Looking at eight case studies of Asian democracies, the contributors to this volume analyze the role of political parties in stabilizing and institutionalizing democracies. How have democracies such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines survived against the odds, despite struggling economic performance and highly unequal distribution of income? How have formerly authoritarian regimes in places like South Korea and Taiwan evolved into stable democracies? The contributors to this volume examine these case studies, along with Mongolia, Malaysia, and India, arguing that the common element is the extent to which political parties, including opposition parties, have become institutionalized and act as stabilizers on democracy. They contend that the role of political parties has been significantly underestimated in comparison with structural elements, which are insufficient to explain how these democracies have persisted. An essential resource for students and scholars of Asian politics, especially those with a focus on comparative politics, political parties, and institutions. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Funded by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

Democracy is in decline and the share of world's population living in freedom under democratic government has decreased considerably as authoritarian practices proliferate. Surprisingly, most of the analyses that study these developments give little attention to the role of political parties in the decline of democracy although there is a broad consensus about the relevance of political parties for the functioning of democracy. How parties can contribute to democracy is best understood by looking at a very diverse range of cases in different parts of the world. Instead of taking a regional approach which dominates the literature on political parties, this volume takes a global perspective. It brings together experts from four continents, which opens up fresh comparative perspectives on the role of political parties in the democratic process. Political Parties and the Crisis of Democracy asks how parties contribute to the consolidation of democracy, why they fail today, why new parties emerge and displace old parties, and also what parties need to do in order to survive cutthroat competition, above all with a new (and sometimes not so new) variants of populist parties. It takes a unique global focus, covering old and new democracies in different regions of the world. It covers Western and Central Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa, Turkey and Israel, including presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary democracies and also some countries where democracy is seriously threatened or eroding. This volume offers unique comparative perspectives combined with a detailed analysis of individual countries and their party systems. It shows that parties are central actors for the consolidation of democracy, but that organisational reforms are necessary to cope with social change such as individualisation, the decline in party membership and the impact of new media and modern communication, thus counteracting the fragmentation of party systems and the decay of democracy. This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics and prospects of democratization in East Asia. A team of leading experts in the field offers discussion at both the country and regional level, including analysis of democratic attitudes and movements in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Evaluating all the key components of regime evolution, from citizen politics to democratic institutions, the sections covered include: • Regional Trends and Country Overviews • Institutions, Elections, and Political Parties • Democratic Citizenship • Democratic Governance • The Political Economy of Democratization Examining the challenges that East Asian emerging democracies still face today, as well as the prospects of the region's authoritarian regimes, the Routledge Handbook of Democratization in East Asia will be useful for students and scholars of East Asian Politics, Comparative Politics, and Asian Studies.

How can civilians in newly democratized countries ensure their control over the military? While establishing civilian control of the military is a necessary condition for a functioning democracy, it requires prudent strategic action on the part of the decision-makers to remove the military from positions of power and make it follow their orders.

Rethinking Arab Democratization unpacks and historicizes the rise of Arab electoralism, narrating the story of stalled democratic transition in the Arab Middle East. It provides a balance sheet of the state of Arab democratization from the mid-1970s into the 21st century. In seeking to answer the question of how Arab countries democratize and whether they are democratizing at all, the book pays attention to specificity, highlighting the peculiarities of democratic transitions in the Arab Middle East. To this end, it situates the discussion of such transitions firmly within their local contexts, but without losing sight of the global picture, namely, the US drive to control and 'democratize' the Arab World. The book rejects 'exceptionalism', 'foundationalism', and 'Orientalism', by showing that the Arab World is not immured from the global trend towards political liberalization. But by identifying new trends in Arab democratic transitions, highlighting their peculiarities and drawing on Arab neglected discourses and voices, the book pinpoints the contingency of some of the arguments underlying Western theories of democratic transition when applied to the Arab setting. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

​This book analyzes several components of democratization and party competition in West Africa focusing on Senegal – a country with one of the longest histories of multiparty elections. It does so in service of examining the origins and consequences of the proliferation of political parties, a trend that has taken hold in Senegal and a variety of other African countries. The author uses novel sources of data to illuminate the economic and political roots of party functions and trajectories by placing party formation, opposition, ruling party loyalty, and presidential turnover into local and regional contexts. This work will appeal to African Studies scholars, professors, graduate students, and policy makers.

How has economic development affected the process of democratization in Southeast and East Asia? the contributions in this volume represent one of the first efforts to answer this question from the vantage of the region.In this book, scholars of Southeast and East Asian politics discuss the rise and fall, or stabilization and modification, of democracy amidst socio-economic changes and class transformations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, Taiwan and South Korea. The approach taken by the contributors gives a fine balance between democratization as a consequence of socio-economic development and as a political-ideological process.

The resurgence of the Left in Latin America over the past decade has been so notable that it has been called “the Pink Tide.” In recent years, regimes with leftist leaders have risen to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. What does this trend portend for the deepening of democracy in the region? Benjamin Goldfrank has been studying the development of participatory democracy in Latin America for many years, and this book represents the culmination of his empirical investigations in Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In order to understand why participatory democracy has succeeded better in some countries than in others, he examines the efforts in urban areas that have been undertaken in the cities of Porto Alegre, Montevideo, and Caracas. His findings suggest that success is related, most crucially, to how nationally centralized political authority is and how strongly institutionalized the opposition parties are in the local arenas.

This book looks at developmental pathways to poverty reduction that emphasize employment-centred structural change, social policies that both protect citizens and contribute to economic development, and types of politics that support economic transformation and participation of the poor in growth processes.