ABSTRACT
The great upheavals of defeat and victory, revolution and independence that swept the Asia-Pacific at the end of the Second World War left behind them an enormously diverse political landscape. One of the key variations in political life in the region, then as now, was the form and degree of democratic politics that existed within states and the variable strength and power of authoritarian and democratic political movements. The Anglo-American states of the region remained, for their white citizens at any rate, liberal democracies. They were characterized by regular free and fair elections, universal and equal suffrage, competitive multi-party politics, accountable representative government and diverse legal freedoms and entrenched rights. Significant barriers to political participation and formal and informal exclusion from the suffrage persisted for African-Americans in the Southern states of the USA and for indigenous peoples in all of these states. In China, and the northern halves of Korea and Vietnam, people’s democratic republics had been declared by victorious communist parties, who created regimes which combined both extraordinary mass participation and mobilization and intensely regulated authoritarian polities. Across the rest of non-communist Asia-Pacific a complex pattern of regimes emerged from defeat, occupation, civil war and independence struggles. The reconstructed Japanese state possessed a pristine, US drafted, liberal democratic constitution. None the less, like its US counterpart, the political system that emerged alongside this constitution managed to secrete very significant powers away from democratic and popular accountability. Sygmann Rhee’s South Korea, also possessed a democratic constitution and often highly undemocratic and exclusionary politics. Thailand’s military rulers were similarly authoritarian in outlook and practice. Hopes for democratic politics were stronger in the newly independent states of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, yet all of them fell at some point in the decades after independence to personal authoritarianisms or the fierce politics of ethnic exclusion. It did not appear that the Asia-Pacific would prove a very fertile environment for democratic politics and democratizing social movements. Yet for all the limits of the liberal democratic models available in the Anglo-American states and the strength of authoritarian politics and culture in many states in the region, the Asia-Pacific continues to display consistent and powerful pressures for democratization. Why should this be?
