JHU SAIS Southeast Asia Studies and the US-Korea Institute at SAIS Publish New Book on the State of Democracy in Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand

The volume Incomplete Democracy in the Asia-Pacific: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand (Palgrave Macmillan 2014) focuses on mass attitudes and behaviors and the ways in which these popular attitudes enable continued elite control of Asian democracies. This book shows that, even with substantial variations, the chronic problem of democracy in Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand has been the lack of mobilized demand for good governance.

In Incomplete Democracies in the Asia-pacific. Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand, Karl D. Jackson, CV Starr Distinguished Professor and Director Asian Studies and Southeast Asia Studies Program at SAIS, Jae H. Ku, Director, U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS, and Giovanna Maria Dora Dore, Visiting Scholar in the Southeast Asia Studies Program at SAIS show that a substantial length of the road must still be travelled before democracy becomes complete and fully consolidated across Asian countries.

The authors explore what it is about the nature of public opinion and the process of day-to-day participation that has made electoral democracies in Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand vulnerable to legitimacy crises occasioned by the expansion of popular participation. The authors analyze the relative absence of participation between elections, the continued influence of traditional social structure, the incomplete emergence of civil society organizations, citizens’ views of democracy and authoritarianism, and the chronic weakness of political parties to understand more fully what is going on beneath the surface and beyond the headlines.

Incomplete Democracies in the Asia-Pacific: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand is the first book emerging from the SAIS Asia Democracy Project, a pioneering research initiative on the role played by the attitudes and behaviors of ordinary people in the democratization process. The volume is informed by data from two original, multi-country opinion surveys designed and implemented by the SAIS Southeast Asia Studies Program in 2000 and 2011, and financed by the US-Korea Institute at SAIS.