Sung Ho Kim
Yonsei University · Social Sciences
About the Lab
Professor Sung Ho Kim's research lab specializes in constitutional theory, democratic governance, and the political thought of modern European intellectuals, with a particular focus on Max Weber’s contributions to civil society and democratic citizenship. The lab explores the interplay between popular sovereignty, historical legacy, and constitutional design, drawing on comparative experiences from postwar Japan and South Korea to examine how democratic institutions emerge amid complex social and political transformations. It also investigates the normative foundations of liberal democracy, especially the role of civil society in fostering civic virtue, political participation, and institutional resilience in contemporary democracies.
Research Overview
Research Output Trend
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Selected Papers
15What does it mean to say that it is 'We the People' who 'ordain and establish' a constitution? Who are those sovereign people, and how can they do so? Interweaving history and theory, constitutional scholar Chaihark Hahm and political theorist Sung Ho Kim attempt to answer these perennial questions by revisiting the constitutional politics of postwar Japan and Korea. Together, these experiences demonstrate the infeasibility of the conventional assumption that there is a clearly bounded sovereign
This book is an in-depth interpretation of Max Weber as a political theorist of civil society. On the one hand, it reads Weber's ideas from the perspective of modern political thought, rather than the modern social sciences; on the other, it offers a liberal assessment of this complex political thinker without attempting to apologize for his shortcomings. Through an alternative reading of Weber's religious, epistemological and political writings, the book shows Weber's concern with public citize
But with the member of a Nonconforming or self-made religious community, how different! The sectary's eigene grosse Erfindungen, as Goethe calls them,—the precious discoveries of himself and his friends for expressing the inexpressible and defining the undefinable in peculiar forms of their own,—cannot but, as he has voluntarily chosen them and is personally responsible for them, fill his whole mind. He is zealous to do battle for them and affirm them; for in affirming them, he affirms himself,
Abstract: During the early years of South Koreaâs transition to democracy, expanding popular rule and deepening individual rights went hand-in-hand. But with Roh Moo Hyunâs narrow election to the presidency on 19 December 2002, the democratic transition that South Korea began in 1987 entered a profoundly new era. The presidency has exposed rifts between majority rule and constitutionalism that the countryâs judiciary is struggling to bridge.
Peace and unanimity are commonly considered as the principal foundations of public felicity; yet the rivalship of separate communities, and the agitation of a free people, are the principles of political life, and the school of men. How shall we reconcile these jarring and opposite tenets?Adam Ferguson
Abstract Weber is not generally recognized as a democratic theorist of civil society. Drawing from his religious and political writings, this chapter reconstructs his vision of pluralistically organized civil society. As such, Weber’s civil society was primarily a site of civic education and leadership selection where dynamic culture and a system of contestation would help arrest the bureaucratic petrification of modern democracy. Based on this reconstruction, Weber’s deeply political vision is
Supply chain failed during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Irrational consumer behaviour created a panic buying and led to bullwhip effects. The United States government response to the pandemic from manufacturing vaccines to distribution to consumers in a very short period of time created further uncertainty as the local authorities where vaccines were to be administrated were unprepared for implementing the vaccine supply chain. The federal pandemic supply chain, Operations Wrap Sp
Max Weber’s reputation as one of the founding fathers of the modern social sciences relies in large measure on his methodological contributions such as value objectivity or freedom (Wertfreiheit) and ideal type (Idealtypus). This essay revisits Weber’s famous lecture on the Science as a Vocation (Wissenschaft als Beruf) to elucidate the meaning of these methodological doctrines that have come to constitute the core identity of the social sciences even into our time. By putting them in the larger
But with the member of a Nonconforming or self-made religious community, how different! The sectary's eigene grosse Erfindungen, as Goethe calls them, – the precious discoveries of himself and his friends for expressing the inexpressible and defining the undefinable in peculiar forms of their own, – cannot but, as he has voluntarily chosen them and is personally responsible for them, fill his whole mind. He is zealous to do battle for them and affirm them; for in affirming them he affirms himsel
[MWS 21.1 (2021) 125–138] ISSN 1470-8078 doi: 10.15543/maxweberstudies.21.1.125© Max Weber Studies 2021, Global Policy Institute, University House, Coventry University London, 109 Middlesex Street, London E1 7JF. Book Reviews Etienne de Villiers, Revisiting Max Weber’s Ethic of Responsibility (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), xi + 243pp. (pbk). ISBN 9783161558160. €49.00. For better or worse, this is an unusual book. True to its title, the book spends most of its pages revisiting Weber’s ethic of
This panel consisted of Honda (presenter), Morikawa (commentator), and Kim (moderator) with a well-attended floor that included Campbell, Gottschalk, Okayama, and other scholars and graduate students from the US and Japan. The title of Honda’s paper was “Postwar Civil Rights Politics in the United States: The Dynamics of Democratization from a Global Perspective.” Our workshop resonated well with the previous morning session, in that both addressed the discursive vicissitude of “Americanism” in
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That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow mee, and bendYour force, to break, blowe, burn, and make me new …Take me to you, imprison me, for IExcept you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,Nor ever chast, except you ravish me.John Donne
Research Areas
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