Structural and process theories of democratization in Asia

Democratic Transition in Asia

Transition and Structural Theories of Democratization

Important Asian countries participated in the Third Wave of democratization from the 1970s to the 1990s, including South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. In China and Burma, there might have been a democratic revolution in 1989-90 had the ruling regimes not suppressed their own people with utmost brutality. This Third Wave, which according to Samuel Huntington started in Spain and Portugal in 1974-75, spread to Southern and eastern Europe and then to Asia, Africa and Latin America (Haynes 1999, p. 80). It demolished the Soviet Union and the apartheid regime in South Africa, and today seems to be rising yet again in North Africa and the Middle East. These unexpected events have led scholars of history, political science and international relations to delve into the questions of how transitions from authoritarianism to democracy occur and what structural factors seem to make these more likely. Another related set of questions concerns the social, economic and cultural factors that offer the best chance for the consolidation and stabilization of democracies over time.

Given the immense cultural, historical and ethnic diversity of Asia, attempting to come up with a theory that fits all cases is probably a hopeless task. There very likely is a correlation between social and economic development and an eventual transition to democracy, for example, but even then there are exceptions like Singapore -- rich countries that have no democracy at all. Even in countries that have strong civil societies and people power movements like the Philippines, capable of overthrowing dictatorships, there is often a persistent danger of military coups as well as feudal-oligarchic tendencies that limit real democratization. Some countries with strong Confucian values became democratic, while others never did. Some countries that had been within the British Empire developed a strong liberal-democratic political culture but this hardly exists at all in others. There is simply no theoretical consensus on democratization that can encompass this vast, diverse reality that is Asia.

Within transition theory, the structural school emphasizes environmental factors such as the influence of the global economy, social class, poverty and inequality, culture and regionalism. On the other hand, the process school "stresses the role of actors and their strategic choices," especially at the elite levels during the transition and consolidation phases of democratization (Shelley 2005, p. 9). Among the many structural factors that influence democratization, rapid urbanization and industrialization are among the most important, and the correlation between democracy and economic development is one of the strongest in political science" (Bevir 2010, p. 366). As of 2010, 42 of 48 rich countries had democratic governments and "democracy makes…society more efficient in terms of use and mobilizing economic resources" (Mehmetcik 2010, p. 6). This is not to assert that capitalism itself leads to democracy since there are numerous examples of capitalist states like China today or Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in the recent past that were never liberal or democratic. Nor does the existence of a large middle class guarantee the consolidation and stability of a democracy, since there are instances of middle classes supporting authoritarian regimes "when they see it as suiting their economic interests," such as the German middle classes turning against the Weimar Republic during the Great depression (Bevir, p. 366).

Education is another major structural factor in sustaining a stable democracy, which has a far better chance of consolidating in societies with effective public education systems like those in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Even so, Communist and fascist states also had systems of mass education and propaganda that were expressly designed to turn the population away from liberal or democratic values.. Karl Popper declared that the vitality of democracy depended "on a culture of learning and an ethic of justice," which Confucianism certainly has in abundance, so much so that even the Chinese government formally declared itself neo-Confucian in 1994 (Schmiegelow, p. 29). In this instance, however, Confucianism is likely to be deployed as a buttress for the authoritarian state, as in often was in imperial times before 1911.

Western scholars gave little thought to transition to democracy before 1970, since most nations were ruled by Communist, fascist or military-authoritarian regimes with state-directed economic policies. Certainly this was the case with every Asian country at the time, with the exception of India and Japan. Dankwart A. Rustow argued that the transition to democracy should be separated from later stages of consolidation and stabilization. He doubted that high literacy levels, economic development or liberal values were essential for the initial transition, but only for "angry and exhausted elites" facing a "stalemate" after prolonged conflicts to decide to opt for democratization (Anderson 1999, p. 3). At certain key junctures in history, elite groups may decide that democratization is in their interest in order to resolve persistent ethnic, religious or economic conflicts. Elites are not always a united or cohesive ruling class, and their unity may break down due to political or economic contradictions, regionalism or rival ethic and religious loyalties. Such a breakdown between Northern and Southern elites occurred in the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65, just to name one important example. Democratization and compromise can resolve intractable differences like these, especially if they provide "material gains through greater stability" (Bevir p. 365). Another feature of elite transitions to democracy is that they often entail demands for "preservation of capitalist institutions through the public suppression of 'extremists'" (Haynes, 2001, p. 150).

