From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia

by Dan Slater

By examining twelve cases in what we call developmental Asia, we have shown how democracy can both inspire universal aspiration and foment universal trepidation. The aspiration comes from democracy’s promise to contribute to human freedom and flourishing. The trepidation comes from democracy’s intrinsic disruptive potential. By unleashing competitive passions into the public square, it can all too easily deteriorate into gridlock, polarization, and chaos. Nothing about these dueling aspirations and trepidations is uniquely Western or Eastern, however; nothing about them is either modern or ancient. Democracy’s fate in the remainder of the twenty-first century, therefore, hinges on the same factors and forces that have determined its fate in every century until now. Either democracy finds a way to speak to the eternal questions of peace and prosperity, or autocrats will eventually subdue it into silence, and find ample public support for their decisions to do so.