Diverse routes to democracy : an introduction / Lynn T. White III -- South Korean democracy in light of Taiwan / Erik Mobrand -- Taiwan's democratization and mainland China's future / Shelley Rigger -- Strategic hypocrisy : sovereignty, legitimacy, and commerce in archipelagic Southeast Asia / Justin V. Hastings -- Democracy and inequality in Thailand : the rise of the red shirts / Erik Martínez Kuhonta -- The local factor in China's intra-party democracy / Cheng Li -- Why did China's reform start from the provinces? : de facto federalism and its limits / Yongnian Zheng and Cuiwen Weng -- Law and democracy in China : a complex relationship / Jacques deLisle -- Suing the government in China / Neysun A. Mahboubi -- Petitioning as policy making : Chinese rural tax reform / Jing Chen -- The fragmented state in action : the production and governance of art districts in Beijing / Yue Zhang -- China invests overseas : does the strong state help China's outbound investment? / Min Ye -- All the news, all the politics : sophisticated propaganda in capitalist-authoritarian China / Guoguang Wu -- Chinese nationalism reconsidered, or, A case for historicising the study of Chinese politics / Ja Ian Chong -- How the Internet is changing China / Kate Xiao Zhou with Stephen Zierak.
Summary:
"Rapid economic pluralization in East Asia has empowered local and medial groups, and with this change comes the need to radically rethink usual notions regarding the ways in which 'democracies' emerge or 'citizens' gain more power. This book demonstrates how careful examinations of current developments in East Asia indicate a need for major expansion of our understandings of democracy and democratization, and challenges the traditional way in which political regimes are conceived and labelled. Further, it shows from Asian experiences that democracy and its precursors come in more forms than most liberals have yet imagined. In reviewing the experiences of states across East Asia, this book shows that actual democracies and ostensible democratizations in Asia are less like those in the West than the surprisingly consensual standard political science of democratization suggests. It first examines the extreme variation of democracy's meaning in many Asian states that hold contested elections (South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand), and in turn shifts its attention to China. It analyses a range of grassroots forces driving political change in the PRC, and uncovers both accelerators and brakes on China's political reform process. Importantly, the contributors show that models for China's political future exist both outside the PRC, including in other East Asian states, and within China, in localities and sectors that already are pushing the boundaries of the powerful, but no longer all-powerful, PRC party-state"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.