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What types of political systems do people in East Asia favor most and least? Throughout the region, do most people uniformly prefer democracy to nondemocratic systems, as advocates of universal democratization theses claim? If they do, do they prefer liberal democracy to non-liberal democracy? If they do not favor democracy more than other types of political systems, what type do they favor most? Is it meritocracy or a hybrid system, for which proponents of Confucian democracy or the Asian Values Thesis have recently advocated? To address these questions, I first review previous studies on democratic system support 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. Then I propose a new typology of citizen preferences for a variety of political systems, including democracy and autocracy. Unlike all other typologies, it ascertain in sequence the types and subtypes people prefer without using the word "democracy" ("the D-word" hereafter). Finally, I attempt to evaluate the relevance of universal and liberal democratization theses in the context of East Asia, analyzing the 3rd wave of the Asian Barometer Survey conducted in 13 democratic and nondemocratic countries. The analysis reveals that these theses serve merely as prodemocracy rhetoric, not as theoretically meaningful propositions.

The past two decades have witnessed the dawning of a new age for the scientific study of people's quality of life. For the first time in its history, both scholars from a variety of disciplines and policymakers from national and international government agencies have partnered to develop a new paradigm, and establish new interdisciplines aiming to appraise and prescribe the quality of life from the perspectives of the people who experience it. This paper sought to review major advances made in these interdisciplines called happiology, hedonomics, and positive psychology.

A growing number of political scientists have recently claimed that democracy has emerged as a universal value, and that it is also becoming the universally preferred system of government. Is the whole world becoming democratic, as these proponents of global democratization claim? To test the validity of these claims, this study critically reviews the voluminous literature on citizen conceptions of democracy and identifies the limitations of previous public opinion research on democratization. In an attempt to overcome those limitations, it proposes a two-dimensional notion of informed democratic understanding, and thereby reanalyzes the World Values Surveys conducted in 2005-8. Results of the analysis reveal that two-thirds of global citizenries are either uninformed or misinformed about the fundamental characteristics of democracy and its alternatives. In every region except for the old-democratic West, moreover, the well-informed constitute minorities of its avowed supporters. On the basis of these findings, the study contends that for much of the world today, democracy represents little more than an appealing rhetorical political symbol voiced in regimes that still retain authoritarian practices. It also contends that contrary to increasingly popular theses of global democratization and neo-modernization, liberal democracy is not likely to stand at the "end of History."

Is democracy emerging as the universally preferred political system, as advocates of the global democratization thesis claim? This paper seeks to explore this question in the context of East Asia, a region known for democratic underdevelopment. To this end, we first provide a critical review of how previous survey-based studies were conducted to estimate the relative preference of democracy as a political system. We then introduce hybridization as a new conceptual tool for ascertaining the emerging patterns of political orientations among citizens of authoritarian and post-authoritarian societies and for analyzing the contours of cultural change taking place in those societies. Finally, we analyze the latest, third wave of the Asian Barometer surveys conducted in eleven East Asian countries conducted in 2010 and 2011. On the basis of this analysis, we argue that it is premature to claim that democracy is emerging as the universally preferred system. Further, we argue that hybridization, unlike democratization, can serve as a concept capable of revealing and illuminating the true nature of cultural change taking place in post-authoritarian and authoritarian societies.

AbstractHow do contemporary publics understand happiness? What makes them experience it? Do conceptions and sources of their happiness vary across culturally different societies? This paper addresses these questions, utilizing the 2008 round of the AsiaBarometer surveys conducted in six countries scattered over four different continents. Analyses of these surveys, conducted in Japan, China, and India from the East; and the United States, Russia, and Australia from the West, reveal a number of interesting cross-cultural differences and similarities in the way the people of the East and West understand and experience happiness. Specifically, the former are much less multidimensional than the latter in their conceptions of happiness. Yet, they are alike in that their sense of relative achievement or deprivation is the most pervasive and powerful influence on happiness.

AbstractWinston Churchill once asserted 'democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time'. In this conception, democracy is 'a lesser evil', something that is not good but is less bad than its alternatives. This study offers a rigorous test of this concept in the context of East Asia. Analysis of the East Asia Barometer surveys conducted in five new democracies in the region reveals that small minorities of these countries actually perceive the current democratic regime as a lesser evil. A large majority of these 'lesser-evil perceivers', moreover, refuse to support democracy fully. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the Churchillian lesser-evil notion of democracy has limited utility as an alternative paradigm for the study of democratization among ordinary citizens.