Democratic political culture may not yet exist during the initial transition to democracy, but its development over time is essential to the stability and success of a democracy. Among the values associated with it are: respect for diversity, pluralism, tolerance, a civic culture or civil society with space for NGOs, labor unions and popular organizations, the rule of law, and belief in the political process to resolve disputes rather than violence. Statistical studies in the World Values Survey demonstrate a "strong correlation between the values and attitudes of a democratic culture and the number of years a country has experienced democracy" (Bevir, p. 367). Democracy is a relatively recent development in Asia, and most studies of democratization in the region begin in 1945 since outside of Western Europe and North America it hardly existed before that time. For this reason, many of the countries have not yet had sufficient time to develop a truly democratic political culture compared to the older, more established democracies in Western Europe and North America.

In East Asia particularly, Confucian values of order, hierarchy, duty, self-discipline and collectivism remain quite influential on both the elite and popular levels. When the Asia Barometer Surveys of 2006 and 2007 studied public opinion in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China and South Korea, they found that the majority of people generally valued free speech and popular participation in government much less than their counterparts in most Western nations. Even in highly developed societies like Japan and Hong Kong, for example, only 9-10% placed a high value of freedom of speech, while just 3-4% did in the other countries. In Singapore, 71% of those surveyed placed high value on maintaining order, as did 58% in China and 47% in South Korea, while only about 35% in Japan and Hong Kong valued popular participation in government. In other Asian nations, those surveyed valued this much less than people in most Western nations (Broadbent and Brockman 2009, p. 21).

East Asia: The Confucian Core Countries

Confucianism and Buddhism had a far different impact on politics and the state in Asia than Christianity did in the West. Confucianism emphasized rule by an enlightened elite of scholar-bureaucrats in a hierarchical and authoritarian society, while Buddhism was generally quietist and otherworldly. None of the Asian countries had a tradition of voting, parliamentary rule, or individual rights, and indeed in Confucian philosophy, individualism is seen as selfishness and egotism. For Confucianism, the good of the family, group, society and nation takes precedence over the personal desires of the individual, who is expected to fulfill certain duties and obligations faithfully rather than act merely out of rational, calculated self-interest. On the other hand, in China, Korea and Vietnam, Confucians and Buddhists also recognized the right of the people collectively to revolt against a corrupt or tyrannical government, but this was not the case in Japan. In that country, both Buddhism and Confucianism were stripped of all their "original populist and humanist qualities" and became a prop for the state. Shinto animism was used in the same way, with all "loyalty, unending and self-sacrificing, due to the feudal lord" -- to the shoguns and later the emperor (Broadbent and Brockman, p. 18).

Japan is unique in that the U.S. imposed democracy there after 1945, as it did in West Germany. Thus it "presents few opportunities to study the complex process of interaction between external and internal factors" in the transition to democratization, or the conservative backlash against it once the Cold War was underway in Asia (Shelley, p. 1). In the Triangular Model of Social Movement Analysis (TRIM), Koichi Hasegawa theorized that the secretive and centralized control of Japan by ministers, bureaucrats, the Liberal Democratic Party and giant corporations left very little space for protest movements and NGOs to influence policy compared to the U.S. And other Western democracies (Broadbent and Brockman, p. 17). Tatsuo Arima described how the rise of fascism in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s was influenced by common intellectual currents of the time. Like Germany, it was ruled by elites who laid claim to "scientific and technical modernity but anti-modern values characterized by the 19th Century nostalgia for medieval history and feudal order" (Schmiegelow 1997, p. 30).

China's economy is still growing at 9% per year in spite of the current recession, and at present rates will overtake Japan in 2015 and the U.S. In 2039. For some time, the "center of the global political economy" has been moving to Asia, with consequences for democracy that are unclear (Chan 2008, p. ix). Perhaps the most important political question in the decades ahead will be whether democratization and liberalization will result from this rapid economic development. Dingxin Zhau observed that the suppression of the students and their supporters in China in 1989 was carried out by the military and bureaucratic faction that "saw them as an illegitimate threat to the state," which gained ascendancy over other factions favoring reform and gradual democratization (Broadbent and Brockman, p. 15). Even so, China is now undergoing a "creeping" democratization due to its increasing integration with the global capitalist economy over the last thirty years (Shelley, p. 2).

