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As each party's primary race to select a presidential candidate ahead of the March presidential election next year is getting fiercer, there are a lot of frowned upon things happening.

At that time, this question pops up in the minds of many people.

Why won't alternative politics change?



SDF2021 <50 Million Voices, Looking for a Conductor> is very interested in how political leadership should change in the age of diversity.



The SDF Team, which organizes a research team related to the subject every year to find the direction of our society's development, this year 



,





together with

Professor

Seung-yoon Lee of the Department of Sociology at

Chung-Ang University

, Director Lee Yu-jin of the Green Transition Research Institute

, and Professor

Jin- 

wook Shin of the Department of Sociology at Chung-Ang University

, are in this era of enormous social and ecological transition. Leaders are looking for questions they need to answer.


SDF2021 <50 million voices, looking for a conductor> Research team

Today, SDF Diary shared the story of 'political change' through a conversation with Professor Shin Jin-wook of the Department of Sociology, Chung-Ang University, who is continuing his research with the SDF2021 research team focusing on sociopolitical fields.



Q. You are a speaker of the research team of SDF2021 <50 million voices, looking for a conductor>. Please explain what kind of research you are doing.



I work in the field of political and sociology. While political science focuses on governments, parties, and political systems, political sociology is mainly concerned with the relationship between the realm of institutional politics and civil society, and the relationship between the state and citizens, and interactions. How are politics and society, and how politics and citizens influence and relate to each other within the framework of a social system? I'm mainly researching this.



From that point of view, in the SDF2021 study, there are two areas that can be said to be the biggest challenges of this era: political alternatives in terms of socioeconomic inequality and the ecological crisis that we are talking about now as climate crisis, political alternatives and political party politics. I am looking for it by dividing it into the realm of civil society. While examining the demands for change that are now emerging in Korean civil society, we are concentrating on overseas cases that are successful and can be positively referenced among various political and social system attempts.



Q. As mentioned earlier, I think the role of politics is becoming more important in the face of the big challenges of this era, such as deepening social inequality and the climate crisis. It's like.



Yes. There is a significant gap between the global trend in recent years and the reality of Korean politics, and at that point, I think that we are at an important time when Korean politics must change now and citizens must demand a change in politics.



First, from a global perspective, it cannot be said that the two (inequality, climate crisis) crises mentioned above have recently escalated. It has already been half a century since warnings began pouring out that 'the crisis is serious and it is not sustainable as it is'. Since the mid to late 1970s, there have been stories that 'stable party democracy is in crisis, and politics that deepen inequality is spreading'. Since then, this problem has remained fundamentally unresolved. About 50 years ago, 'Limits to Growth', also known as the Club of Rome Report, which is very famous in terms of ecological crisis, came out. It was predicted at the time that in the 2020s and 30s, there is a risk that the Earth's ecosystems will cross a critical point in such a serious situation that they can no longer recover.



[1] Club of Rome: Founded in 1968 by European leaders such as scholars, businessmen, and politicians, it is a world-class non-profit research institute that studies the future of mankind and the earth. In his first report, 'The Limits to Growth', published in 1972, he argued that the pace of growth and development must be slowed in order for mankind to 'sustainable prosperity' without walking on the path of decline.



From then on, the way nature and humans relate, the technologicalism and growth-oriented development model of capitalist society, and major works that require fundamental reflection on these things are pouring out. It's been a long time since the crisis started to deepen.



However, what I said recently that the global trend is changing, I think that it has been only about 10 years since the perception that survival and coexistence is impossible without change has started to fundamentally expand.

From 2007 to 9, there was a global economic crisis after the collapse of the US subprime, and from 2010 to 11, there was a serious economic crisis mainly in southern Europe.

After that, international organizations and governments of various countries began to reflect on the idea, 'This can't be the case'.

Something has changed since 2010.

From an ecological point of view, the UN's SDGs[2] for sustainable development were presented in earnest in 2016.

The European Union (EU) officially proposed a European Green Deal in 2019, very recently.


Photo source: Statistics Korea (https://kostat-sdg-kor.github.io/sdg-indicators/)


[2] SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals): A term meaning 'sustainable development', first appeared in the UN Brundtland report in 1987. In 2015, 193 UN member states gathered to announce 17 goals and 169 detailed goals that the international community should aim for by 2030, and are based on three pillars: economic growth, social integration, and environmental conservation.



In recent years, it is a global trend that international organizations and governments of major countries are putting the resolution of inequality and overcoming the ecological crisis to the fore as very important future agendas. In that sense, Korean politics is very far away from global trends. Although these two factors, inequality and climate crisis, are being reflected in certain individual policies, I don't think major changes are taking place in this direction, in which the basic paradigm of politics has changed, people's perceptions and their way of life are changed accordingly. .



Q. What is the reason that the paradigm of politics does not change? Is it still the key to not being able to recognize social and ecological changes in an integrated way?



Obviously there is such a thing. The first problem, however, is that the axes of inequality, labor issues, and welfare policy tasks and the aspect of ecological transformation were simultaneously overlooked in the core agenda.



