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Signaling Democracy: Patron-Client Relations and Democratization in South Korea and Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Andrew Yeo
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Abstract

Facing massive protests, why did incumbent regimes in both South Korea and Poland repress movements for democratization in the early 1980s but make democratic concessions to the opposition in the late 1980s? I demonstrate how the United States and the Soviet Union as superpower patron states influenced democratic transitions in South Korea and Poland. The different outcomes across time are partially attributed to superpower policies toward their client states. Absent in 1980 were strong, credible signals from the United States and the Soviet Union to their respective client states to support political liberalization. But in the late 1980s superpowers affected the calculus of client state elites by either signaling or encouraging governments to make concessions to the opposition.

Keywords

democratizationsignalingpatron-client relationsinternational pressureCold Warregime changeauthoritarianismsecuritySouth KoreaPoland
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , August 2006 , pp. 259 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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References

Notes

I would like to thank Valerie Bounce, Hyeok-Yong Kwon, Robert Weiner, Jai-Kwan Jung, Stephan Haggard, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Cornell University Government Department's Political Economy Research Colloquium and at the 2005 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting in Chicago.Google Scholar

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