ABSTRACT
The economic crisis that rolled across East and Southeast Asia in the late 1990s provides a good opportunity to reexamine the relation between economics and politics. One of the most interesting issues is whether regime types (authoritarian regimes, semi-democracies, and democracies) matter in dealing with economic crises. Are centralized authoritarian regimes better at coping with economic crises than decentralized democracies, in which policymaking is more likely to be influenced by those who suffer or benefit from policy choices? Alternatively, are democracies more resilient in economic crises than authoritarian regimes?
