Taking a comparative approach, Alan T. Wood traces the evolution of democracy from its origins in prehistoric times and describes democratic growth in thirteen Asian countries from Japan in East Asia to Pakistan in South Asia and examines key issues such as: * How does the democratic experience in Asia, in countries with unique and totalitarian political traditions, compare with democracies worldwide? * Is the aspiration to freedom universal or is it a product of western ideas and institutions?
This second edition of this widely used text covers the last two centuries of Indian history, concluding with an epilogue written from the perspective of the 1990s. It thematically and analytically discusses the emergence of India as one of the world's largest democracies and one of the most stable of the states to emerge from the experience of colonialism. The foundations of this rare phenomenon in either Asia or Africa are seen in India's society, the ideas and beliefs of her people, and the institutions of government and politics which have developed on the subcontinent, in a process of interaction between what was indigenous to India and the many external influences brought to bear on the country by economic, political, and ideological contact with the Western world. Modern scholarship has shown how diverse and complex was India's socio-economic and political development; and this theme runs through the study which eschews any simple understanding of India's politicaldevelopment as a clash between `imperialism' and 'nationalism', or the making of a new nation. The complexity reflects many of the continuing ambiguities and inequalities in the subcontinent's life and suggests why the structures of the state, and indeed the very nature of the Indian nation, are now being questioned, often with unprecedented public violence. India's dilemmas are not hers alone: they also raise economic, political, and social issues of profound significance throughout the contemporary world.
Predicts that East Asia, with its remarkable diversity of political regimes, economies, and religions, would likely be the critical arena in the global struggle for democracy, a prediction that has proven prescient. This title offers a treatment of the political landscape in both Northeast and Southeast Asia.
East Asian democracies are in trouble, their legitimacy threatened by poor policy performance and undermined by nostalgia for the progrowth, soft-authoritarian regimes of the past. Yet citizens throughout the region value freedom, reject authoritarian alternatives, and believe in democracy. This book is the first to report the results of a large-scale survey-research project, the East Asian Barometer, in which eight research teams conducted national-sample surveys in five new democracies (Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Mongolia), one established democracy (Japan), and two nondemocracies (China and Hong Kong) in order to assess the prospects for democratic consolidation. The findings present a definitive account of the way in which East Asians understand their governments and their roles as citizens. Contributors use their expert local knowledge to analyze responses from a set of core questions, revealing both common patterns and national characteristics in citizens' views of democracy. They explore sources of divergence and convergence in attitudes within and across nations. The findings are sobering. Japanese citizens are disillusioned. The region's new democracies have yet to prove themselves, and citizens in authoritarian China assess their regime's democratic performance relatively favorably. The contributors to this volume contradict the claim that democratic governance is incompatible with East Asian cultures but counsel against complacency toward the fate of democracy in the region. While many forces affect democratic consolidation, popular attitudes are a crucial factor. This book shows how and why skepticism and frustration are the ruling sentiments among today's East Asians.
This book argues that democratization is inherently international: states democratize through a process of socialization to a liberal-rational global culture. This can clearly be seen in Taiwan and Thailand, where the elites and attentive public now accept democracy as universally valid. But in China, the ruling communist party resists democratization, in part because its leaders believe it would lead to China's "permanent decentering" in world history. As China's power increases, the party could begin restructuring global culture by inspiring actors in other Asian countries to uphold or restore authoritarian rule.
Taking a comparative approach, Alan T. Wood traces the evolution of democracy from its origins in prehistoric times and describes democratic growth in thirteen Asian countries from Japan in East Asia to Pakistan in South Asia and examines key issues such as: * How does the democratic experience in Asia, in countries with unique and totalitarian political traditions, compare with democracies worldwide? * Is the aspiration to freedom universal or is it a product of western ideas and institutions?
