Introduction

From the mid- to late 1980s, popular uprisings in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America overthrew several authoritarian regimes or military juntas and replaced them with democratic governments. In Asia alone, the military, martial-law or one-party regimes of the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan were toppled, and decades of authoritarian rule gave way to new forms of multi-party political competition and electoral government. Elsewhere, notably in China and Burma, popular assaults upon authoritarian rule were mounted but failed in the face of determined state repression.