Baogang He affirmed that China stands in contradiction of transition theory in that it now has a mixed authoritarian and democratic system, with local elections permitted in the rural areas. This gradual transition to democracy has some historical precedent as well, such as Britain and North America in the 17th and 18th Centuries and constitutions that combined monarchy, aristocracy and democracy (He 2007, p. 225). China will not undergo the Solidarity Model of transition to democracy, in which a mass popular uprising forces the government to make the change. Rather, as Minxin Pei put it, the transition will be "silent and evolutionary with characteristics that Westerners will not recognize as 'democratic'" (He, p. 226). This gradual transition may well take decades, as it did in many other countries like Germany, Britain and France.

For decades in East Asia, the authoritarian and state-directed economic model had little in common with liberalism and was not influenced or controlled by large movements of private global capital. Bruce Cumings called this system a "bureaucratic-authoritarian industrializing regime" which in South Korea and other 'Asian Tigers' ensured that the state was thoroughly "insulated from the lower classes and civil society in general. By the 1980s, though, economic growth had led to the expansion of civil society and a new middle class "whose growing political demands had drastically weakened the autonomy and authoritarian character of the state" (Berger 2006, p. 111). According to Chulhee Chan, democratization occurred in South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s because students groups took the lead of a grassroots movement demanding the end of military dictatorship, and this reflected deep cultural traditions in Korean society (Broadbent and Brockman, p. 16). In Taiwan, Michael Hsiao found that social movements also brought an end to decades of dictatorship by the military and Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), although they were not initially accepted within the context of "conservative Chinese culture" (Broadbent and Brockman, p. 16). There was also a persistent ethnic conflict between the mainland Chinese who ruled the island after 1949 and the native Taiwanese majority.

These grassroots movements for democratization only became important factors with the waning of the Cold War in the 1980s and 1990s. From the 1940s to the 1970s, there was very little international investment or activity by multinational corporations in South Korea and Taiwan, especially because these were threatened by nearby Communist nations like China, the Soviet Union and North Korea. Since the first priority of U.S. foreign policy was to "inoculate the countries against Communism," it supported land reform, mercantilist and protectionist policies, and exports, even opening up its own markets to their products without demanding reciprocity (Mahan, 2004, p. 198 Note 31). Significantly, its efforts to promote the exact same types of policies in South Vietnam from 1954-73 proved to be a dismal value in the face of North Vietnam's determination to unify the nation under Communist rule at all costs. In Southeast Asia as a whole, in fact, U.S. foreign policy turned out to be far less successful than it had been in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, even at establishing stable authoritarian regime that could produce the necessary level of social and economic development.

Muslim and Hindu West Asia

Like China, India is an ancient civilization with historical and cultural traditions spanning thousands of years, but politically the two nations nave developed in diametrically opposed directions. India has had a parliamentary government since 1947 that has stood the test of time and weathered many internal and external crises. It has a vibrant media, numerous competitive political parties and an independent judiciary that generally protects individual rights, none of which have ever existed in China. In part, the distinction is explained by profound differences each nation experienced during the era of colonialism. Britain allowed local elections in India in 1884 and provincial elections in 1892, while the 1935 Government of India Act created "a federal a representative system of government that was in turn to provide much of the basis for independent India's constitution" (Randall 1997, p. 196).

From its inception in the 1880s, the Indian National Congress and its Western-educated leaders were committed to liberal and democratic values. This was hardly true of the Nationalists and Communists in China, and yet the Congress Party ruled India most of the time after its independence rather than some authoritarian movement of the far Right or Left. Barrington Moore wrote in Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship that the role of the relatively weak urban bourgeoisie in charge of the Congress Party in allying with the peasants against British colonialism was the key factor in democratization. In this case, the feudal and aristocratic landholders were tied to the British, so a liberal, nationalist bourgeoisie could take power by appealing to the rural masses, just as Gandhi had always insisted. India's situation was unlike that of Germany and Japan, in which the feudal elite controlled the military and the state, dominating the capitalist class as well as the peasants and workers. It was also quite different from Russia and China in which a Communist movement successfully organized the peasants against the traditional elites (Randall, p. 202).

