a number of laws were promulgated in Japan that in variousways impact the legal environment of the NGOs. These laws include theAdministrative Procedures Law (1993), the Products Liability Law (1994), therevised Code of Civil Procedure (1996), and The Information Disclosure Law (2001)(ibid, p. 18). In 1999, a Cabinet Order established a procedure for public comment inthe formulation of regulations of general applicability. It requires governmentagencies to publish proposed regulations or proposed amendments to existingregulations, and to take into consideration public comments before issuing finalstatements of regulations [14]. These laws and regulations are the result of the civilmovements in the 1990s and have improved the legal environment for civil society.However, compared to the efforts made by the South Korean government toinstitutionalize civil society, the Japanese governments response to citizensdemands for a bigger participatory role has been more passive. Meanwhile, thegovernment continues to impose restraints on the NGO sector.

For example, the new NPO Law did not at first give tax-exemption status to theNGOs. In 2001, after 3 years of review, the government finally began to permit thedeductibility of contributions to approved specified nonprofit corporations (ninteiNPO hjin) in 2001 [53, p. 16]. However, the tax-exemption status still needs to beapproved by the National Tax Administration. Since it is very hard to get theapproval, most NPOs will not benefit from these exemptions. As of April 2002, only5 out of a possible 6,700 organizations, 0.075%, had been certified (ibid., p. 17).Meanwhile, financial requirements remain an obstacle for registration. Theministerial cabinet resolution Standards for the Permission of the Establishmentand Guidance of the Management of Public Interest Corporations adopted inSeptember 1996 requires public-interest corporations to have a solid financial basisto be able to sustain activities to achieve their missions [48, p. 197].

In South Korea, the legal environment for NGOs was tremendously improved inDecember 1999 when the Law to Promote Nonprofit Civil Organizations wasenacted. The purpose of this law is to promote the sound development of nonprofitcivil organizations, to enlarge the foundation for citizens participation in the form ofvolunteer and other activities to benefit society and thereby to contribute to thedevelopment of South Korean civil society through expanding public activities fornonprofit civil organizations [28, p. 8].

This law has demonstrated the governments determination to create a facilitatinglegal environment for the civil society by improving registration standards,providing tax-exemption status, and increasing government support to the NGOs.It stipulates that the government may invite the NGOs to participate in publicprojects and provide public facilities, funding, and subsidies to the NGOs. It madegreat improvements in provisions of tax-exempt regulations for the NGOs andgreatly lessened the registration requirement for the NGOs. According to the law,government authorities must give permission to the nonprofit organizations that arequalified for registration (ibid., p. 89).

Another major breakthrough is that the South Korean NGO law has institution-alized governmental support to the NGOs and made it one of the majorresponsibilities of the state to facilitate the development of the civil society. TheLaw to Promote Nonprofit Civil Organizations stipulates that the government shouldprovide various kinds of government resources to the civil society organizations.

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Apart from government funds and subsidies, other forms of support includepartnership in government projects and use of government facilities (ibid). In Japan,there is no such stipulation in the new NGO Law. In fact, among the 36 nationscovered by the GCSI Civil Society Project, including the United States, the legalenvironment for the NGOs in South Korea is rated as very close to the best [42, p.207]. South Korea has done a much better job than Japan of facilitating thedevelopment of the NGOs through institutional changes.

Conclusion

There are good reasons to presume that a democratic political system is more likelyto have a politically powerful civil society. In fact, a healthy civil society is anintegral part of a liberal, pluralistic democracy. However, in East Asian countrieswhere the state has long dominated the political, economic, and social structure, theestablishment of democratic institutions does not necessarily foster the developmentof a vibrant civil society that is able to check the power of the state.

