ABSTRACT
As Asia’s most prosperous and stable democracy and as one of the world’s largest aid providers (in fact, for much of the 1990s, the largest aid provider in the world by some measures), Japan might also be expected to be a major democracy assistance provider. Japan has been engaged in at least some form of democracy assistance since the early 1990s not only in many parts of Asia but also in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Beginning in the mid-2000s, greater emphasis was placed on democracy assistance.