India is also the second-largest Muslim nation in the world after Indonesia, and has numerous other religious, linguistic and ethic groups besides Hindus, which makes a secular state essential in order to hold the nation together, even if very precariously at times. Barrington Moore asserted that democracy in India was "helping to obstruct the revolutionary break with the past needed to set the country on the road to thoroughgoing economic and social modernization" (Randall, p. 215). Its elitism, corruption, caste system, oppression of women and Muslims were all the result of much of the old order being carried forward to the present after independence. On the other hand, China experienced a huge famine during its Great Leap Forward in which 17-30 million peasants died, which is something that never would have been permitted in democratic India.

Pakistan has been under military rule for most of its history since partition from India in 1947. It was a very weak tradition of liberalism, democracy and civil society, particularly in the face of the autonomous power of the army and the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). In fact, the latter have been running their own military and foreign policies in Kashmir and Afghanistan largely independent of civilian control. Socially and economically, Pakistan is still controlled by feudal landholding elites, with a very small capitalist class and significant influence by the Islamic clergy over the impoverished masses. It has never had land reform, and the elite groups dominate industry, education, the military and political parties (Bandyopadhyaya 2004, p. 121). Throughout the Cold War and of course during the War on Terror, the U.S. was firmly allied with the Pakistani military and intelligence services and provided them with considerable assistance, while hardly ever pressing the issue of democratization or civilian rule. Pakistan has never managed to "institutionalize democracy" in it history, and the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who had already been removed from office in 1996 because of a coup, seems to underscore the reality that its future there is problematic at best (Schmiegelow, p. 36).

Conclusions

Transitions to democracy can occur because of shifts at the elite level or as a result of populist and revolutionary movements from below. They can be gradual or very sudden and dramatic, and there are examples of all of these in Asia over the past thirty years. Once established, a democracy will have the best chance of succeeding if it maintains a high level of social and economic development, effective mass education, space for NGOs and civil society and a democratic culture. Another very important factor that keeps recurring in Asia is the necessity for land reform and abolition of the old feudal-oligarchic order, clearing the way for democracy and economic development. Countries that have not done this, like Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand seem to have very limited democracies that are always in danger of being overthrown as well as inhibited economic development. Correlation is not causation, of course, and there are no absolute guarantees or precise recipes in carrying out a democratic transition and consolidation. At best, these can only be general rules of thumb. In addition, there are some countries like Burma and Pakistan, whether because of history, culture or social structure seem incapable of making the transition at all.

REFERENCE LIST

Anderson, L., ed., 1999. Transitions to Democracy. Columbia University Press.

Bandyopadhyaya, J., 2004. A General Theory of Foreign Policy. New Dehli: Allied Publishers.

Berger, M.T., 2006. "The Neo-Liberal Ascendancy in East Asia: Geo-Politics, Development Theory and the End of the Authoritarian Development State in South Korea" in Plehwe, D. et al., eds. Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique, pp. 105-19.

Bevir, M., 2010. Encyclopedia of Political Theory. SAGE Publications, Inc.

Bridges, B. And Ho, L-S. eds. Public Governance in Asia and the Limits of Electoral Democracy. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Broadbent, J. And V. Brockman, 2009. East Asian Social Movements: Power, Protest and Change in a Dynamic Region. Springer Service and Business Media.

Chan, S., 2008. China, the U.S., and the Power Transition Theory: A Critique. Routledge.

Eldridge, P.J., 2002. The Politics of Human Rights in Southeast Asia. Routledge.

Haynes, J., 2001. Democracy in the Developing World: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Polity Press.

He, B., 2007. Rural Democracy in China: The Role of Village Elections. Palgrave MacMillan.

Kuhata, E.M. et al., eds. 2008. Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis. Stanford University Press.

Mahan, J.E., 2004. Mobile Capital and Latin American Development. Pennsylvania State University Press.

Mehemetcik, H., 2010. The Relationship between Democracy and Economic Growth: An Empirical Study of Post-Communist Transition. GRIN Verlag.

Randall, V., 1997. "Why Have the Political Trajectories of China and India Been Different?" In Potter, D. et al., eds. Democratization. The Open University Press, pp. 195-218.

Schmiegelow, M., ed., 1997. Democracy in Asia. St. Martin's Press.

Shelley, B., 2005. Democratic Development in East Asia. Routledge.