Gordon P. Means is professor emeritus of political science at McMaster University in Canada and the author of Malaysian Politics: The Second Generation (1991). The present essay is a revised version of a paper presented in Washington, D.C., at a March 1996 conference on “Democracy in East Asia” sponsored by the International Forum for Democratic Studies and the Japan Institute of International Affairs.
"Asian and non-Asian authors debate the desirability of democracy in East Asia… The two editors… do an excellent job introducing the issues, ideas, and approaches of the fifteen authors."—Foreign Affairs
