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Going through a protracted period of transition since the end of the Cold War, the world order in the making is neither what was nor what it is yet to become. It is in "the middle of the future."To get our bearings in this uncertain transition, we explore the two grand post‐Cold War narratives—"The End of History" as posited by Francis Fukuyama and "The Clash of Civilizations" posited by the late Samuel Huntington. Mikhail Gorbachev looks back at his policies that brought the old order to collapse. The British philosopher John Gray critiques the supposed "universality" of liberalism and, with Homi Bhabha, sees a world of hybrid identities and localized cultures. The Singaporean theorist Kishore Mahbubani peels away the "veneer" of Western dominance. Amartya Sen, the economist and Nobel laureate, assesses whether democratic India or autocratic China is better at building "human capacity" in their societies.

Why is it that some countries have been able to develop high-quality state administrations that deliver services to their populations with relative efficiency, while others are plagued by corruption, bloated or red-tape-ridden bureaucracies, and incompetence? And what is the relationship between the effectiveness of a state and democracy? Are the two mutually supportive, or is there a tension between good public administration and broad political participation? The experiences of the United States, Greece, and Italy suggest that the process of political development democratic expansion of the franchise, when it takes place in advance of state modernization, can lead to widespread clientelism. Conversely, authoritarian states that develop modern bureaucracies early on are often in a happier position once they democratize, since their states tend to be inoculated from the dangers of political colonization.

This commentary points to the poor state of empirical measures of the quality of states, that is, executive branches and their bureaucracies. Much of the problem is conceptual, as there is very little agreement on what constitutes high‐quality government. The commentary suggests four approaches: (1) procedural measures, such as theWeberian criteria of bureaucratic modernity; (2) capacity measures, which include both resources and degree of professionalization; (3) output measures; and (4) measures of bureaucratic autonomy. It rejects output measures and suggests a two‐dimensional framework of using capacity and autonomy as a measure of executive branch quality. This framework explains the conundrum of why low‐income countries are advised to reduce bureaucratic autonomy while high‐income ones seek to increase it.

Stagnating wages and growing inequality will soon threaten the stability of contemporary liberal democracies and dethrone democratic ideology as it is now understood. What is needed is a new populist ideology that offers a realistic path to healthy middle-class societies and robust democracies. Adapted from the source document.

The contemporary problems of democracy in East Asia and its ability to deal with future challenges cannot be understood except in the context of a region whose largest player is a rapidly growing and relatively successful authoritarian regime -- China. The field of comparative politics has not developed an adequate conceptual framework for categorizing and understanding different forms of authoritarian government; we need to fill in this gap and develop an understanding of how the specific characteristics of East Asian government arise out of the historically determined development path that the region followed. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract:
The contemporary problems of democracy in East Asia and its ability to deal with future challenges cannot be understood except in the context of a region whose largest player is a rapidly growing and relatively successful authoritarian regime—China. The field of comparative politics has not developed an adequate conceptual framework for categorizing and understanding different forms of authoritarian government; we need to fill in this gap and develop an understanding of how the specific characteristics of East Asian government arise out of the historically determined development path that the region followed.

Stable democracy does not depend on a rigid set of preconditions, and has emerged in many surprising circumstances.

Abstract: This article explores the relationship between liberal democracy and socioeconomic equality, both on a theoretical and a practical level. It recounts both liberal and non-liberal arguments why democracies should or should not worry about de facto inequality, and then goes through a series of consequentialist arguments about why, alternatively, democracies should either worry about high persistent levels of inequality, or conversely, why attempts to remedy inequality through social policy is likely to have deleterious political or economic effects.