ABSTRACT
The social science literature on the cultural prerequisites to democracy inquires whether receptivity to democratic political norms can be explained by cultural traditions. The weakness of a composite socioeconomic model is its understanding of democratization as a process almost devoid of politics. Democracy requires a transvaluation of social values. China's most prominent democratic intellectual, Fang Lizhi, locates China's hope "in the fact that more and more people have broken free from blind faith in the leadership. An attempt to comprehend the prospects of democratization in the East Asian context provides an opportunity to test the Eurocentric view that democratic transitions are likely only in settings that replicate the West European historical experience. The political capacity to create a broad coalition that marginalizes violent and exclusive extremes facilitates democratic institutionalization. A positive correlation is found between an instrumental political culture and the development and perpetuation of democracy.
