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The paper is to examine how international actors influence democratization by focusing on two leading states of recent democratization in East Asia and East Europe - Taiwan and Hungary. The paper seeks to challenge the classic domestically biased assumption that democratization is an exclusively domestic affair, aiming at the transformation of the internal political system, and external factors may play a secondary role. It aims to provide systematic accounts for why and how there are different external actors at different phases of democratization through a cross-regional comparison between the two regions. First, I will examine the dynamics of democratization and the interactions between external and domestic factors in each national case from the phases of transition to consolidation. Next, I will develop some explanatory factors for the international dimension of democratization from the two regions and compare their similarities and differences. For the country case studies, I will be attentive to internal-external linkages and to their own historically specific conditions. For the inter-regional comparison, I will compare Taiwan with Hungary, placing greater emphasis on their common elements across regions and differences shown in each region. My analysis supports following points: (1) in Central Europe, the Soviet presence was a decisive overriding obstacle to democratization, no matter how favorable domestic conditions may be in countries like Hungary. The constraint was gradually lifted under Gorbachev, finally opening the possibility for a successful transition to democracy. Furthermore, the policies of various European institutions like EU, OSCE, the Council of Europe, and NATO are becoming crucial stabilizing elements in the consolidating process. The integration into Western institutions began to act as an external democratic force. (2) in East Asia, the global trend toward economic liberalism did exert some positive impact on the transition to democracy in Taiwan. More fundamentally, unlike Central European cases, the political opening in both Asian cases was not triggered by any major socio-economic crisis, geopolitical change or external market shocks. In both cases, societal support for the regime-sponsored development program has been much more broadly based as compared to many Latin American countries at comparable level of industrialization. Lastly, the dominant characteristic of Taiwan is its inherited legacies of divided nations. Their nationhood problem makes the regime stability highly susceptible to external influences in the processes of democratic transition and consolidation. This paper will be a first effort to compare and distinguish international effects on East Asian patterns of democratization from what has been noted especially in East Europe. It attempts not only to refine current theoretical frameworks, but also to enhance the literature of democratization in both breadth and depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the role of political ideology and economic growth models in the East Asian peace since the 1980s. It first makes the point that the East Asian peace does not support democratic peace theory, since the region has a great variety of regime forms. Then it suggests that it may still be possible to speak of a 'liberal peace' if we mean economic liberalism. The article finds that the period of relative peace converges with a period of export-oriented growth, made possible by market economic 'liberal' reforms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines relative impacts of cultural socialization and interactions with government on support for democracy and regime legitimacy across eight Asian nations based upon surveys of populations in these countries. Results show that cultural socialization has more impact than Mishler and Rose observed in a study of Central Europe, but interactions with government also produce differences in attitudes. Inclusion of dummy variables indicates that identification of individual indicators allows substitutions of variables for country contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to compare and understand Asian variations of corporatist democracy in the domain of public policy and systematic governance by comparing two outlier cases of Korea and Japan. While the Japanese pattern of corporatist governance has been widely known as 'corporatism without labor', the Korean experience can be characterized by the notion of 'corporatism without capital'. Such different paths of corporatist governance in these two countries of East Asia present distinctive institutional settings for dealing with labor in the different historical embeddedness. Two questions drive this comparative inquiry: what are the key factors explaining different paths of corporatist solutions in the two countries?; and why ahd how the government designed and developed the corporatist adaptation in dealing with workers? By using the historical-institutional approach as a main method for analysis, the paper will explore and compare the Korean and Japanese different developments of historical background, interactive processes of tripartite actors, and different outcomes of corporatist governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several regions of the world, including Western and Eastern Europe as well as North and South America, have built regional institutions that promote market liberalization in conjunction with democratic governance or human rights protection. The integrative or ?Kantian? institutions take the form of either hard law (conditioning free trade arrangements upon good democratic or human rights practices) or soft law (affirming or recognizing democratic governance or human rights). The integrative institutions are believed to promote economic growth effectively and efficiently because healthy market operations require democratic institutions with the protection of individual liberty and property. In contrast, states in East Asia have repeatedly rejected the integrative approach in the inter-regional cooperative forums such as Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and are likely to do the same in the intra-regional efforts at creating an East Asian Community. The Asian way of separating politics from economics engenders the criticism that Asian states lack democratic commitments, rekindling the controversy over the clash of civilizations. This paper seeks to clear up the popular mythology and find the reason behind the East Asian exceptionalism in institutional design by testing the following hypotheses: (1) the sovereignty hypothesis that Asian states, insistent on sovereignty and autonomy, are averse to a strong regional institution overarching politics and economics; (2) the cultural hypothesis that Asian states share the values placing high priority on collective identity and social order that diametrically oppose the liberal values of individual freedom and equity; and (3) the political-economic hypothesis that an East Asian developmental state aims toward maximizing growth by governing markets and requires the beliefs that the government administering industrial policy is long-lived and that it has low transaction costs of shifting governmental resources from inefficient to efficient firms (Liberal pluralism with frequent elite turnovers and decentralized policy processes will undermine the beliefs).Through the empirical analysis, the paper will reveal the ideas or social structures that drive the institutionalization of regional relations in contemporary East Asia. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, countries in East Asia have achieved rapid economic development. In some countries, economic growth produced democracy. On the other hand, leaders of other countries have maintained a strong hold over power. In certain cases, this has lead to weak institutionalization of human rights. Through our research, we answer why some East Asian countries have achieved significant economic development while curtailing the degree of political human rights. The complete text of this paper can be requested from mandelafanon@hotmail.com [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The belief that some forms of authoritarianism are superior to democracy in promoting economic development has historically been widespread in many academic and political circles. Today, certain East- and Southeast Asian countries are often used as the mo ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas in the long term, the spread of liberal democracy and economic interdependence is expected to stabilize international politics, in the short term, the process of democratization may bring increased risk of violence. Understanding the stability of political transitions holds particular significance in East Asia, which anticipates democratization in China, and Korean unification. Whereas the democratization and war thesis expects instability in these transitions, theories of economic interdependence predict the opposite. Which theory has the greater explanatory power? To answer this question, this article tests a theory of democratization and conflict in three democratic transitions: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. These states--like the future cases--were pursuing export-led growth strategies, and thus faced potentially high costs from bellicose behavior. I test for both the occurrence of conflict and for the presence of the mechanisms through which conflict is predicted to occur (nationalism and "logrolling" by political coalitions). For the most part, evidence does not support the theory. Rather, these case studies suggest that economic interdependence stabilizes democratic transitions. This analysis suggests optimism for the future Korean and Chinese transitions; it supports theories of economic interdependence, and the strategies of engagement that they prescribe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]