This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It... more This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It first provides a historical background on transitions to democracy in the region before assessing the extent to which third-wave democracies have consolidated by appraising the quality of their performances. Analyses of Freedom House and the World Bank data show that the East Asian region has been slow in responding to the surging wave of global democratization in terms of not only transforming authoritarian regimes into electoral democracies, but also consolidating electoral democracies into well-functioning liberal democracies. The Asian Barometer surveys, on the other hand, reveal that the mass citizenries of China and Singapore endorse their current regime as a well-functioning democracy, and are not much in favour of democratic regime change in their country. The chapter concludes with a discussion of prospects for democratic regime change in China and Singapore.
The presence of failed states in the international system has increased, especially after the end... more The presence of failed states in the international system has increased, especially after the end of the cold war. Recent research demonstrates that state fragility and failure are strongly influenced by regime type, political instability, and economic growth. But these studies do not highlight the possibility that state fragility/failure is a function of historical path dependency. To address its prevalence and persistence in the modern world, we must focus on the unique histories of nation-states and examine how the colonial past may have led to substandard institutions and problematic state-society relations. Using an extensive dataset of nation-states in the developing world in order to conduct panel regression analyses, I find that state failure is largely a function of variations in the type of colonial rule and the duration of colonial control. British or Spanish rule, as well as the relative absence of European intervention into the polity, is associated with a lower risk of state failure, while French or Portuguese rule is associated with a higher risk. The findings imply that we need to reconsider our understanding of state failure; its very existence and persistence in the modern world are influenced by the historical process of colonialism and its institutional legacies.
Recently, economic accountability theory as a means by which to hold political leaders accountabl... more Recently, economic accountability theory as a means by which to hold political leaders accountable in the industrialized world has been generalized in transitional democracies. The theory advances how mass publics in young democracies evaluate and assess the performance of chief executives based on sociotropic or pocketbook economic evaluations and the occurrence of pivotal political events. The study finds that self-placement on poverty among Filipinos and primordial assessments of hunger are predictors of presidential approval. Pivotal political events involving attempted coups, corrupt practices and executive level malfeasance are not likely to affect presidential approval ratings over time. Furthermore, changes in the national economy have no association with Philippine presidential approval ratings from 1986–2009. The results of the study suggest that political and economic theories of accountability as applied to the developing world should be reassessed by taking into account...
THE PEOPLE POWER UPRISING of 1986 that reinstalled democracy in the Philippines after fourteen ye... more THE PEOPLE POWER UPRISING of 1986 that reinstalled democracy in the Philippines after fourteen years of martial law marked the start of the third wave of democratization in East Asia (Carothers 2002; Lapitan 1989). Among third-wave democracies globally, the Philippines was the first make the transition through mass protest. The Philippine transition was cited as an inspiration for the protest movement in Czechoslovakia that toppled the communist regime and for the 1989 prodemocracy movement in China's Tiananmen ...
Liberal Interventionism and Democracy Promotion, Mar 16, 2012
The United Nations, as an international organization, has been hesitant in sponsoring democracy p... more The United Nations, as an international organization, has been hesitant in sponsoring democracy promotion programs since its founding in 1945. Partly due to the membership of communist states within the Security Council, there was a tacit agreement among all member states that its primary mission is to secure domestic peace within borders and to engage in nation-building efforts so that postconflict states do not revert back to war (Joyner 1999). For many years, illiberal states within the secretariat and the Security Council have ...
How do attachments to political parties among the mass publics of East Asia affect the process of... more How do attachments to political parties among the mass publics of East Asia affect the process of democratization in the region? Analyses of the East Asia Barometer surveys reveal that partisanship motivates East Asians to endorse the democratic performance of their political system and embrace democracy as the best possible system of government. These findings accord, by and large, with the socialization, cognitive dissonance, and rational choice theories of partisanship.
