Liberal democracy as the end of history
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2057891116673745 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Author | Doh Chull Shin,Hannah June Kim |
| Subject Matter | Research articles |
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2017, Vol. 2(2) 133–153
Liberal democracy as the end
ª The Author(s) 2016
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of history: Western theories
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891116673745
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Doh Chull Shin and Hannah June Kim
Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine, USA
Abstract
A growing number of political scientists have recently advocated the theses that democracy has
emerged as a universal value and that it is also becoming the universally preferred system of
government. Do most people in East Asia prefer democracy to nondemocratic systems, as
advocates of these Western theses claim? Do they embrace liberal democracy as the most pre-
ferred system as they become socioeconomically modernized and culturally liberalized? To
address these questions, we first propose a typology of privately concealed political system pre-
ferences as a new conceptual tool in order to ascertain their types and subtypes without using the
word ‘ democracy’’. By means of this typology, we analyze the third wave of the Asian Barometer
Survey conducted in 12 democratic and nondemocratic countries. The analysis reveals that a
hybrid system, not liberal democracy, is the most preferred system even among the culturally
liberalized and socioeconomically modernized segments of the East Asian population. Our results
show that the increasingly popular theses of universal and liberal democratization serve merely in
East Asia as prodemocracy rhetoric, not as theoretically meaningful propositions.
Keywords
cultural liberalization, East Asia, neo-modernization theory, political system preferences,
socioeconomic modernization, universal democratization theses
‘‘Strikingly, the belief that democracy is the best (in principle at least) is overwhelming and universal.’’
(Diamond, 2008a: xi)
‘‘Even as we raise questions about how soon everyone will get there, we should have no doubt as to
what kind of society lies at the end of History.’’
(Fukuyama, 2014)
Corresponding author:
Doh Chull Shin, Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Email: shindc@uci.edu
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Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 2(2)
‘‘Thus, the desire for democracy becomes more liberal with emancipative values.’’
(Welzel, 2013: 14)
For the past two decades, a large number of regional and multiregional research teams have con-
ducted waves of public opinion surveys to monitor and compare citizen views on democratic politics
and democratization taking place across the globe (Heath et al., 2005; Mattes, 2007). These surveys
have shown that most people worldwide approve of democracy as a system of government and dis-
approve of its alternatives. These findings have led a growing number of political scientists to advocate
the theses of universal democratization, which contend that democracy is emerging both as a universal
value (Diamond, 2008b; Sen, 1999) and as the universally preferred system of government (Diamond,
2013; see also Beetham, 2009; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005; Klingemann, 2014; Welzel, 2013).
Do most people in East Asia prefer democracy to nondemocratic systems, as advocates of the
democratization theses claim? If they do, do they prefer liberal democracy to non-liberal democ-
racy or hybrid systems, as Francis Fukuyama (1989, 2014), Larry Diamond (2012), and proponents
of neo-modernization theory argue? If they do not favor democracy, what political system they
favor most? We address these questions in order to evaluate the relevance of the democratization
theses proposed in the West and observe whether the process of cultural democratization in East
Asia deviates from those of other regions.
The outline of this article is as follows. We first review previous studies on citizen support for
democracy, and highlight their limitations in unraveling the meanings of avowed democratic
system support and comparing its levels across different countries and regions of the world. To
overcome these limitations, we propose a new typology of concealed citizen preferences for a
variety of political systems and explain the procedures to ascertain the types and subtypes people
prefer in sequence without using the word ‘‘democracy’’ (the ‘‘D-word’’ hereafter). Finally, we
analyze the third wave of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), which was conducted in 12 dem-
ocratic and nondemocratic countries, and evaluate the relevance of the universal and liberal
democratization theses in the context of East Asia.