Both Japan and South Korea have witnessed a booming of NGOs since thelate 1990s. Nevertheless, Japan and South Korea have different types of civilsocieties. In the incipient stage of the civil society in both nations, thecomposition and role of the NGO sectors shared similar features. Since the1980s, the civil societies have begun to evolve along different trajectories. Today,South Korea boasts of a significant presence of civic and advocacy activism inits NGO sector, and civil society organizations are exerting great influence on thepolicy-making process [42]. In Japan, although it has been widely acknowledgedthat by the end of the 20th century, the boundary between the state and society inJapan is becoming more clearly defined than before [40, pp. 2732], the civilsociety lacks sizable professional groups that influence the public sphere andpolicy making.

The comparison between the post-war evolution of the civil societies in Japan andSouth Korea suggests that the state-centric institutions can be changed and thetransformation is path-dependent. Comparison of the social movement tradition inJapan and South Korea also suggests that the goals, nature, and intensity of thesocial movements have a deep impact on the scale and depth of the changes in thestate-society relations.

Being a newly established democracy, South Korea has a time-honored traditionof citizens political mobilization that can be dated back to the colonial period. InSouth Korea, continuous civil movements have tremendously eroded the rigidity ofstate-centric institutions by bringing about a democratic transition and fundamentallychanging the nations power structure. The social movements from the 1960s to the1980s developed a clear and powerful political goal, which was to change thepolitical system to usher in democracy, rather than seek participation in policymaking [34, p. 7]. Waves of intense and even militant protest brought the citizensinto direct confrontation with the government and created an antagonist society thatchallenged the legitimacy of the government. After the regime change, themomentum of the social movements has greatly facilitated the growth of a fullyfledged, politically active civil society. In summary, the high level of civil society

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institutionalization in South Korea is built upon the countrys long tradition of socialprotest and citizens movement.

In contrast, post-war citizens movements in Japan were mostly focused onspecific issue areas and failed to develop a powerful, overarching ideology; most ofthe social protests were less confrontational and very few were aimed at facilitatingregime change. Moreover, since the democratic transition in Japan did not originatefrom within, the introduction of democracy dampened citizens politicalparticipation in two ways: On the one hand, it ruled out the possibility of masspolitical movement. As a result, many of the old political institutions were no longersubjected to major challenges. On the other hand, since these democratic institutionswere imposed upon the existing political and cultural tradition, they retained manyof the state-centrist traits and became insulated from external pressure because theeconomic and political systems were in general quite successful. The politicalinstitutions tended to exclude major interests groups other than big businesses frompublic policy-making. Consequently, citizens organizations in Japan were confinedto the narrow fields of service and business. In contrast, South Koreasdemocratization replaced the old political system with a new one. Its major politicalinstitutions, including the competitive party system, helped to facilitate the politicalparticipation of the citizens groups.

In South Korea, although the state bureaucracy and large business conglomerates(chaebols) still play important roles in the system, civil society has become animportant political force. Without the militant and persistent social movementtradition, the NGO sector in South Korea would not have been able to assert itself asan equal and independent player in the nations politics. In contrast, civil movementsin Japan have brought about incremental changes in the major institutions but failedto establish an influential political advocacy component in the NGO sector. Atpresent, the Japanese state continues to use regulatory barriers to stymie the growthof large-sized, professional NGOs [44, pp.166169].

Using historical institutionalism and path-dependency theory, this paper arguesthat the social movement tradition has played a key role in bringing aboutinstitutional changes in the state-society relations. Comparison of the socialmovement traditions in Japan and South Korea also suggests that the goals, nature,and intensity of the social movements have a strong bearing on the scale and depthof institutional changes.

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Social Movement Tradition and the Role of Civil Society in Japan and South KoreaAbstractIntroductionCivil Society in East AsiaCivil Society as a Western ConceptThe Early Evolution of Civil Society in Japan and South KoreaComparison of Civil Society in Japan and South KoreaExplaining the DifferencesSocial Movements and Institutional ChangeComparing Social Movement Traditions in Japan and South KoreaComparing Changes in InstitutionsConclusionReferences

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