| Chapter 1: | Democratization in Modernizing Societies |
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For this reason, many argue that a Confucian heritage dovetails perfectly with modernity (Tu, 2000a), and Confucian culture is in fact “a-democratic” (Hua, 2000).
This book leaves aside the “Asian Values” debate. I assert, as many others do, that modernization will produce values that challenge authority and embrace democratic principles (Heng, 1997). Recent scholarship in human development and democracy convincingly argues that aspirations to liberty and democracy lie latent in every human being. Once socioeconomic conditions allow people to take survival for granted, they show a predisposition for liberty and democratic social and political life. In other words, human desires for liberty, freedom, and emancipation naturally arise once industrialization and economic development take off (Welzel, Inglehart, & Klinngamen, 2003). Hence, regardless of the ideology or culture that exists in an agrarian society, it will give way to a set of proliberty, proequality, proemancipation, and prodemocracy values. This set of values I call self-expression values. As economic development continues, the strength of self-expression values of a society also grows. An increasingly self-expression-oriented citizenry will demand political openness, which results in more democratic government. Scholars have recently dubbed this a human development perspective of democratization (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005).
Plan of the Book
This book answers the question: why and how will social and economic developments lead to a more democratic East Asia? I argue that economic growth and social changes in East Asia will give rise to prodemocratic self-expression values.