UN communications at 75: Incremental change or innovative transformation?

In the age of globalization, the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) is expected to play an active role in communicating with citizens the world over. This study explores the DPI's evolution over the last 75 years, tackling the nature of organizational change in what is too often dismissed as a hidebound and conservative institution. The authors use textual analysis of UN documents combined with Grunig and Hunt's four public relations (PR) models to track the DPI's transformation from an organization that favoured the one-way dissemination of objective information to an institution ready to embrace two-way symmetric public relations. Though useful, these models were unable to explain the driving forces behind the DPI's transition from one model to another or detailed changes within models at a micro level. To remedy this, the authors incorporate Harry Nystrom's basic model of organizational innovation illuminating incremental changes within the DPI between 1946 and 1989, as well as the transformative changes that were driven by the end of the Cold War, new communications technologies, and Kofi Annan's leadership in the 1990s and 2000s

What Caused Ahn Chul-soo Phenomenon: Political Distrust or Cynicism?

2012년 대선은 안철수현상이 휩쓸었다 해도 과언이 아니다. 많은 논평가뿐만 아니라 안철수 캠프는 안철수현상의 원인은 국민으로부터 외면 받는 주요정당에 있다고 주장했다. 정치불신을 연구하는 학자뿐만 아니라 미국의 제3후보의 등장을 연구한 대부분의 학자는 정치불신과 정치냉소주의를 동일한 개념으로 사용해왔다. 본 연구는 정치불신과 정치냉소주의가 서로 다른 개념임을 밝히고 안철수현상이 둘 중 어느 것에 의해 추동되었는지를 규명하기 위해 2012년 총선 직후와 2012년 대선 직전의 설문조사 자료를 사용하여 분석하였다. 그 결과 일부 무당파가 안철수현상의 주요 동력이었던건 사실이지만, 정치불신자보다는 민주당을 신뢰하는 유권자와 정치냉소주의자라는 서로 다른 종류의 유권자에 의해 안철수현상이 추동되었음을 발견하였다. 이는 안철수현상이 함께 하기 어려운 집단이 만들어낸 현상으로서 시작부터 성공하기 어려운 조건을 내포하고 있었음을 말해준다. 만일 안철수현상이 정치불신에 의해 추동되었다면 적당한 수준의 정치불신은 기성 정치를 견제하는 역할을 하고 반드시 정치참여율을 떨어뜨리지도 않기 때문에 민주주의에 긍정적이라고 할 수 있다. 그러나 정치냉소주의는 정치에 대한 이해부족에서 비롯되기 때문에 정치권 밖에서 정치권으로 갑자기 진입하는 포퓰리스트에 의해 동원되는 경향이 있다. 정치냉소주의가 민주주의에 미치는 부정적 영향과 향후 안철수현상의 재발 가능성에 대해 논의했다.The 2012 Korean Presidential election was swept by the so-called Ahn Chul-Soo phenomenon; that is, the rise of the third candidate. Ahns camp claimed, along with many political pundits, that the failure of the major political parties and the Korean electorates consequent party distrust gave rise to Ahn Chul-soo phenomenon. Students of political trust have used the terms political distrust and cynicism interchangeably to describe such an effect, as have the students of the third party candidates in the United States. This study distinguishes between these two concepts and examines which of them is the major driver of the Ahn Chul-soo phenomenon, given that distrust and cynicism have totally different political ramifications. Two national surveys were employed: one conducted right after the 2012 National Assembly elections at the peak of Ahns popularity, and one right before the 2012 presidential election as his popularity was dwindling. The results suggest that independent groups of voters supported Mr. Ahn, but more importantly both those who trusted the opposition party and those who were cynical were his major supporters. Ahn appears to have been doomed to fail from his inception as a candidate because he found his support in two incompatible voter groups. It was political cynicism rather than distrust that bred Ahns popularity. Political distrust is a natural and even positive force in democracy because it checks and balances against political corruption and can sometimes motivate voters active political participation. However, cynicism may endanger the democratic process, due to voters lack of political knowledge and understanding leading them to be mobilized by a populist figure abruptly entering an election race from the non-political arena. The study discusses the negative influence of cynicism on Korean democracy and the prospects of the recurrence of Ahn syndrome in future

Two-Component model of general trust: Predicting behavioral trust from att itudinal trust

General trust constitutes a critical aspect of social capital that facilitates democratic governance and economic prosperity of a society. Despite its theoretical importance, attitudinal measures of general trust often fail to predict actual trusting behavior in laboratory testing. We suspected that the failure of currently available measures of trust in predicting behavioral trust stems from the overly consequentialist approach to defining trust. We proposed that measures of attitudinal trust succeed in predicting behavioral trust when they tap both the responder's belief that his/her trust will be honored and his/her preference to be a trusting person. We constructed a new measure of general trust that includes both of these aspects. Using a nonstudent sample of trust game players (N = 470), we demonstrated that the newly constructed measure better predicts behavioral trust in a trust game and other related games, especially when the participant's social-value orientation is controlled. © 2015 Guilford Publications, Inc

Female labour force participation during economic crises in Argentina and the Republic of Korea

The impact of economic crisis on female labour force participation in two middle-income countries is explored, by testing two hypotheses: the "added workers hypothesis", which holds that more women are likely to enter the labour force in order to compensate for household income lost because of the crisis; and the "discouraged workers hypothesis", which posits that poor macroeconomic conditions and scarcity of jobs lead women to leave the labour force altogether. With FLFP rates rising in Argentina but falling in the Republic of Korea, neither hypothesis is supported. Differences in employers' risk-aversion/ discrimination in employment and compensation, and supportive public policies (e.g. on childcare), apparently explain most of the country differences. Copyright © International Labour Organization 2005

A model on the rise and decline of South Korean anti-American sentiment

Most of the literature on the 2002 candlelight vigils in South Korea (Korea) has ascribed the cause of the anti-Americanism of these protests to domestic factors. Authors predicted that any change in United States policy on Korea would not substantially improve the two countries' strained alliance because the fundamental problem was rooted in Korea's domestic transformation and subsequent shifts in perspective towards North Korea. However, South Korea has once again become one of the world's most pro-American countries. This study claims that South Korea's domestic transformation is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to give rise to anti-American protest and thus anti-American sentiment is merely latent in the South Korean public consciousness and will not manifest itself unless it is ill-managed. A comprehensive analytical model is presented to predict the rise and decline of anti-American protest, incorporating period as well as generational effect. The model depicts the dynamic process of mass demonstrations in which cognitive basis and emotional incidents interact. © 2015 by THE INSTITUTE OF KOREAN STUDIES

Who Protest and Why? The Evolution of South Korean Civic Activism Since 2000

Street demonstrations had steadily decreased in South Korea after the country's democratization in 1987 and subsequent reform, but the country witnessed resurgence of a series of mass candlelight vigils since 2000. This study examines three competing theses to explain the individual-level sources of Korea's recent civic activism: 'disaffected radicalism,' 'social capital,' and 'Postmaterialism.' We used 2005 and 2010 World Values Surveys as well as the Lee et al. 2017 protest study to trace changes in protesters' characteristics and the motivations for protest over time during this period. Our results provide strong support for the Postmaterialism thesis and illuminate the evolutionary process of South Korean activism, demonstrating that the number of Postmaterialists has been slowly growing. The study confirms Inglehart's prediction that a nascent democracy will follow advanced democracies in an upward trajectory of elite-challenging activity and normalization of non-conventional participation by mobilizing traditionally inactive voters