Is there an ''Asian Model'' of Democracy?

Convergence on an identifiable ''Asian model'' of electoral democracy.

Context: Transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy 80s, 90s.


Instituional reforms to elections, parliaments, and parteis via deliberate ''political engineering''
This turn towards majoritarian democracy. Increasingly majoritarian electoral systems, laws favoring the development of aggregative parties and constraints on the enfranchisement of ethnic or ergional minorities.

Efficient instititutions that deliver clear parliamentary majorities and distinct policy alternatives. Reforme in side of efficiency over representation. An attempt to engineer political stability through the desing of democratic institutions.


JAPAN

MMM in 1994
Three fifths of all seats chosen from single-member districts

SOUTH KOREA

MMM in 1963. Not proportional until 2004
273 seats, 243 are elected from single-member constituencies by a plurality formula
56 are chosen from national constituency

PHILIPINES

MMM in 2004
80% of the 250 House of Representatives seats elected from single member districts - plurally formula
20% from national list

TAIWAN
MMM in 1992
2/3 Parliament elected by plurality rules and the remainder form a national list

THAILAND
MMM in 1997
80% Parliament's 500 seats from local constituencies and 20% from a national party list


Promote the development of a two-party system responsive to the itnerest of the median voter.
Seeks encourage voters and candidates to focus more on party politcy positions regardin national issues. Develop coordinated party-centres electoral strategies, parties began to differentiate themselves in terms of their policy platforms.

Southeast Asia
Semidemocracies, the electoral system remain largely unchanged since independence.
Malaysa got a Westmister system with plurality elections but constituency boundaries are gerrymandered to favor the Malay community, the electoral commission is a compliant servant of the government. Government has won every election since independence  Government party controle the majoritys required to amend the constitution. Similar situation in Singapore.

Disproportional rates after electoral reforms had been introduced were considerably higher than previous levels.


Political parties
Three strategies of such 'party engineering':

-Those that try to promote the development of a national party systems and hamper the growth of regional, local or secessionist parties
-Those that attempt to control, influence or restrict the number of parties
-Those that seek to strengthen party organizations by building stable party systems from the top down.

In Indonesia national parties are promoting while separatist parties are resisted. 141 applied to contest the 1999 elections, only 48 were approved to run. Need 5% of votes or 3% of seats. All parties were requried to demosntrate that they had a national support base as precondition, it is also require each party to establish branches in at least one third of Indonesia's 27 provinces and in more than half the districts or municipalities within these provinces. (Regional parties were ven banned from competing in elections to the regional assemblies, only national level parties were permitted).

In Thailand ambititous 1997 constitutional reforms, promoting political aggregation and reducing party fragmentation. Parties need to show they have at least 5000 members within 6 months of being registered.

It is not permited stand as independent in Indonesia and Thailand. Systemic and educative role of parties is emphasidez in the new legislation governing party registration and party leaders are given significant power in terms of candidate selection and replacement.

New party primaries in Korea.

Strengthen parties internal control over their members to maintain greater organziational chesiveness and stability and restrict the capacity of parliamentarians to change parties. Politicians who switch parties to help bring down a government usually cannot legally contest the forthcoming election.

Technical electoral barriers such as vote thresholds.(Effective parties dramatically decline almost 50% in Thailand).

In these countries build a consolidate party system is seen as an essential step in building a consolidate democracy. But restrictions on party fragmentation become restrictions on democracy-


Conclusion

Asian system is based on hegemonic, one-party rule underpinned by communal values of family solidarity and personal discipline.

It is a system of grand irony, moving closer to the Anglo-American model of two party democracy.

The main exceptions are Indonesia and the Philippines where parties has increased. We have to consider the high levels of social diversity combined with the fact that both have only recently emerged frome extended authoritarian rule in which the composition and number of parties were controlled from above.

Why is the asian system like this?

-Asian values: harmonious,bance, stable...
-Political changes that have taken place across the region are an all-too-familiar case of self interested politicians seeking to ensure their electoral prospects by rejigging political rules in their favor.
-Asia's distinctive democratic development heralds a genuinely new form of political architecture in the region (compromise between mass constituents and elite politicans).  Outcome of successive trafe-offs between demands for reform from below with the perennial interests of incumbents from above.


Convergent patterns of political reform across the region have seen the development of what appears to be an identigiable Asian approach to the desing of democratic institutions, making the outcomes of democratization in the Asia-Pacific region quite distinctive by world standars. The increasing shift towarrd distinctively majoritarian mixed-member electoral systems and embryonic two-party systems in what were previously either one-party autocracies or unstable multiparty democracies is perhaps the most compelling evidence for this emerging Asian model of electoral democracy.

Democratization and Electoral Reform in the Asia-Pacific Region
Is there an ''Asian Model'' of Democracy?
Benjamin Reilly
Australian National University, Canberra
Comparative Political Studies
Volume 40 Number 11
November 2007