ABSTRACT
To date, studies of the political systems of East and Southeast Asia have concentrated almost exclusively on the more managerial or administrative aspects of these systems. This has been, in large measure, because, up to the late 1980s or early 1990s, the countries of the area were ruled by authoritarian governments. In such a context, the issue of democratic political development of the systems could not be seriously considered. Instead, the bulk of academic work was devoted to the characteristics of ‘development states’, of ‘state capacity’, etc. What this book is doing, for the fi rst time, we believe, is to ‘bring politics back in’. This needs to be done as a matter of principle. It also needs to be done for very good practical reasons since a process of democratization has been embarked upon in the region and specifi cally in the majority of the states that we are examining in this book. As a contribution towards meeting this need, this chapter presents a comparative analysis of the political culture of the states in question, focusing on the aspects of political culture that have particular relevance for the process of democratization.
