Abstract

The passage of the political reform act made the righteous consciousness and behavior of people more important for the establishment of clean political climate in the future. The problems of unhealthy and weak citizenship and behavior of people that had been intertwined with the problems of the structural and systemized irrationality in politics are identified as follows: the problems of requesting as well as receiving the monetary and treating offers, abstention from voting, spreading unrooted negative propaganda, voting based on regional relationship with the candidates and finally, the paid political canvassers and the bogus audiences at campaigning places. The psychological mechanisms involved in these problems are diverse: the fact that in our collectivistic culture, the morality judgment of behavior often relies on how the majority thinks and behaves, the confusion of the 「bribery」with「etiquetteㆍsincerityㆍrespect」, the lowing of voting efficacy, the increase in political helplessness, and finally the misled political identification based on regional relationship with the candidates. It is proposed that to further more active and mature citizenship and political behaviors of people, the expansion and activation of civil movement for clean election and politics, the education and the political socialization of children from the early ages through role playing in fair school elections and finally, more support for the research on political behaviors and attitudes are needed.