Lazy Europeans

[Toro]

* JANUARY 9, 2009

Belgians Take Lots of Sick Leave, And Why Not, They're Depressed
Some, of Course, Are Watching the Soaps; Mr. Vandervelpen Needed a Little TLC

Dirk Cuypers, the top official at Belgium's health ministry, is sick of sick leave.

Belgians, like many Europeans, are entitled to extensive or even unlimited sick leave -- and they tend to stretch the definition of the word. One study showed government employees in droves were calling in sick to pack before vacations and to sleep off holiday hangovers. Some government departments were averaging 35 days of paid sick leave per employee each year, more than twice the national rate and seven times the U.S. average.

"It was perverse," says the 55-year-old former medical director for two big private-sector pharmaceutical companies, Eli Lilly & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. He decided to do something about it.

Dr. Cuypers and the minister for civil service set up a network of doctor-inspectors around the nation to smoke out malingerers. Each day since January last year, a dozen inspectors such as Vincent Quoidbach have been touring Belgium, knocking on the doors of 150 randomly selected sick and not-so-sick civil servants.

Once, says Dr. Quoidbach, he discovered that a man taking time off was really working a black-market job, given away by the paint on his hands. Another man answered his door with an undone belt as a woman hurried out the door. Others, faking bad backs, got to the door too fast.

Europe has long suffered from sick-day disease, and many European governments are trying to fix the problem. The average European worker took off 11.3 days in 2005, compared with 4.5 days for the average American, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in Paris. The cost of those lost workdays to Europe's economy is sometimes as much as 1.3% of gross domestic product annually, says OECD senior economist Christopher Prinz.

But changing Europe's sick-day culture isn't easy. Half of all Belgians on medical leave say they suffer from depression -- the country has Western Europe's highest suicide rate. "You can't contradict the opinion of a psychiatrist," says Dr. Quoidbach. "It has to be obvious they're cheating." ...

What Ails Belgium? <break/> Workers' Sick Time - WSJ.com

The Belgians make the best beer though.

 

[Munin]

What Ails Belgium? <break/> Workers' Sick Time - WSJ.com

The Belgians make the best beer though.

I don't get your point, you re saying Europeans in general are lazy because they take more days of for being sick?

What I do agree with is that the socialistic workers system in Europe is the cause of this, it gives workers more rights then anywhere else in the world. And this is the problem: the system is being taken advantage of by some workers.

"Belgium's economy and its transportation infrastructure are integrated with the rest of Europe. Its location at the heart of a highly industrialized region helps made it 2007 the world's 15th largest trading nation. The economy is characterized by a highly productive work force, high GNP, and high exports per capita." Belgium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Let s not forget that Belgium is a Nation with 10 million inhabitants and isn't even the size of a peanut on a world-scaled map.

And lets also not forget that for the moment the word "European" is an empty word, because their is very little that can define a European other then "a person living in Europe" (Although that might get tricky too if Turkey would ever join the EU): European Unity is simply something that doesn't exist, it s more like being part of a collection of states that work together very closely.

The situation in Belgium is just more complex than just the sick-day culture, this is a specific problem that is being magnified although one thing is true: the socialistic system is becoming a problem, workers seem to have become too powerful (in some cases) compared to their employers and unions seem to take too much advantage of their power given by the law.

The present system is a heritage of the past where employers were abused by their employers and had to be protected. This caused the socialistic politic parties to gain much power all over Europe and the results of that are still visible in laws, although it is good that workers are protected in the case that an employer abuses them it now has become also a problem that the workers seem to be overprotected and sometimes abusing this. Now it seems that socialistic parties all over Europe are loosing, so hopefully this will balance the social system more.

Ironically the depression and suicide rate are not always the result of not working (as it is claimed in the article), in Flanders (part of Belgium) it is the result of working too much and the result of a society that revolves around working (with stress as result). That is the situation in Flanders (Dutch speaking part of Belgium with a low unemployment rate and a good economy).

In another part of the Country the situation is different (Wallonia and Brussels): high unemployment and a bad economy are the cause of these depressions and high suicide rates.

So the situation is complex, in Wallonia and Brussels what you say is true but in Flanders the opposite is true so it makes the general picture about Belgium untrue.

 

[editec]

What's wrong with the Belgians?

Too many waffles, I expect.

I had one at the New York World's Fair in 1961, and I'm still regretting it.

