Cooptation Of Political System And Political Transition In East Asia

Along with the expansion of the third wave of democratization, a large number of scholars research this issue. On the basis of the criticism of structure factors, democratic transitionists analyze the process of democratization by the means of elite behavior and strategy choice, and distinguish different modes of transition by elite interactive behavior, and propose the casal relations between transition modes and results of transitions. This method, however, obviously ignores elite power which is the foundation of elite decision-making, therefore it is difficult to answer why elites make different behavior choice in the process of transition, let alone to explain which factors make the balance and change of elite faction power. In order to make up for the defect of the transition school, this dissertation proposes the theory of cooptation of political system to analyze political transitions in East Asia, and try to put forward a more adequate explanation of political transition.Cooptation of political system effects political transition by influencing the power of elite factions. According to the difference of positive and preventing reversed cooptation capacity, cooptation can be distinguished into four types, and each type has different influence on the power of elite factions which support or oppose the certain political system. In general, the cooptation capacity of political system is stronger, compared to the power of support factions, the power of opposition factions is smaller or grows more slowly, on the contrary, the power is greater or grows rapidly. Cooptation has following influences on political transition:first, cooptation makes the collapse or promotes maintenance of the political system by change the balance of power of elite factions, second, based on the balance of power, elite behaviors form various transition modes, if the power of opposition elites outside the system gets the upper hand, the transition mode is rupture, and if the power of opposition in the system is greater than other factions, imposition mode tends to occur, and if no one faction has greater power and there is negotiation and communication channels between elites in the system and outside the system, a new political system is established through transaction mode.After World War II, In East Asia have taken place a variety of paths and types of political transition, including from authoritarian to democracy, and from democracy to authoritarian, and alternating between democracy and authoritarian. This dissertation uses Korea, Singapore and the Philippine as cases to verify10theoretical propositions about the relation between cooptation of political system and political transition by comparative methods, and to reveal the influence of cooptation on political transition.