State-Society Relations and Citizenship Regimes in East Asia

Abstract

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.This chapter overviews the individual dynamics of state-civil society relations in Japan, South Korea, and China, comparatively assesses the historico-political effects of such relationships on each countrys citizenship regime, and discusses major theoretical and/or analytical issues of citizenship politics particularly characteristic of East Asian countries. Wide diversities in East Asian civil societies basic characteristics and relationship with the respective states have critical direct ramifications for the history and politics of citizenship in each country. Modernization in East Asia, as elsewhere, has been a simultaneous process of social and economic restructuring and nation-state (re)formation, so that civil society (often as communal formations) and the state in each country have intricately interacted over the allegiance of individual citizens.