The impact of economic development under dictatorship on democratization remains an unresolved puzzle among scholars and policy makers. In From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia, Dan Slater and Joseph Wong examine this question for the region they describe as “developmental Asia,” a region defined in terms of its political economy. The book comprises 12 cases in Southeast and Northeast Asia that successfully pursued a national developmental model, witnessing impressive economic growth and poverty reduction. However, the region also presents contradictory evidence in the debate about the developmentalism–democratization nexus. Among the 12 cases examined in From Development to Democracy, only 6 authoritarian regimes were open to experimenting with democratic concessions. In Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, democratization resulted in strong and consolidated democracies, whereas in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Thailand democracy remained incomplete or prematurely abandoned. The remaining six cases—Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam—avoided democratization altogether.
The main empirical contribution of From Development to Democracy is a historical-comparative analysis of different sequences of economic development and their impact on dictatorship and democracy in these 12 Asian cases. The book has 10 chapters, including an introduction to Slater and Wong’s theory of democracy through strength. Chapter 2 identifies four development clusters: developmental statism (Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea); developmental Britannia (Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong); developmental militarism (Burma/Myanmar, Indonesia, and Thailand); and developmental socialism (China, Vietnam, and Cambodia). Chapters 3–6 present single case studies of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Mainland China until 1989, whereas chapters 7–9 offer shorter case studies of Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as post-Tiananmen China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The book closes with a summary and discussion of its implications for the broader field of democratization studies.
Although each case study in From Development to Democracy offers valuable insights, the book’s main contribution lies in its conceptual and theoretical analysis. Solidly anchored in both comparative politics and political economy, it challenges the causal assumption advanced by modernization theory and distributive conflict models regarding the relationship between development and democracy in Asia: the idea that autocracies concede to democratic pressure because they are weak. On the contrary, one of the book’s key claims is that the most common pathway to democracy in “developmental Asia” is “democracy through strength.” As the authors explain, in Asia “democratic reforms commenced when authoritarian elites felt considerable victory confidence and stability confidence, and not when they were in a death spiral of political crisis and imminent collapse” (p. 10). According to their causal logic, stable and substantive democracies can evolve from strong authoritarian regimes, whereas weak authoritarianism is the “worst of all worlds” (p. 296).
Successful national development strengthens authoritarian rule, and authoritarian strength is a necessary but not sufficient condition for democratization through strength and a strong democracy. Why is that? The authors argue that successful development strengthens three key components of the political order in nondemocratic Asia: a bureaucratic state apparatus, enduring and dominant political organizations, and a cohesive coercive apparatus. With regard to the specific mode of development and its link to authoritarian strength, Slater and Wong differentiate four developmental clusters: first, a Northeast Asian cluster of developmental statist cases (Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea) that had strong authoritarian regimes and high levels of development, and second, a Southeast Asian cluster (Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar) characterized by developmental militarism, with intermediate levels of authoritarian strength and development when democratization began. In contrast, the autocratic rulers in the third cluster, known as developmental Britannia (Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia), and the fourth cluster, referred to as developmental socialism (China, Cambodia, and Vietnam), avoided democratization. Despite differences in authoritarian strength and economic modernization, Singapore, China, and Vietnam are categorized as “candidate” cases: they exist in a zone where introducing democracy does not guarantee political defeat for the regime nor does employing more repression ensure political stability. In contrast, Cambodia, Hong Kong, and Malaysia are “embittered cases”: strong authoritarianism missed this bittersweet spot, and the only remaining path out of autocracy would be democratization through weakness.
Why do some cases pursue democratization through strength, while others do not? For Slater and Wong, regime confidence is the key factor (“strength matters because confidence matters”; p. 18). Confidence is necessary for autocrats to pursue democratization through strength. Successful development establishes a political track record that instills confidence in strong ruling parties and bureaucratic states, assuring them of remaining in power after the transition to a more democratic system (“victory confidence”) without causing political chaos and instability (“stability confidence”). However, not all strong autocracies possess the necessary victory and stability confidence to initiate democratization, particularly because electoral, contentious, economic, and geopolitical factors can influence the likelihood of a strong dictatorship embracing democratization through strength. Outcomes of elections, mass protests, diplomatic pressure, and threats of economic sanctions by external patrons of an authoritarian regime send signals that can either increase or decrease the chances of autocrats perceiving the right moment to undertake democratic reforms. These signals may act as a convincing “tap on the shoulder” of autocrats that now is the right moment to pursue democratic reforms.
From Development to Democracy is an impressive scholarly achievement, although readers may find points of minor disagreement in the case studies and the interpretation of historical evidence. For example, is it the case that “nowhere in developmental Asia have political elites experimented with democracy before devoting decades to promoting rapid economic development,” as the authors claim (p. vii)? Instances such as South Korea’s first failed democracy (Second Republic) in 1960–61, Thailand between the student protests of October 1973 and the reactionary coup of 1976, and the Taisho democracy in interwar Japan challenge this assertion. Although those democracies were highly defective, restricted, and vulnerable, these characteristics also hold true for the military-guarded regime that emerged in Myanmar in the 2010s. The level of developmentalism in post–civil war Cambodia and post-1990 Myanmar also raises concerns, which the authors acknowledge. Additionally, how do we know that Singapore’s People’s Action Party lacks “stability confidence”? The argument that Japan’s liberal and democratic party elites “conceded” a transition from strong electoral authoritarianism to multiparty democracy in 1955, when it marked the beginning of 38 years of LDP rule, also invites scrutiny.
Despite these minor points, From Development and Democracy is an impressive piece of scholarship, one that makes important contributions to our understanding of what path-dependent development legacies hinder or nurture successful democratization; why “strong” autocracies sometimes accept democratization; and when these democratizations through strength succeed, whereas others fail. The book is a must-read for everyone who strives to understand the development–democracy nexus.
