The Crisis of Democracy in Capitalist Dynamism

Wonik Kim, Louisiana State University

Democracy is in crisis everywhere. Sentiments and signs of “anti-elite,” “anti-system,” “populism,” and even “neo-fascism” are increasingly visible, erupting in both mature, wealthy democracies and young, poor ones. Existing studies have centered on the rise to demagogic rule, cultural anxieties, globalization, low economic growth, increasing inequality, and stagnated social mobility. While these findings point to surface phenomena that have appeared as crises of democracy, these theories largely overlook one fundamental feature of democracy: the essence of capitalism. Political democracy can exist only within the capitalist economic system. To make sense of the current global democratic backsliding, democracy should be understood as capitalist democracy, in which a form of the political regime is always changing because capitalism is immanently dynamic, characterized by the self-valorization of capital, endless profit-making on a global scale, relentless spatial expansion, and accelerating over time. I employ two approaches: statistical analysis of the global sample and an in-depth case study of South Korea. First, using time-series-cross-section from the global sample for the neoliberal period, 1980s – 2020s, I investigate two hypotheses: 1) whether there is a systematic relationship between neoliberalism in late capitalism and the crisis of democracy, and 2) whether this relationship is reinforced by the temporal dimension, namely the dynamism of global capitalism. Second, I conduct an in-depth country analysis of South Korea to trace a dynamic causal mechanism by which capitalism generates shifting configurations between the state and civil society. South Korea is an ideal case, for it has experienced a clear historical trajectory in which the Fordist mode of capital accumulation under “the developmental state” eventually led to democratization in the late 1980s, and the subsequent neoliberal mode of accumulation has caused the sudden rise of far-right populism and de-democratization, as vividly manifested in the 2024 martial law crisis.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 108. Rule of Law, Policy Feedback, and Civic Participation