Previous studies on democratic system preferences
Is democracy universally approved as a system of government and always preferred to its alter-
natives? Waves of regional and global surveys have repeatedly shown that ordinary people in both
democratic and nondemocratic countries see democracy as valuable and prefer it to autocratic
regimes. The last two waves (the fifth and sixth) of the World Values Survey (WVS), for example,
revealed that more than 95 percent of the adult populations in all regions were in favor of
democracy for either themselves or their countries. The Gallup International 2015 Global End
of Year Survey, which was conducted in 63 countries, similarly showed that a substantial majority
of 76 percent believes that ‘‘democracy may have problems, but it is still the best system of
government’’ (Worldwide Independent Network, 2015).
From these findings, it is apparent that democracy has become ‘‘virtually the only political
model with a global appeal’’ (Inglehart, 2003: 52; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005: 264), and that it is
‘‘really the only broadly legitimate form of government in the world’’ (Diamond, 2008b: 13).
Nonetheless, we need to carefully evaluate the validity of the key assumptions that researchers
have made in designing survey questions and analyzing responses to those questions before
we endorse the claims of universal democratization: that ‘‘the belief that democracy is the best
(in principle at least) is overwhelming and universal’’ (Diamond, 2008a: xi) and ‘‘public
Shin and Kim
135
100%
90%
90%
87%
84%
83%
80%
76%
73%
74%
71%
67%
71%
70%
62%
61%
63%
58%
60%
50%
40%
China
Thailand Singapore Vietnam Cambodia Malaysia
(Pooled)
Ordinary Citizens
Avowed Supporters of Democracy
Figure 1. Those cognitively incapable of differentiating democracy from authoritarianism.
Source: 2010–2012 Asian Barometer Survey.
aspirations toward democratic ideals, values, and principles, or the demand for democracy, proved
almost universal around the globe’’ (Norris, 2011: 10).
One of the key assumptions comes from whether ordinary citizens, especially those with little or
no democratic political experience, are cognitively capable of understanding what democracy
really means. Another assumption stems from whether they agree over what constitutes it. All
universal democratization theses are predicated on the assumptions both that contemporary global
citizenries are capable of understanding democracy and that they also understand it comparably
even across different cultures and regions.
These assumptions are grounded in the mistaken belief that understanding democracy repre-
sents a single dimensional concept, which involves nothing more than identifying its properties.
Contrary to this belief, understanding it as a system of government is a multidimensional phenom-
enon that involves not only the identification of its essential properties but also the differentiation
of those properties from the ones of its alternatives (Sartori, 1987: 183–185; see also McClosky
and Brill, 1983; McClosky and Zaller, 1984; Schmitter and Karl, 1991).
Contrary to what is assumed in the theses, our findings show that most citizens, especially of
authoritarian countries, are incapable of differentiating democratic regimes from autocratic ones,
although they are able to identify some of its basic properties, such as freedom and elections
(Dalton et al., 2007). In authoritarian East Asia, which consists of China, Thailand, Singapore,
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia, the cognitively incapable, i.e. those who mistake their own
authoritarian system for a democracy, constitute a large majority of 71 percent of its people (see
Figure 1). The cognitively incapable, moreover, constitute a larger majority (74%) of those who
approve of democracy, agreeing with the statement ‘‘Democracy may have its problems, but it is
still the best form of government.’’ Even in Singapore, the world’s richest authoritarian country,
they form an overwhelming majority (90%) of avowed democratic system supporters.
Another equally dubious assumption concerns how ordinary people understand democracy and
whether their democratic understandings can be compared meaningfully across different cultures
and regions. The universal democratization theses view democracy as an uncontested concept
whose meanings are widely shared throughout the world. Since its meanings differ little in kind,
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Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 2(2)
support for democracy is interpreted similarly even in different contexts (Moncagatta, 2015: 5).
This assumption that all supporters of democracy understand the concept in the same way has led
advocates of the theses to compare affirmative responses to the questions containing the ‘‘D-word’’
worldwide, and to proclaim its universal appeal. Regardless of how differently they understand
democracy, all those who respond positively to any of the survey questions containing the
‘‘D-word’’ are regarded as...
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