 

[Skull Pilot]

We'll see what happens when businesses finally figure out that it doesn't pay to operate in Belgium. Then all those go get em ambitious workers they have can call out sick 365 days a year

 

[mightypeon]

Well, for some reason this was the case in the last 60 years or so, in Germany too. And for some reason Germany now exports more manufractured goods than the USA.

If workers rights stop investment, than all industrial activities would be in China.

 

[morpheus]

And lets also not forget that for the moment the word "European" is an empty word, because their is very little that can define a European other then "a person living in Europe" (Although that might get tricky too if Turkey would ever join the EU): European Unity is simply something that doesn't exist, it s more like being part of a collection of states that work together very closely.

On the contrary, there is a collective European identity, not as strong as national or regional identities obviously, but nonetheless a potent one. Otherwise, you're denying the ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, political, and historical characteristics that European cultures have in common, and separate them from the rest of the world, even North America.

 

[Harry Dresden]

i work for the USPS,and we get 13 days a year,and believe me,there are those who call in quite often.....

 

[Munin]

And lets also not forget that for the moment the word "European" is an empty word, because their is very little that can define a European other then "a person living in Europe" (Although that might get tricky too if Turkey would ever join the EU): European Unity is simply something that doesn't exist, it s more like being part of a collection of states that work together very closely.

On the contrary, there is a collective European identity, not as strong as national or regional identities obviously, but nonetheless a potent one. Otherwise, you're denying the ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, political, and historical characteristics that European cultures have in common, and separate them from the rest of the world, even North America.

Yes a potent one, because all modern European civilizations are based upon the religion of Christianity and the things that come from that religion and the ideals of democracy, freedom is what mostly binds European Nations together. That is if you don't see Turkey as part of Europe at least, in my opinion Turkey is not European because of geographical, religious and cultural reasons. But language is the biggest barrier that separates us from each other, you can't even travel (and communicate with everyone) through the whole of Europe if you don't know less then 4 languages. Although I know that the youth is changing things, all over Europe they seem to know/learn English these days. It would be cool to have such a bridge-language that you could use in every European nation to communicate, I hope this will be something that will be true in the future.

 

[jodylee]

And lets also not forget that for the moment the word "European" is an empty word, because their is very little that can define a European other then "a person living in Europe" (Although that might get tricky too if Turkey would ever join the EU): European Unity is simply something that doesn't exist, it s more like being part of a collection of states that work together very closely.

On the contrary, there is a collective European identity, not as strong as national or regional identities obviously, but nonetheless a potent one. Otherwise, you're denying the ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, political, and historical characteristics that European cultures have in common, and separate them from the rest of the world, even North America.

Yes a potent one, because all modern European civilizations are based upon the religion of Christianity and the things that come from that religion and the ideals of democracy, freedom is what mostly binds European Nations together. That is if you don't see Turkey as part of Europe at least, in my opinion Turkey is not European because of geographical, religious and cultural reasons. But language is the biggest barrier that separates us from each other, you can't even travel (and communicate with everyone) through the whole of Europe if you don't know less then 4 languages. Although I know that the youth is changing things, all over Europe they seem to know/learn English these days. It would be cool to have such a bridge-language that you could use in every European nation to communicate, I hope this will be something that will be true in the future.

On the contry it was moving away from religion and becoming more progressive, that gave birth the deomcracy in europe, the first parilmentry countries being england and holland who were the two main proponents of protestism. Religion only held back progress, the industrial revolution started in the protestant countries.
Infact alot of the early technology and ideas were taken from islam india and china. euope doesn't stand alone in history, and it wasn't always christian

 

[Munin]

On the contrary, there is a collective European identity, not as strong as national or regional identities obviously, but nonetheless a potent one. Otherwise, you're denying the ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, political, and historical characteristics that European cultures have in common, and separate them from the rest of the world, even North America.

Yes a potent one, because all modern European civilizations are based upon the religion of Christianity and the things that come from that religion and the ideals of democracy, freedom is what mostly binds European Nations together. That is if you don't see Turkey as part of Europe at least, in my opinion Turkey is not European because of geographical, religious and cultural reasons. But language is the biggest barrier that separates us from each other, you can't even travel (and communicate with everyone) through the whole of Europe if you don't know less then 4 languages. Although I know that the youth is changing things, all over Europe they seem to know/learn English these days. It would be cool to have such a bridge-language that you could use in every European nation to communicate, I hope this will be something that will be true in the future.

