Democracy, Security, and Regionalism in Asia

• http://asiapolicy.nbr.org • asia policy, number 10 (july 2010), 189–95 Benjamin Reilly Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 u 256 pp. Yun-han Chu, Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, and Doh Chull Shin, eds. How East Asians View Democracy New York: Columbia University Press, 2008 u 328 pp. Donald K. Emmerson, ed. Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia Stanford: Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, 2008 u 422 pp. review essay Democracy, Security, and Regionalism in Asia Daniel Lynch© The National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle, Washington [ 190 ] asia policy Democracy, Security, and Regionalism in Asia Daniel Lynch One consequence of the “great recession” is that faith in a cardinal verity of the past fifteen years—China’s inexorable rise—is under challenge. Economic data published throughout 2009 seemed to suggest that China’s rise relative to the United States would accelerate. By early 2010, however, analysts were warning that the credit boom Beijing launched to mitigate the loss of export markets was transmogrifying into a dangerous property bubble. Some predicted that even if this bubble were contained, China could face many years of stagflation. If this scenario developed, China’s rise would proceed but at a substantially slower pace. Asia’s future has suddenly become significantly cloudier with uncertainty. The three stimulating books reviewed in this essay do not focus primarily on China; and all were published prior to the great recession. But the books are extremelyvaluableinhelpingareadertothinkthroughthepossibleimplications of differing China scenarios for the internal governing arrangements of countries throughout Asia. Though significantly different in focus, the books all assess the degree to which democracy and good governance (not always seen as identical) influence institutional design or public demands in Asian states as they continue their quest for development—broadly defined to include economic advancement as well as effective, just, and clean government. In Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific, Benjamin Reilly studies fourteen democratic, semi-democratic, or democratizing states in the less-developed corners of Asia and the Pacific. His core finding is that “for both self-serving and national-interest reasons, [elites] consistently sought to foster aggregative and centrist political parties and broad-based coalition governments” as they strove to construct or consolidate democracy, “while actively discouraging sectional or minority groups from forging their own political parties” (p. 96). Such centripetal techniques are expected to be useful for state elites anywhere in trying to reshape (or “engineer”) ethnically diverse societies so thatdevelopmentcanbefacilitated.ButReillyshowshowAsia-Pacificstatesare even more alacritous than others in using such techniques. “There is indeed an emerging Asian model of democracy—but one that has little relationship with the political restrictions advocated by the region’s now-retired autocrats”—the daniel lynch is Associate Professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He can be reached at . [ 191 ] review essay • democracy, security, and regionalism in asia proponents of “Asian values.” Instead, “in something of a grand irony, the political systems of most new Asia-Pacific democracies are not only becoming more consolidated, but in many cases are actually moving closer to the AngloAmerican model of two party democracy” (p. 194). This is a strikingly counterintuitive and challenging claim that some readers may find hard to accept. Students of Thailand, for example, might question how Reilly’s hypothesis could account for the processes by which Thaksin Shinawatra’s centripetal techniques ended up exacerbating the divisions in Thai society and politics (as well as creating new divisions). To some extent, Reilly inoculates himself against such criticisms by noting that any large comparison will inevitably require some sacrifice of detail. Readers may be sympathetic to this claim because the book is undeniably learned and stimulating. But the Thailand case suggests the possibility that a prior intellectual commitment to end-of-history conceptions may be influencing, to some degree, Reilly’s interpretation of the evidence. The real value of Reilly’s work is his elucidation of how elites in these varied Asia-Pacific states are all, to varying degrees, attempting centripetal engineering, even if stubborn social realities sometimes cause their endeavors to fail. The states that Reilly studies...