Western theorists have long suggested that economic development transforms society in complex ways that will inevitably transition traditional autocracies into modern democracies. But this postulate may not accord with the politically diverse outcomes that we see in Asia after some five decades of peaceful economic development. In this working paper, we propose a new framework of “social resilience” that combines four social characteristics expected to support democratic regime resilience and progressive development over time. We divide 18 Asian regimes into four types and tabulate their social resilience profiles. A comparison reveals that Asia’s most successful democracies display strength in all social resilience parameters, as we supposed might be the case. The single best predictor of democratic success among our four social resilience parameters was not level of economic development, but civil society development, which generally corresponds with regime type on the autocracy–democracy spectrum. These results may thus offer new insights into the social requisites of democracy and, together with historical and institutional factors, help explain the actual record of democratic development in Asia.
Related research: Democratic and Social Resilience – A Critical Link
CAPRI aims to continue the discussion on this important topic. We will soon be inviting comments on this paper and submissions for similar working papers.
Author
David Arase
Resident Professor of International Politics, the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Hopkins-Nanjing Center
Biography
David Arase is a resident professor of international politics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Hopkins-Nanjing Center in Nanjing, China (2012–present). Prior to this, he was a professor of politics at Pomona College, Claremont, CA, where he began as an assistant professor in 1989. He was a Lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London from 1994 to 1995. He earned a BA from Cornell University (1977), an MA at Johns Hopkins SAIS (1982), and a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley (1989). Prof. Arase’s research areas include Indo-Pacific security, comparative foreign policy (special focus on China and Japan), Sino-US relations, international development (foreign aid), and comparative Asian politics. He has conducted resident research at National Chengchi University (Taiwan, 2022–2023), Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong (2020–2022), several times at ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute (Singapore, since 2015), and the National Institute of Defense Studies (Tokyo, 2014). David is the author of Buying Power: The Political Economy of Japan’s Foreign Aid (Lynne Rienner, 1995). He is editor or coeditor and chapter author of six volumes, including most recently The US-Japan Alliance: Balancing Soft and Hard Power in East Asia (Routledge-Nissan Institute, 2010), which was awarded the 2011 Ohira Memorial Foundation (Tokyo) Special Prize; The Rise of China: Implications for East Asian Order (Palgrave, 2016); Routledge Handbook of Africa-Asia Relations (Routledge, 2018); and The Belt and Road Initiative in Asia, Africa, and Europe (Routledge, 2023). David has also authored numerous journal articles, book chapters, and media commentaries addressing his research interests.