On the contry it was moving away from religion and becoming more progressive, that gave birth the deomcracy in europe, the first parilmentry countries being england and holland who were the two main proponents of protestism. Religion only held back progress, the industrial revolution started in the protestant countries.
Infact alot of the early technology and ideas were taken from islam india and china. euope doesn't stand alone in history, and it wasn't always christian

Europe still shares Christian values although we may be unaware of it today (that they originally are religious values because they are drained in our traditions and customs), because they have been in our laws from before WWII. We all share a past of Christianity and the values that came from that religion. Protestism really is still a christian religion that today has little values that really are different from the catholic church. Initially religion held back progress, but after the struggle christianity became mostly part of that progress by not interfering with it (unlike other religions in this world).

The industrial revolution started in the UK, wich had nothing to do with religion. Except the non-interference of the religion, just like the Catholic church (the second country were it started was Belgium, a catholic country/region) did not interfere with the industrial revolution. The most important thing is the non-interference ("secularity") of this religion after europeans won the struggle against its separation from the state. This allowed us to have a modern democracy, freedom, ... .

No Europe wasn't always christian, but modern day europe is unified by christian values and the respect of secularity by the christian religions after its struggle against the separation of church and state.

True very important early technology came from India and muslim countries (wich weren't muslim at that time) mostly through trade.

 

[morpheus]

And lets also not forget that for the moment the word "European" is an empty word, because their is very little that can define a European other then "a person living in Europe" (Although that might get tricky too if Turkey would ever join the EU): European Unity is simply something that doesn't exist, it s more like being part of a collection of states that work together very closely.

On the contrary, there is a collective European identity, not as strong as national or regional identities obviously, but nonetheless a potent one. Otherwise, you're denying the ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, political, and historical characteristics that European cultures have in common, and separate them from the rest of the world, even North America.

Yes a potent one, because all modern European civilizations are based upon the religion of Christianity and the things that come from that religion and the ideals of democracy, freedom is what mostly binds European Nations together. That is if you don't see Turkey as part of Europe at least, in my opinion Turkey is not European because of geographical, religious and cultural reasons. But language is the biggest barrier that separates us from each other, you can't even travel (and communicate with everyone) through the whole of Europe if you don't know less then 4 languages. Although I know that the youth is changing things, all over Europe they seem to know/learn English these days. It would be cool to have such a bridge-language that you could use in every European nation to communicate, I hope this will be something that will be true in the future.

Even linguistically, most European languages belong to the Indo-European language family. Yes, there's European languages that don't, but we can argue that Europe -is in some way- the most homogenous continent. Certainly more so than Asia and Africa, and even the Americas (the Americas are not too diverse linguistically, but more diverse than Europe ethnically/racially). Europeans have more in common with each other than other continents do internally, which is why Europe can also be considered -not only a continent- but also a geo-cultural region llike Sub-saharan Africa, the Lesser Antilles, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, Meso-America, South Pacific, and so on. You make a good point that adding Turkey challenges this ethnocultural definition of Europe, but I don't think it does. We should be able to speak about a sociocultural or ethnocultural geographic region in a general sense, without being thrown off by a small component. Such as: Israel within the Middle East, White South Africans in Sub-saharan Africa, or Korea's large Christian minority in the region influenced heavily by Chinese civilization (modern-day China and Taiwan, as well as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam). Europe also shares, more or less, a common pop culture. There's local pop cultures, but also a common one.

I disagree that Christianity spawned democracy. As someone else noted, democracy is credited to pre-Christian Greece, and representative government (republic) to pre-Christian Rome. These movements were reborn in Europe many centuries later after the secularization of Europe. Arguably, the rebirth of democracy was the antithesis to the Christian theocracy of the Middle Ages.

 

[Munin]

On the contrary, there is a collective European identity, not as strong as national or regional identities obviously, but nonetheless a potent one. Otherwise, you're denying the ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, political, and historical characteristics that European cultures have in common, and separate them from the rest of the world, even North America.

Yes a potent one, because all modern European civilizations are based upon the religion of Christianity and the things that come from that religion and the ideals of democracy, freedom is what mostly binds European Nations together. That is if you don't see Turkey as part of Europe at least, in my opinion Turkey is not European because of geographical, religious and cultural reasons. But language is the biggest barrier that separates us from each other, you can't even travel (and communicate with everyone) through the whole of Europe if you don't know less then 4 languages. Although I know that the youth is changing things, all over Europe they seem to know/learn English these days. It would be cool to have such a bridge-language that you could use in every European nation to communicate, I hope this will be something that will be true in the future.

