SDF

[Title] Democratic Innovations through Institutionalization of Civic Participation

KIM Joohyung received his PhD in political science at Indiana University. He is currently on the faculty of the Department of Political Science & International Relations at Seoul National University. His teaching and research focus on modern and contemporary political thought and issues in democratic theory and practice, and he has more recently expanded his areas of interest to “democratic innovations” through civic participation, civic education, and theoretical analysis of Korean contemporary political history. Key publications include “The Social and the Political in Luhmann” (2015), “Deliberation and Democracy: An Assessment of the Deliberative Minipublic” (2018), “Populism and Democracy” (2020, co-authored), and “Concepts and Types of Democratic Innovations” (2021, co-authored).

What will Korean democracy look like in 2040? How should traditional representative democracy, based on elections, a parliament, and political parties, be innovated? What are the political implications and dynamics being created by newly emerging mechanisms of civic participation and their focus on participation, deliberation, and direct democracy? We have been seeing increasing experimentation around “democratic innovations” as a means to overcome the limitations of elite democracy and reform representative democracy by institutionalizing active participation and deliberation on the part of ordinary citizens. In this session, we analyze and evaluate key examples of democratic innovations, including the Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland, the Citizens’ Initiative in Finland, and the United States’ process by which citizens can introduce bills for legislation, and explore how to successfully institutionalize such innovations within Korea to ensure a sustainable and dynamic future for Korean democracy.