ABSTRACT
Asia now hosts a sizeable basket of fully democratized countries, even though there are still a greater number of non-democratic regimes in the region. This volume is aimed at analyzing voting behavior and election results and explaining the political party systems in Asian democracies, in particular, in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Korea. The comparative literature on developing countries deals largely with the regime-level issues of democratic transition and consolidation, and pays less attention to the voting patterns and internal mechanisms of operation within newly established democracies. The scant attention to the intra-democratic issues is understandable, considering the frequent retreats of seemingly stable new democracies into the non-democratic camp, as observed in the recent military coups in apparently democratic Thailand. Nevertheless, it is important for the comparative literature to go beyond the regime issues and pay more attention to the behavior of the new democratic electorate and the dynamics and causal mechanisms within the newly established democratic systems. 1 Of the various sub-regime level issues, this volume pays primary attention to the political party system. Of course, we admit that it is not easy to disentangle regime issues from intra-regime issues. They are linked to each other. For instance, many scholars believe that a strong political party system helps to build up a consolidated democratic regime. Yet, this volume focuses on the linkages between votes and party systems rather than on the effects of political party systems on democratic consolidation.
