ABSTRACT
Aspirations for democratic and accountable government run deep throughout the Middle East, and for years to come the region will be a lively and contested terrain of possibilities for regime evolution. There are three democracies in East Asia today that rank among the stable liberal democracies of the industrialized world: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They are not without stiff economic and political challenges and large numbers of disenchanted citizens who in surveys express only tepid support for democracy. A transition to democracy could happen any time in the coming years through the familiar instrument that has brought it about in other competitive authoritarian regimes: the electoral process. Henry Rowen's projections were a bit mechanical in assuming that economic growth would necessarily drive gradual political change toward democracy in China. The irony of communist China's relentless push for integration with Taiwan is that it may begin to generate political convergence, but not in the way that the communist leaders imagined.
