Liberal democracy as the end of history

Western theories versus Eastern Asian realities

Bibliographic Data

ID13021158
AuthorsDoh Chull Shin (0000-0003-3645-1535, University of California, Irvine, corresponding author), Hannah June Kim (0000-0002-8198-8596, University of California, Irvine)
Year2016
Volume2
Issue2
Pages133-153
Publication date2016-10-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Journal of Comparative Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2057-8911 • E-ISSN: 2057-892X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/2057891116673745
OpenAlexW2545793458
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited56

A growing number of political scientists have recently advocated the theses that democracy has emerged as a universal value and that it is also becoming the universally preferred system of government. Do most people in East Asia prefer democracy to nondemocratic systems, as advocates of these Western theses claim? Do they embrace liberal democracy as the most preferred system as they become socioeconomically modernized and culturally liberalized? To address these questions, we first propose a typology of privately concealed political system preferences as a new conceptual tool in order to ascertain their types and subtypes without using the word “democracy”. By means of this typology, we analyze the third wave of the Asian Barometer Survey conducted in 12 democratic and nondemocratic countries. The analysis reveals that a hybrid system, not liberal democracy, is the most preferred system even among the culturally liberalized and socioeconomically modernized segments of the East Asian population. Our results show that the increasingly popular theses of universal and liberal democratization serve merely in East Asia as prodemocracy rhetoric, not as theoretically meaningful propositions

Asian values · China · Democracy · Democratization · Development economics · East Asia · Economics · Government (linguistics · Liberal democracy · Political economy · Political science · Political system · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Typology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies