ABSTRACT
Although the economic crisis through much of Southeast and Northeast Asia has quietened the champions of an authoritarian “Asian” model of development, harder economic times may only strengthen the debate over food and freedom. This essay, like the last one, continues to challenge the tidy equation of authoritarianism and economic growth. Originally written in 1994, the argument is no less relevant in today's very different economic context.
The repudiation of an autocratic model of development, however, does not mean that capitalist democracy, as promoted in the West, should be embraced in its place. The persistence of massive inequality, political disenfranchisement and social malaise in the capitalist democracies of the West point, instead, to the need for an alternative vision— a vision based on a return to our forgotten faith. The appeal to a spiritual alternative was not popular when this paper was first presented at a conference on Development and Democracy, organised by the Southeast Asia Centre at Bochum, Germany, in February 1994. But that vision, six years later, remains as necessary as it is unheeded.
