Democratization in Confucian East Asia: Citizen Politics in China ...

C. Civic Culture

The classical notion of the term prodemocratic values refers to the set of values originally known as civic culture. Civic culture refers to trust, tolerance, and participatory attitudes. Earlier, civic culture meant a necessary condition for the quality of democracy (Almond & Verba, 1963). More recently the term has come to mean a factor that affects democratic consolidation. This is most notably presented by scholarship on performance or quality of democracy, such as the social capital theory of Putnam (1993, 2000) and the new civic culture theory of Inglehart (1990). In my framework, I argue civic attitudes contribute to citizen’s participation in local and national governmental or nongovernmental activities. Once democratic transition has taken place, civic culture is important for democratic consolidation, but a high level of civic culture does not directly lead to demand for democracy.

Citizen Politics

How citizens engage in politics reflects their values and beliefs, although institutional factors will also matter. In this framework, I list two types of citizen politics important for democracy. Demand for political reform refers to overt criticism and challenges of government by citizens. This, as I will show later, largely include two dimensions. One, citizens’ elite-challenging attitudes, refers to distrust of government in my study.