The Status and Prospects for Democracy in Asia
https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/06/27/the-status-and-prospects-for-democracy-in-asia/
Posted by HooverInstitution
The Status and Prospects for Democracy in Asia
https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/06/27/the-status-and-prospects-for-democracy-in-asia/
Posted by HooverInstitution
2 comments
“Democracy in Asia is down but not out,” argues Hoover Senior Fellow [Larry Diamond](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/larry-diamond) in a column for the *East Asia Forum*. “It faces challenges even where it is relatively liberal and strong. In most countries, it is weak, contested, retreating or non-existent.” Across the region, authoritarianism has a strong presence in nations including North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Laos, and compromised institutions of constitutionalism and political freedom plague burgeoning democracies. “The hopeful news,” according to Diamond, “is that ideas of popular sovereignty and accountability, according to the [Asian Barometer Survey](https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/how-asians-view-democratic-legitimacy/), enjoy substantial support outside the entrenched one-party states where it is methodologically difficult to measure.” Diamond, a longtime scholar of democratic movements, closes by reminding readers that autocratic rule can appear stable “for a long time,” until it suddenly becomes clear that it’s not. Diamond stresses that the possibility of “wild cards,” like the “2024 [youth revolution](https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-return-of-politics-in-bangladesh/) in Bangladesh,” should not be overlooked.
Among all, I find the situations of Philippines and Indonesia most disheartening, they had successfully kicked their former “dictators” out, Marcos and Suharto respectively, and yet now they voted for their descendants (son in Philippine or son-in-law in Indonesia) ! Didn’t we learn anything at all from history ?
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