Wonik Kim

Coopting Workers under Dictatorship

What explains the variance in how authoritarian regimes treat labor? We advance a theory of why and how some dictatorships coopt workers using nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties. When dictatorships need cooperation from society and face a potentially strong opposition, they attempt to coopt workers to reinforce their bases of support. As instruments of cooptation, legislatures and parties are useful in facilitating a political exchange between regimes and labor: dictatorships provide material benefits to workers in exchange for labor’s quiescence. As a result, institutionalized dictatorships provide more benefits to workers and experience lower levels of labor protest than their noninstitutionalized counterparts. We find empirical support for these hypotheses from a sample of all dictatorships from the 1946–96 period.

Rethinking Colonialism and the Origins of the Developmental State in East Asia

Abstract Previous studies on economic development in East Asia focus exclusively on the recent period (since the 1960s) and posit that East Asian “miracles” were largely a result of the states exceptional capacity to implement consistent industrial policy. Yet, they neglect the question of the origins of the developmental state. To confront this neglect, this article makes a macro-historical comparison between Northeast and Southeast Asia, highlighting colonialism, the role of income inequality, and subsequent socio-economic transformations. It is argued that a crucial historical phase for new economic trajectory was the decolonisation period when East Asian countries had an opportunity to break away from negative colonial legacies. This article sheds new light on the ways in which colonialism shapes long-term economic development in East Asia.

Does Class Matter? Social Cleavages in South Korea's Electoral Politics in the Era of Neoliberalism

This paper analyzes class voting in South Korea under neoliberalism. The class voting literature has paid too little attention to cases outside Europe and North America, while the existing studies on South Koreas elections and voting patterns have largely ignored the issue of class. The lack of interest in class voting is due mainly to strong regionalism prevalent in South Koreas electoral politics. However, the rapid and profound neoliberalization after the 1997 financial crisis has generated negative socioeconomic consequences, which may have increased the importance of a class-based bloc as a salient electoral factor. Using Goldthorpes class schema, I test the validity of class voting in South Korea, employing microlevel survey data of the two recent parliamentary elections of 2000 and 2004. I pay particular attention to entrenched conservatism that is historically rooted in South Koreas electoral and representative systems. I formulate this vital issue in terms of a possible connection between peoples decisions on whether to vote (or for that matter, nonvoting) and for whom they vote (their vote choice). The empirical evidence in this paper suggests that people vote according to their class positions in the context of the swift neoliberal restructuring in South Korea.

Polanyi's Double Movement and Neoliberalization in Korea and Japan

This paper reformulates and extends Polanyis main insights in The Great Transformations (2001 [1944]) and attempts to theorize the societal countermovement against neoliberalism by illustrating the cases of Korea and Japan. Polanyis main approach was to synthesize three critical domains: the state, market, and society, and his notion of double movement should be understood as such. Predicated on his double movement, I analytically decompose the mechanism of societal countermovement, emphasizing the importance of social organizations that aggregate peoples insecurities and translate them into a political voice capable of acquiring social protection. Applying this analytical framework of the double movement to Korea and Japan reveals that the problem with the conventional understanding of the double movement is that it necessarily arrives at social compensation equilibrium. This paper implies that a highly contentious society, like Koreas, and a highly docile society, like Japans, may both hinder social welfare provision.

Simultaneous Transitions: Democratization, Neoliberalization, and Possibilities for Class Compromise in South Korea:

The purpose of this paper is to bring class compromise back into the study of South Korean political economy and present it as a possible alternative to the overwhelmingly one-sided neoliberal trajectory in South Korea. The process and conditions under which positive class compromise is acquired are identified in terms of the Polanyi-Gramsci nexus. This perspective suggests that the restoration of state-led developmentalism would be unfeasible under a democratic regime, while the implementation of a purely neoliberal blueprint may lead to unproductive class conflict. Employing this theoretical framework, I examine possibilities for positive class compromise in the context of the simultaneous transitions—democratization and neoliberalization—in South Korea. JEL classification: B5, H7, O53, P5

Economic globalization, inequality, and protest movements under capitalist political regimes, 1970–2007

This article examines the impacts of globalization on protest movements. Highlighting the nature of capitalist political regimes in which capitalist societies and political institutions are deeply interconnected, I argue that the relationship between globalization and protest is profoundly constrained by two domestic conditions: the distribution of material resources and the type of political regime. Based on time-series, cross-sectional (TSCS) data in a global sample for the period 1970–2007, the findings indicate that globalization is more likely to increase protest in egalitarian democracies; globalization is not systematically associated with protest under dictatorships, except in the case of a highly unequal dictatorship in which globalization appears to revitalize protest, and hyperglobalization radically diminishes the possibility of protest, especially in democracies.