Even linguistically, most European languages belong to the Indo-European language family. Yes, there's European languages that don't, but we can argue that Europe -is in some way- the most homogenous continent. Certainly more so than Asia and Africa, and even the Americas (the Americas are not too diverse linguistically, but more diverse than Europe ethnically/racially). Europeans have more in common with each other than other continents do internally, which is why Europe can also be considered -not only a continent- but also a geo-cultural region llike Sub-saharan Africa, the Lesser Antilles, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, Meso-America, South Pacific, and so on. You make a good point that adding Turkey challenges this ethnocultural definition of Europe, but I don't think it does. We should be able to speak about a sociocultural or ethnocultural geographic region in a general sense, without being thrown off by a small component. Such as: Israel within the Middle East, White South Africans in Sub-saharan Africa, or Korea's large Christian minority in the region influenced heavily by Chinese civilization (modern-day China and Taiwan, as well as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam). Europe also shares, more or less, a common pop culture. There's local pop cultures, but also a common one.

I disagree that Christianity spawned democracy. As someone else noted, democracy is credited to pre-Christian Greece, and representative government (republic) to pre-Christian Rome. These movements were reborn in Europe many centuries later after the secularization of Europe. Arguably, the rebirth of democracy was the antithesis to the Christian theocracy of the Middle Ages.

My point in the European Identity is mainly this: If you can identify with another man you should be able to understand his language first, the thing is that if you are a tourist and you want to visit each country in Europe you need to learn a lot more then 1 language and the number of languages you should know to be able to communicate with all is just too high. If you can't communicate with someone then it is very hard to identify yourself with him, even though this is possible through religion: a great example of what binds europeans is the movie "Noël" (something that actually happened), where the common tradition of Christmas made that soldiers saw their own identity reflected in the identity of their enemy. (this would never have been possible if people of another religion fought each other)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5iDz8Ul_AQ]YouTube - WWI Scots and German opera singing. Joex Noel French Movie![/ame]

And the fact that we have a weekend on saturday and sunday, our holidays are the same. A lot of other traditions that modern Europeans have in common come from this religion.

The thing I tried to say with modern democracy and christianity is that in a modern democracy people are able to become atheists or convert to another religion and the reason for this is that the specific former state-religion would allow this. That is why other countries with different religions don't have a modern democracy because their religion does not allow it. For example in all muslim countries (turkey included) it is for muslims in a lot of cases very hard or even impossible to convert to another religion or become an atheist without being rejected by their family and community because of religious reasons.

 

[morpheus]

Munin,

Great discussion, BTW.

On Europe: You're getting somewhere! Of course, national and subnational identities are strong, so it's important not to confuse European identity as a sort of national identity. But it is a very strong regional identity, just as we can say there's a strong regional identity for other geocultural regions such as the Arab world (true, they speak the same language), or Latin America (Latin Americans don't all speak the same language), East Asia (particularly China and its offspring cultures: Japan, Vietnam, Korea), the Afro-Carribean nations (who also don't speak the same language), and the Anglosphere (US, Canada, Australia, NZ, and Britain, the last of which belongs to Europe as well), and so on... I don't buy into Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, but I think that a lot of Americans underestimate the strong collective identity that Europeans do in fact share. Most of Europe, even parts of Europe that are not normally included in the definition of the "West", have more or less experienced the same series of historical and cultural movements that have swept the continent, from the spread of Christianity to the Cold War. And especially today, as Northern Europeans vacation in Southern Europe very summer, and everyone in Europe knows what Eurovision is, and everyone watches the UEFA Champions League Final (Europe's Superbowl), a uniquely continent-wide European pop culture has slowly emerged since WWII, things that are Europeana... a Europe-wide version of Americana or Canadiana.

