Democratization in Confucian East Asia: Citizen Politics in China ...

With stronger self-expression values, citizens in these societies will become more assertive in demanding political changes, and they will also become more active in civil society. In both ways, they contribute to long-term democratization of these societies.

Part I contains two introductory chapters. In chapter 2, I lay out a framework for understanding the process of democratization. This framework puts citizens at the center of political changes in modernizing societies. Economic and social modernization result in self-expression-oriented citizens, who in turn drive political changes by building a strong civil society and demanding political openness from the government. Chapter 3 reviews scholarly works on the relationship between citizen values and democracy, focusing on the human development theory of democratization and explaining the argument of how self-expression values lead to more democratic governments around the world.

Chapters 4 and 5 make up Part II, which examines the rise of self-expression values in the six societies in Confucian Asia. They present empirical evidence of how economic development and social modernization results in stronger self-expression values in these societies. Chapter 4 looks at economic and social modernization as a holistic process, while chapter 5 looks at education as one element within broader economic and social development.

Part III of the book examines the political consequences of self-expression values. Chapters 6 through 8 present empirical evidence for how self-expression values give rise to democratic citizenship in these societies. In chapter 6, I demonstrate that strong self-expression values lead to high protest propensity.