International Comparison of Protest Norms Between Japan, South Korea and Germany

In recent years, many protests draw many people’s attention all over the world. However, protests in Japan are not yet as active as in other countries. Why don’t Japanese people participate in protest? They have complaints about society and politics, and they also have opportunities to participate. In the previous survey in Japan, we found people who shy away from politics consider that social movements are arbitrary claims which bring about disruption in social order, although majority of people consider that social movements are legitimate political rights. In addition, the fear of social order disruption has a bad influence on permission to participate in protests.

Based on these findings, the important factors that affect Japanese non-participation are norms to participate in protests. Although people think a protest is legitimate, they also think a disruptive activity should not be done. Then, protest participation is affected by which norms people consider important.

However, are these arguments applicable to other countries? Do people in other countries have similar views toward social movement? Therefore, in this study, we try to grasp the norms to participate in protest by the international comparison survey: Japan, South Korea, and Germany.

Using this survey data, we examine similarities and dissimilarities of protest norms between three countries. Furthermore, we explore questions as follows. First, what factors affect such norm emergences in each country?: political regime, civil society structure, political culture, and so on. Second, do protest norms effect on real protest participations?

It is indicated that these countries have different characteristics about civil society: active advocacy in South Korea and calm advocacy in Japan. By comparing these two countries, we can expect to grasp norm emergences clearly. Furthermore, we can grasp a feature of the Asian protest norms by comparing norms in these Asian countries to norms in Germany.