ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that lively electoral democracies in countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand are radically different from each other. It expands theory about mechanisms of democratization by incorporating evidence from Asian local politics. The book provides a common empirical approach to Asian democratization, which attempts to make statistical surveys of ideas. In the West, brutal wars of religion eventually left European elites scant choice but to tolerate each other. Conflicts, especially violence between faith communities or between workers and capital-managers, deserve attention as much as values. Electoral institutions can empower demagogues who may be as corrupt as oligarchs whom they defeat; yet such politicians in some cases expand popular semi-sovereignty. Democracies and proto-democracies are inseparable from their evolutions. They may start in informal networks that have no clear ideologies or leaders or meeting places.
