Political Citizenship Without Democratic Social Representation

Abstract

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.In South Koreas sociopolitical modernization, there has been a systematic dislocation among the main societal spheres of modernity—that is, among civil society, industrial class structure, and democratic polity. Democratic in form only, the formal political domain has almost completely ruled out organized labor despite its apparent presence as a strong social force (and the demographic preponderance of the urban working population), whereas unions and union-based parties have been unable to deal with this incongruous situation very effectively. The chronic limit of the nations (demographically) largest social class in effective democratic representation in formal institutional politics, particularly in the heavily state-centered system of socioeconomic governance, has systematically disadvantaged them in the process of capitalist economic development and industrial restructuring. In fact, this dilemma of empty political citizenship has been nearly universal to all grassroots social classes in civil society, and thereby structurally hindered the nations Marshallian evolution in citizenship politics.