During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted U.S. racism in order to undermine the credibility of U.S. democracy. In response, incorporating racial and ethnic minorities in order to affirm that America worked to ensure the rights of all and was superior to communist countries became a national imperative. In Citizens of Asian America, Cindy I-Fen Cheng explores how Asian Americans figured in this effort to shape the credibility of American democracy, even while the perceived “foreignness” of Asian Americans cast them as likely alien subversives whose activities needed monitoring following the communist revolution in China and the outbreak of the Korean War. While histories of international politics and U.S. race relations during the Cold War have largely overlooked the significance of Asian Americans, Cheng challenges the black-white focus of the existing historiography. She highlights how Asian Americans made use of the government’s desire to be leader of the “free world” by advocating for civil rights reforms, such as housing integration, increased professional opportunities, and freedom from political persecution. Further, Cheng examines the liberalization of immigration policies, which worked not only to increase the civil rights of Asian Americans but also to improve the nation’s ties with Asian countries, providing an opportunity for the U.S. government to broadcast, on a global scale, the freedom and opportunity that American society could offer. Cindy I-Fen Cheng is Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In the Nation of Newcomers series
Close attention to the writings of the founding fathers of the Republic of China on Taiwan shows that democracy is indeed compatible with Chinese culture. Conceptions of Chinese Democracy provides a coherent and critical introduction to the democratic thought of three fathers of modern Taiwan—Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Ching-kuo—in a way that is accessible and grounded in broader traditions of political theory. David J. Lorenzo’s comparative study allows the reader to understand the leaders’ democratic conceptions and highlights important contradictions, strengths, and weaknesses that are central to any discussion of Chinese culture and democratic theory. Lorenzo further considers the influence of their writings on political theorists, democracy advocates, and activists on mainland China. Students of political science and theory, democratization, and Chinese culture and history will benefit from the book's substantive discussions of democracy, and scholars and specialists will appreciate the larger arguments about the influence of these ideas and their transmission through time.
A highly original and convincing book by one of our best-informed China specialists, offering an entirely new perspective on the nature of democracy as the Chinese practice it—and, incidentally, as we practice it too. What do the Chinese mean by the word “democracy”? When they say that their political system is “democratic,” does this mean that they share our ideas about liberty, civil rights, and self government? With the recent improvement in relations between China and the West, such questions are no longer merely academic. They are basic to an understanding of the Chinese people and their state, both now and in the future. In Chinese Democracy, Andrew J. Nathan tackles these in issues in depth, drawing upon much fresh and unfamiliar material. He begins with a vivid history of the short-lived democracy movement of 1978-81, where groups of young people in a number of Chinese cities started issuing outspoken publications and putting up posters detailing their complaints and opinions. Apparently condoned at first by the post-Mao regime, the movement flourished; then it was crushed, its leaders tried and jailed. With quotes from many of the participants and their works, Nathan constructs—for the first time—a poignant picture of the burst of liberal activity, at the same time showing how distinctly Chinese it was and how the roots of its failure lay as much in history as in current political necessity. To demonstrate this, Nathan investigates the nature of the democratic tradition in China, tracing it back to the close of the imperial era at the end of the nineteenth century and the works of Liang Qichao, the country’s most brilliant journalist and most influential modern political thinker. We see how Liang deeply influenced Mao Zedong, and how conflicts between party dictatorship and popular participation, between bureaucratic authority and individual rights, between Mao’s harsh version of democracy and Deng Xiaoping’s more liberal one, remain to this day unresolved and potentially dangerous. For example, as Nathan shows, there was apparently a serious move toward liberalization projected on the highest government levels in the years after Mao’s death, yet the move failed. In a tour de force of scholarship, Nathan shows through an extended study of the many Chinese constitutions put force since the 1911 Revolution that individual rights have always been forced to give away to the needs and ambitions of the state. Democracy in China has traditionally been admired mainly for what it can help accomplish, not for any human rights it may embody. Finally, making use of scores of interviews with émigrés from the mainland, the author analyzes the extraordinary role played by the press in forming public attitudes in China, and then goes on to show what happened in 1980 when the authorities for the first time conducted direct elections to the county-level people’s congresses. It was a splendid shambles. Much of this story has never been told before.
