Introduction Aurel Croissant Introduction: Aurel Croissant The late twentieth century was a time of global democratization. Between 1974 and 2000, the number of democracies world-wide increased from 39 to 120 (Diamond, 1999; Freedom House, 2000a). However, comparative studies on democratic development in different continents paint a clear picture: the global trend of democratization was weakest in Asia(Croissant, forthcoming). Annual reports of the United States-based Freedom House Institute, for instance, show that in terms of political and civil rights, Asia even lags behind Africa, a region notorious for its record of authoritarian regimes and human rights violations (Freedom House, 2000a; Emminghaus and Nord, 2000; Karatnycky, 2000). Freedom House’s data as well as several case studies 1 disclose two trends of political development in Pacific Asia in the last 25 years: First, democratization processes are fragile. During the 1970s and 1980s, many endangered and unstable democratic regimes developed, which often fluctuated between democracy and dictatorship. It was not until the early 1990s that the data indicated a trend toward stable democracy. Second, new democracies exhibit one common characteristic: at the end of each transition stands the institutionalization of the model of representative democracy. In representative democracies, elections and electoral systems are of crucial importance because elections are the most significant mechanism for citizens to exercise their rights of political participation; and the electoral system is the main institution for transforming political preferences, expressed by votes, into political representation. Because most democracies in Asia show significant deviations in form and substance when compared to liberal democracy in Western Europe and North America, the liberal and even democratic character of these regimes is often doubted(Neher and Marlay, 1995; Zakaria, 1997: 22-43; Aquino, 1998: 1; Jones, 1998: 147; Hewison, 1999). Depending on the observer’s theoretical preferences, analytical tools and, last but not least, his/her normative ideals, democracies in Asia are classified as‘Asian-style democracy’(Neher and Marlay, 1995), ‘illiberal democracy’(Bell et al., 1995) or‘Confucian democracy’(Chaibong, 1995: 343). Because of a lack of space, we cannot discuss this point at length. 1. Since the early 1970s, Freedom House has compiled an index of political regimes which is composed of two partial indices: the Political Rights Index and the Civil Rights Index. Both range from one to seven points(the higher the score, the lower the quality of political and civil rights in a system). Together these two indices can be seen as an indicator for liberal democracy. Once again, the lower the score, the higher the level of democratic constitutionalism. For methodology see Emminghaus and Nord, 2000: 167 and Schmidt, 2000: 408. For an overview see Croissant, forthcoming; Hewison, 1999: 224. 1