What Democracy Can Do for East Asia

Issue Date January 2002
Volume 13
Issue 1
Page Numbers 113-126
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The implicit social bargain that carried many East Asian countries through the Cold War has lost its currency. If the peoples of this region are to secure the blessings of peace, liberty, and prosperity in the century ahead, they will need to have a new and explicitly democratic bargain working for them.

About the Author

Hilton L. Root has been an advisor on East Asia to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Treasury Department. Formerly a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Milken Institute, he is the author of numerous articles and six books, including Small Countries, Big Lessons: Governance and the Rise of Asia (1996).

View all work by Hilton L. Root

Further Reading

Volume 16, Issue 2

Challenge and Change in East Asia: Is Democracy the Only Game in Town?

In three of the six democracies surveyed by the East Asia Barometer, a majority of respondents prefer democracy to its alternatives. In the other three, however, a lingering nostalgia for…

Volume 8, Issue 2

Hong Kong, Singapore, and “Asian Values”

The Editors’ introduction to “Hong Kong, Singapore, and ‘Asian Values.'”

Volume 27, Issue 2

The Puzzle of the Chinese Middle Class

Seymour Martin Lipset argued that economic development would enlarge the middle class, and that the middle class would support democracy. To what extent will this general proposition prove true of China?