As for Christianity and democracy: you're forgetting that there's quite a few non-Christian democracies such as Japan, Taiwan, India, and South Korea (S Korea has a sizeable Christian population, but they're less than a third of the total population). In fact the world's largest democracy - India - has a minute Christian population, and is overwhelmingly Hindu with a large Muslim minority. There's also plenty of Christian countries that have experienced one dictatorship after another during the 20th century. Most of the Christian world itself was not democratic 100 years ago, and much of it wasn't democratic 50 years ago either. 100 years ago may sound like a long time ago, but it's actually not. It's very recent when we take all of recorded history into context, and it isn't that many generations ago. We can argue that democracy in the non-Christian world is an influence that arrived from Europe and North America, but it became a lasting influence in the countries I mentioned (Japan, Taiwan, India, etc), and in no way clashed with Buddhism (Japan) or Hinduism (India) or Chinese Traditional Religion (Taiwan, Hong Kong, the latter which is a part of the PRC since 1997, but which continues its democratic tradition as much as possible under the great degree of autonomy afforded to it by the PRC in accordance with international law]). Democracy is a movement that has been spreading, slowly, since the 18th century, and there's no viable evidence to support that it's incompatible with non-Christian cultures. What I see when I look at struggling democracies or pseudo-democracies around the world, is the way United States and Europe once were. These countries will eventually fully democratize as fledgling democratic institutions become more potent and more embedded in their sociopolitical systems over time, and a culture of democracy is ingrained ever increasingly in each successive generation. Even China - while not a democracy - has been slowly moving in that direction since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976. Remember the Tiananmen Square protests? It's only a matter of time, now that China's economy is maturing and people's primary needs are being met (food, water, shelter)...people will only start to demand democratic reforms more and more. And Iran has an underground movement that will - sooner or later - topple the theocratic government that's actually quite unpopular over there. Keep in mind, after all, that the Islamic Revolution is a byproduct of Washington's meddling in Iran to overthrow a democratically elected leader (Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq) in 1953. South Korea and Taiwan were also run by US-supported dictatorships until these two countries overthrew these regimes and became democratic in the 1980s and 1990s (respectively). In fact, in these last 3 examples we have a Christian superpower promoting undemocratic politics in non-Christian countries, two of which (S Korea and Taiwan) overthrew that system and democratized.

 

[Munin]

Munin,

Great discussion, BTW.

On Europe: You're getting somewhere! Of course, national and subnational identities are strong, so it's important not to confuse European identity as a sort of national identity. But it is a very strong regional identity, just as we can say there's a strong regional identity for other geocultural regions such as the Arab world (true, they speak the same language), or Latin America (Latin Americans don't all speak the same language), East Asia (particularly China and its offspring cultures: Japan, Vietnam, Korea), the Afro-Carribean nations (who also don't speak the same language), and the Anglosphere (US, Canada, Australia, NZ, and Britain, the last of which belongs to Europe as well), and so on... I don't buy into Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, but I think that a lot of Americans underestimate the strong collective identity that Europeans do in fact share. Most of Europe, even parts of Europe that are not normally included in the definition of the "West", have more or less experienced the same series of historical and cultural movements that have swept the continent, from the spread of Christianity to the Cold War. And especially today, as Northern Europeans vacation in Southern Europe very summer, and everyone in Europe knows what Eurovision is, and everyone watches the UEFA Champions League Final (Europe's Superbowl), a uniquely continent-wide European pop culture has slowly emerged since WWII, things that are Europeana... a Europe-wide version of Americana or Canadiana.

As for Christianity and democracy: you're forgetting that there's quite a few non-Christian democracies such as Japan, Taiwan, India, and South Korea (S Korea has a sizeable Christian population, but they're less than a third of the total population). In fact the world's largest democracy - India - has a minute Christian population, and is overwhelmingly Hindu with a large Muslim minority. There's also plenty of Christian countries that have experienced one dictatorship after another during the 20th century. Most of the Christian world itself was not democratic 100 years ago, and much of it wasn't democratic 50 years ago either. 100 years ago may sound like a long time ago, but it's actually not. It's very recent when we take all of recorded history into context, and it isn't that many generations ago. We can argue that democracy in the non-Christian world is an influence that arrived from Europe and North America, but it became a lasting influence in the countries I mentioned (Japan, Taiwan, India, etc), and in no way clashed with Buddhism (Japan) or Hinduism (India) or Chinese Traditional Religion (Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the latter which is a part of the PRC since 1997, but which continues its democratic tradition as much as possible under the great degree of autonomy afforded to it by the PRC in accordance with international law]). Democracy is a movement that has been spreading, slowly, since the 18th century, and there's no viable evidence to support that it's incompatible with non-Christian cultures. What I see when I look at struggling democracies or pseudo-democracies around the world, is the way United States and Europe once were. These countries will eventually fully democratize as fledgling democratic institutions become more potent and more embedded in their sociopolitical systems over time, and a culture of democracy is ingrained ever increasingly in each successive generation. Even China - while not a democracy - has been slowly moving in that direction since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976. Remember the Tiananmen Square protests? It's only a matter of time, now that China's economy is maturing and people's primary needs are being met (food, water, shelter)...people will only start to demand democratic reforms more and more. And Iran has an underground movement that will - sooner or later - topple the theocratic government that's actually quite unpopular over there. Keep in mind, after all, that the Islamic Revolution is a byproduct of Washington's meddling in Iran to overthrow a democratically elected leader (Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq) in 1953. South Korea and Taiwan were also run by US-supported dictatorships until these two countries overthrew these regimes and became democratic in the 1980s and 1990s (respectively). In fact, in these last 3 examples we have a Christian superpower promoting undemocratic politics in non-Christian countries, two of which (S Korea and Taiwan) overthrew that system and democratized.