In the next step, it should be discussed how to solve both social and ecological problems together. For a long time, issues such as inequality and ecological issues were not accepted as central goals for politics to pursue. It was believed that the solution would be secondary to technological development or economic growth. In the 2000s, the perception that inequality and social welfare are very important in themselves gradually expanded, and I think that there is a trend in which politics, policies, and people's perceptions have changed to some extent.



On ecological issues, the government started too late. So, there are still a lot of shortcomings in implementing the policy as a policy, and I think that the awareness of citizens in that area is also lacking in specific awareness of issues and preparations to participate in the transition.



How do you combine these two issues to solve the problem? It can be said that this is a high-level task that Korean society has to follow quite a lot. It's not just politics that's a problem, it's that citizens have to strongly demand it for politics.



Q. You are repeatedly emphasizing the civil society that demands it independently. It sounds like the voters need a change too.



At every opportunity, I am emphasizing the story that citizens need to pay more attention not only to politics, but also to what good politics is and what it takes to be good politics. Here, I will briefly explain the difference between interest in politics and interest in good politics. When talking about democracy, the phrase 'the vitality of democracy cannot be sustained without citizens' interest and participation in politics' is always like a textbook. Follow me. And it is a global phenomenon that citizens' interest in politics has increased significantly due to various factors, such as an improvement in education level and technological and social and structural changes. Interest and participation, which are important prerequisites for democracy, are exploding. But at the next stage, a problem arises.



What are your political interests? What kind of politics are you involved in? that is. Is it interest and participation that contributes in a positive direction for human rights and good values ​​in our society? Or is it an interest and participation in the direction of threatening democracy through radicalized and radicalized collective political actions? that is.



Instead of saying, “I support this party, I will somehow make this party win this time,” but with a voice saying, “Our country needs this kind of politics now, that’s good politics.” When demanded, institutional politics also have the potential to change for the better.



Q. Next year will be 35 years since Korea achieved political democracy. It seems like it is time to think about what kind of democracy we are going to move forward in the increasingly extreme political situation like now. There is also a presidential election next year.



After democratization in 1987, the biggest challenge for democracy from the 1990s to the early 2000s was to survive the young democracy that was just born. In many countries, dictatorships break down, democracy is introduced, and then back to dictatorships happen. As seen in several countries recently.




And since the early 2000s, regular elections are held, the multi-party system is guaranteed, and basic political rights are strictly adhered to in the sense of consolidating democracy, and now 'quality of democracy' is the keyword. When speaking within the political realm of 'the quality of democracy is important', the rule of law, separation of powers, civil liberties, and basic rights are considered as the requirements of democracy.



And if the quality of democracy is extended to the social realm, the aforementioned 'democratic citizenship' and mature citizenship that makes institutional actors think of 'good politics' becomes more important. Rather than rejecting people who have different political beliefs and opinions, we need to develop a civil and political culture that allows us to try to argue and persuade each other and embrace them as coexistent objects.


Furthermore, if inequality in society becomes too severe, there will come a situation where people who have fallen behind and socially underprivileged groups cannot politically represent or reflect their situation and needs. So, politics has moved to a stage with such an important task of achieving qualitative improvement in democracy beyond regular elections, which is a problem that Korean politics is too insignificant to meet.



Ultimately, I think the task is to change the political subject. In the two large political parties whose political subjects have not changed at all, politicians who are getting older are now taking important social issues such as inequality, welfare, and ecology as their only language. Do you have a strong will to make the demands of civil society a top priority in the political agenda and to break through the non-total forces? It's always easy to break down here. So, as a result, we see the result that 'politics doesn't change'.



Q. Then, in a situation of uncertainty and important transition, what kind of capabilities should we select leaders with?



We want to convey the message that from every new government to the previous government, it was a corruption, and a different era begins with the current government. But what the people need is the future to come if the past was a bad thing? I want to hear the positive key word.



In this presidential election, regardless of the opposition, what should Korean society aim for in the next history?

I think it's time to come up with a key word as a leader of the country about what should be the most important value in our society.




Prof. Shin Jin-wook said, "It would be great if I could play a role in creating a discourse with a vision and a big story that our society should share," as a scholar through research with SDF2021.



What do you think is the story that we need to share as a priority in order to live together in the midst of a huge transformation and an accelerated future after COVID-19?

SDF2021 will continue the bold challenge of opening the future by finding essential questions in this era through in-depth discussions with researchers who are seeking ways to change our society this year.



We ask for your interest in SDF2021 <Fifty million voices, looking for a conductor>.


(Written by Yejin Choi, Future Team sdf@sbs.co.kr)



*** This article was introduced in SDF Diary, a newsletter sent every Wednesday morning.

The SDF Diary is written by members of the SBS Press Headquarters Future Team who prepare for SBS's representative forum, SDF.

We look ahead to the topics that our society should be interested in, and deliver meaningful new perspectives or attempts.



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