Strategic Model of Economic Performance and Democratization in South Korea and Taiwan

A debate persists over how economic performance fuels democratization. It is fanned partly by the divergent experiences of South Korea and Taiwan that suggest that economic growth leads to democratization. This paper provides a theoretical model that shows that economic downturns lead to democratization, and evaluates the conclusion systematically with data from South Korea and Taiwan. It departs by treating democratization as an outcome of strategic interaction between government and non-government actors. The model and statistical results corroborate that economic downturns motivate government and non-government actors to credibly pursue political reforms and democratization in South Korea and Taiwan. This paper makes four contributions: First, it provides a model to show democratization as the outcome of strategic responses under weak economic conditions. Second, the model's conclusions are tested with different operationalizations of democratization, ensuring that the findings are robust to alternative specifications. Third, the findings bring empirics in line with theoretical expectations that democratization improves government support by specifying threshold conditions, within which that occurs and, at the same time, reveals that democratization is not a panacea for eliciting support. Fourth, the evidence from South Korea and Taiwan expands strategic treatment and systematic analyses to critical cases to augment theoretical and empirical bases