The Road To Democracy: Comparative Study On Democratization Mode Of East Asia

Although rationality, liberty, differentiation and transformation that modernity endows individual and society release gigantic productivity, create plenty of fortune, enhance human ability to conquer nature, it does lead to a lot of issues,such as conflict between individuals and groups, hostility between state and society, contradiction between freedom and order, inconsistency between differentiation and integration。In order to resolve these questions,the modernizing countries and regions have to democratize its polity,which is the ultimate reason that many none-democratic countries and regions have turned to democracy and come into being the third wave of democratization since 1980s.For the third wave,nearly all scholars are mainly interesting in using macro or micro theory to explain what drive the democratization,but the more important question is which way can be led to democracy and which way is the most excellent.In early,English, French and American transition to democracy was through gradual reform which mean the government increased its competition at first and increased its participation latter;German and Japanese democracy was imposed by external force;And there are three classical paths to democracy in third wave. The first paths to democracy is reform,softliners within the authoritarian initiate democratization and control the process,they construct democracy by changing policy,adjusting political structure in a long term. The second path to democracy is transplacement,political elites within the authoritarian do not will implement democratic reform ,but they have to withdraw under the pressure from opposition and mass and new democracy is built by negotiation and struggle between rulers and opposition. The third path to democracy is rupture , the opposition to the authoritarian and the public build the democracy by overthrowing weak rulers.These authoritarian countries and regions in east Asia have turned to democracy one after another since 1980s.Softliners in the Kuomintang set out to reform political structure since 1986,they controlled the whole process of democratization by policy adjust and negotiation,and completed Taiwan's democratization through reform mode in 1996.Although military rulers in Korea did not want to democratize its polity,they had to give in when facing strong pressure from opposition and public. The rulers and opposition constructed the democracy together by struggle and transaction. Marcos and Suharto had not any strength to control situation when opposition and public revolt against their government,so Philippine and Indonesia finally completed democratization by rupture.All modes of democratization can lead to democracy,but they have different effects and costs. By examine and comparative analyzing east Asian experience,we find meaningful conclusion. Taiwan's reform mode had smallest negative effects on political capacity, political stabilization, economic increase, unemployment rate, urbanization and social equality, did good to democratic consolidation;Philippine and Indonesian rupture mode had biggest negative effects on development index,and did harm to democratic consolidation;the effects of Korean transplacement mode on development and democratic consolidation are all in middle level. Therefore,reform mode is best path to democracy based on east Asian experience.Then we have to ask why Taiwan completed democratization through reform mode and paid low cost for its democratic polity but Korea,Philippine and Indonesia completed their democratization through transplacement mode and rupture mode?East Asian experiences give the answer again. The macro conditions of reform mode include high level economy, mature market system, high level social equality, institutional authoritarian,weak civil society and political society. In order to create these macro conditions,the rulers must choose reasonable land policy, industrialization policy, social security policy, grasp proper reform opportunity and take effective election maneuver. The latter countries which will set out democratization can learn from east Asian experience,and build democratic polity at lowest cost.