ABSTRACT
Most significant developments in the shaping of political order in modern East Asian states are the democratization movements in the 1980s and 1990s and public sector reforms in the 1990s and 2010s. This chapter examines the methods and outcomes of people power revolutions in South Korea and China, political liberalization in Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam, and institutional reform of the public sector in all of them from the 1990s. These political movements and developments reflect and operate on the shifts in the power structure, and generate institutions that redefine authority relations among influential political forces in the national political society. This round of political change results in different outcomes in the restructuring of authority relations in different East Asian states. Democratic transition completes in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, while these developments and movements fail to change the power and authority relations in that direction in those states on continental East Asia. In the emergent political order in the former, pluralist dynamics are much strongly institutionalized and so is the power of political forces over government. Contending political forces exercise their power over government, and state authority is much contentious. In the emergent political order in the latter, statist dynamics remain powerful. The state governed by the ruling political forces is the essential framework for power and authority relations among influential political forces in the polity.
