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In this article I examine public evaluations of quality of governance in East Asia and analyze the effects of perceived governance quality on regime support. I distinguish between two modes of governance, democratic and law-based, and examine which mode of governance matters. It was found that East Asian democracies suffered various governance deficits in the eyes of their publics. It was also revealed that a weak rule of law remained the most notable governance malaise across much of the region. The micro-level analysis shows that perceived quality of governance shaped regime allegiance and institutional confidence but not all aspects of governance mattered. It was shown that law-based governance served as the major source of regime support regardless of regime types. On the whole, public support for the prevailing system of government across much of the region depended on quality of law-based governance as well as national economic performance. Yet, evidence indicates that democratic governance encourages citizen skepticism of the ongoing political order, supporting the thesis of assertive citizenship. Overall, the findings suggest that establishing a strong rule of law constitutes one of the major challenges to regime consolidation across much of East Asia.

AbstractThis article describes public attitudes toward government spending in Australia, China, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States, the six major economies of the Asia-Pacific region. An analysis of the 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey data shows that ordinary citizens of the sample countries favored increased, rather than reduced, government spending on a wide range of policy programs. It is also found that support for state activism was stronger in former state socialist countries than in market capitalist ones. Although economic interests, symbolic predispositions, and social positions influenced spending preferences to varying degrees, left–right ideology was particularly conspicuous in most countries surveyed. It is evident that the mass publics of the major economies of the Asia-Pacific region did not strongly endorse state contraction or retrenchment, even in the wake of economic globalization and the neoliberal reform movement.

In this article, we attempt to describe how ordinary people in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan view democracy and its authoritarian alternatives and how they experience institutional practices of their democracies to determine the extent of cultural and institutional democratization. The analysis of the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey data shows that although the citizens of East Asian democracies unequivocally reject military authoritarian rule, they are ambivalent toward civilian authoritarian rule, and are not yet fully committed to democracy. The analysis also shows that they are not satisfied with the provision of civil rights and institutions of horizontal accountability, but remain highly satisfied with voting rights, which suggests that East Asian democracies are not adequately liberal, though unmistakably electoral, in the eyes of ordinary people. On the basis of this finding, we conclude that East Asian democracies fail to achieve a high-level equilibrium between the popular demand for democracy and the institutional supply of democracy.

Introduction, Chong-Min Park and Eric M. Uslaner Part 1: Inequality and Political Institutions 1. Inequality, Democracy, and the Welfare States in East Asia: Toward a New Theoretical Proposal to Analyze the Politics of Redistribution, Cheol-Sung Lee 2. Trust, Corruption and Inequality, Eric M. Uslaner 3. The Political Economy of Inequality and Capture in South Korea, Jong-sung You Part 2: Inequality and Political Support 4. Assessing the Inequality-Democracy Linkage at the Individual-Level: Evidence from East Asia, Chong-Min Park 5. Equality of Opportunity and Satisfaction with the Political System: The Mediating Role of Regime Type, Yun-han Chu and Chin-en Wu 6. Economic Inequality and Authoritarian Legitimacy: The Case of China, Shuai Jin and Yingnan Joseph Zhou Part 3: Inequality and Political Behaviour 7. Redistribution Preferences and Ideological Orientations across Countries, Willy Jou and Sejin Koo 8. Economic Inequality and Political Participation in East Asia: Evidence from East Asian Countries, Inyoung Cho 9. Economic Inequality, Ethnic Mobilisation, and Electoral Competition, Eric C.C. Chang and Chunho Park

This article examines whether Confucian Asian values are incompatible with liberal democracy. Analyses of the East Asia Barometer Survey conducted in South Korea reveal that attachment to those values makes it more difficult to reject authoritarian rule than to embrace democracy. These findings suggest that Asian values detract from cultural democratization primarily by keeping the mass public oriented toward the virtues of authoritarian politics.

In this paper, we examine the micro-level implications of social capital for the development of democratic citizenship. By using a recent East Asia Barometer survey in Korea, we determine whether social networks and social trust, two key components of social capital, cultivate virtues of democracy among ordinary citizens. First, the analysis shows that the Korean people as a whole tend to be involved in small informal groups. Most of them stay away from formal associations. Second, the Korean people tend to differentiate trust-in-principle from trust-in-action. It turns out that a majority of the people display competence-based trust, if neither generalized nor particularized trust. Third, associational membership has no role in promoting support for democratic institutions and principles; it merely leads to more political activism. Fourth, social trust plays a role in promoting support for democracy. Yet it has little to do with political activism. It is concluded that in Korea, social involvement contributes to democratic citizenship behaviorally, whereas social trust contributes to it attitudinally.

"This book compares contemporary civil service systems across East and Southeast Asia, a dynamic region of greater diversity in local administrative tradition, imported models of modern administration, and the character of prevailing political institutions. Featuring chapters on Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, this book provides a detailed analysis of key aspects of the civil service system, including centralization, recruitment, classification, openness of positions, performance assessment, promotion, training, and senior civil service. It distinguishes four modes of public employment, namely, bureaucratization, professionalization, politicization, and marketization, to develop a conceptual framework for comparing the civil service system at the operational level. The region's contemporary civil service systems appear to be hybrid systems that combine, at varying degree, these modes of public employment, responding to administrative reform pressures. The patterns of public employment across East and Southeast Asia reflect local administrative traditions, imported Western models of administration, and the relative timing of democratization and bureaucratization. With contributions from leading local experts across the region, this book will be invaluable to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in Asian public administration, especially civil service systems"--