Towards Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia

by Daniel A. Bell, David Martin Jones, Kanishka Jayasuriya

This book challenges the view that liberal democracy is the inevitable outcome of economic modernization. Focusing on the high-performing Asian economies, it argues that contemporary political systems are legitimated by the values of hierarchy, familism and harmony, by contrast with the Western understanding of political liberalism and the communicatory democracy it facilitates.

197 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1995

About the author

Daniel A. Bell is Chair Professor of the Schwarzman Scholar Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing and director of the Berggruen Institute of Philosophy and Culture. He was born in Montreal, educated at McGill and Oxford, has taught in Singapore and Hong Kong, and has held research fellowships at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values and Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.