ABSTRACT
The primacy of elites is a recurrent theme in the study of politics in the Asia-Pacific. A good general definition of an elite is Scruton’s (1982, p. 143): ‘the class of persons within a society who are in a position to view themselves…as chosen, either by others or by nature, to govern’. Whereas Western liberal democracies are typically characterized by pluralist political systems in which the interests of different groups are checked and balanced by a set of rival competing claims, in many Pacific Asian countries pluralism is quite limited. Instead, governance is the prerogative of a narrow set of interlocking elite interests. Business, especially large corporations and conglomerates, often works hand-in-hand with the bureaucracy. In some cases, public policy is determined by civilian government officials, or by uniformed officers from the armed forces. Although political parties, parliaments, prime ministers, cabinets, and other institutions may enjoy a set of formal legislative and administrative powers, in practice they often have to reflect entrenched bureaucratic economic and military interests. It is not surprising, therefore, that in many Asia-Pacific states the dividing line between the public and private sectors can be extremely blurred: an idea neatly captured by the phrase ‘Japan, Inc’, implying a structural integration of business and bureaucratic interests and concerns. The Japanese model, portrayed by analysts such as Chalmers Johnson as a form of command economy which he termed a developmental state, was widely emulated by the first wave of newly-industrializing economies of South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan (Johnson, 1982). The second wave of newly-industrializing economies—some regions of China, and South-East Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand—have borrowed some features of the developmental state, but often in a more eclectic and less centralized fashion.