Good post,

about Americans I think they have a good point because at the moment we are nationalistic despite the EU. When the rubber hits the road, European Nations will always tend to put their personal interests ahead: the most recent example showed this very clear, when the economy crashed each Nation had its own measures and its own Nationalistic rescue plan. The EU (because it is also an economic Union which was its initial purpose and the reason for its creation) that could have played a significant role was just set aside like it did not exist. The first sign of Unity was with Gazprom recently, but then it did concern all of us: so it really wasn't that big of a gesture. Really the first signs of real political unity have yet to be seen.

About democracy, it is true what you said other religions don't always stand in the way of modern democracy. But those countries like Japan, South Korea all have been under Western occupation (or huge influence in the case of South Korea) and have been a result of exportation of European values (Europe + US -> the world).

And the other point you point out is also very interesting, about china and Iran. I m very curious if the theory about Industrialization is true: that industrialization/modernization leads to democracy and freedom values on the long run. Like in China were so many people get more individual power through their modernization because they get connected more (internet, transport, ...), get more wealth and more tools to express themselves on a Nationwide scale. After the earthquake it became clear that many schools weren't build with the right materials, immediately people connected with the internet/cellphones/... to mount protests and lately there have been more and more protests.

 

[editec]

If anything, it was the REFORMATION of RELIGION which brought about democracy.

Religion was the MONARCHISTS greatest ally.

The great schism which began in Europe so weakeded the lock that the monarchies had on the people, that eventually the borguoisse gained greater and greater contol over the land, thus granting the people greater freedom.

Modern capitalism owes a great debt to the boubonic plagues which ravaged Europe in the 14-16th centuries , folks.

Had it not been for those disasters, which essantially fractured the social systems in place, European monarchical feudalism might have lasted much longer than it did.

 

[morpheus]

Munin,

Well most of the known world was at some point occupied by either the US or Europe, but most of these places are not yet democratic, let alone that almost none of these places were ruled democratically during their time under US occupation or as European possessions. Furthermore, Thailand -never occupied by the "West"- is a young [albeit slightly troubled] democracy, far more democratic than any of its neighbors. I think that the theory of democracy as a European/American influence is certainly plausible, but in a more indirect way than what you're suggesting. You're arguing that democratic ideals were imported by European and American rule. While I think that this did happen in some places and to some extent (like Japan), this did not happen in most places. Most places were -rather than having democracy imposed on them or imported to them by American and European rule- they were instead inspired by internal democratic/anti-establishment revolutions in the US and Europe by the American and European publics, and I think that South Korea is an example of the latter, not the former. And it certainly wasn't incompatible with non-Christian religions, nor spawned by Christianity wtihin Europe/America itself. Like you said, it'll be interesting to see of the industrialization-democracy theory plays out here. I think for the most part it does, and I think China is showing signs of this, and the same happened in Eastern Europe and the USSR in the late 1980s/early 1990s. And I see a democracy as more of a global movement, rather than some sort of cultral "westernization".

 

[Munin]

I hate to be nitpicking, but South Korea is only democratic because of US post WWII intervention (also the reason why Korea is split in 2 countries), at least that is how I remember it.

 

[mightypeon]

not really, South Korea was a military dictatorship after the US intervention which was turned over into a more democratic system later.
The new "democratic leaders" made clear that they would still follow a pro western course, which was the main reason why the US did not counteract the democracy movement.