This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It... more This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It first provides a historical background on transitions to democracy in the region before assessing the extent to which third-wave democracies have consolidated by appraising the quality of their performances. Analyses of Freedom House and the World Bank data show that the East Asian region has been slow in responding to the surging wave of global democratization in terms of not only transforming authoritarian regimes into electoral democracies, but also consolidating electoral democracies into well-functioning liberal democracies. The Asian Barometer surveys, on the other hand, reveal that the mass citizenries of China and Singapore endorse their current regime as a well-functioning democracy, and are not much in favour of democratic regime change in their country. The chapter concludes with a discussion of prospects for democratic regime change in China and Singapore.
Extant research in comparative politics has examined the role of institutional frameworks such as... more Extant research in comparative politics has examined the role of institutional frameworks such as constitutional design, the nature of the electoral systems, parliamentarism and federalism on the quality of governance. Understanding variations on effective democratic governance has assumed a state-centric approach that has largely neglected how strong legislatures can drastically affect political outcomes. This study finds empirical evidence that the strength of national legislatures (in terms of its influence over the executive, institutional autonomy, its specified powers and institutional capacity) is correlated to effective democratic governance as measured by voice and accountability, governmental effectiveness, regulatory quality, control of corruption and rule of law entrenchment based on a cross-national analysis of 150 countries with available data from the period 1996–2016. The results hold even when the sample is restricted to developing countries, where party systems are...
Critics of Philippine democracy have pointed out that the unitary system employed since the count... more Critics of Philippine democracy have pointed out that the unitary system employed since the country became a sovereign state in 1946 led to the prolonged underdevelopment of sub-national regions (provinces). Hence, policy makers have put forward the argument that a shift to a Federal system is necessary because of the imperial Manila syndrome. This is the notion that political, economic, and social underdevelopment is more prevalent the farther away a province is from the capital, Metro-Manila, which has been a longstanding theory of ‘core-periphery’ dynamics in political geography. Using sub-national data derived from Philippine provinces, the study finds that provinces farther away from Manila in terms of geodesic distance are indeed disadvantaged not only in terms of economic, poverty, and human development indicators, but also in terms of dependence on internal revenue allotments which inhibits local growth. Physical distance from the capital also decreases rural funds for provi...
Migrant remittances have been linked to improving the quality of government and political account... more Migrant remittances have been linked to improving the quality of government and political accountability in the developing world. The argument is that migrants have the capacity to withhold remittances to their families when they deem that their local governments are blighted with corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency. Relatedly, migrants also empower citizens in sub-national regions by providing funds to family members who become less beholden to clientistic ties with political parties which concomitantly foster state-level corruption. Thus, relatives of migrants also become social agents who will increasingly expect better governmental performance and demand higher levels of political accountability at the sub-national level. Using data provided by the Philippine National Statistics Office and the National Statistical Coordinating Board of the Philippines (NSCB hereafter), the study provides empirical evidence that the number of migrants (by province) and the amount of remittan...
This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It... more This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It first provides a historical background on transitions to democracy in the region before assessing the extent to which third-wave democracies have consolidated by appraising the quality of their performances. Analyses of Freedom House and the World Bank data show that the East Asian region has been slow in responding to the surging wave of global democratization in terms of not only transforming authoritarian regimes into electoral democracies, but also consolidating electoral democracies into well-functioning liberal democracies. The Asian Barometer surveys, on the other hand, reveal that the mass citizenries of China and Singapore endorse their current regime as a well-functioning democracy, and are not much in favour of democratic regime change in their country. The chapter concludes with a discussion of prospects for democratic regime change in China and Singapore.
The presence of failed states in the international system has increased, especially after the end... more The presence of failed states in the international system has increased, especially after the end of the cold war. Recent research demonstrates that state fragility and failure are strongly influenced by regime type, political instability, and economic growth. But these studies do not highlight the possibility that state fragility/failure is a function of historical path dependency. To address its prevalence and persistence in the modern world, we must focus on the unique histories of nation-states and examine how the colonial past may have led to substandard institutions and problematic state-society relations. Using an extensive dataset of nation-states in the developing world in order to conduct panel regression analyses, I find that state failure is largely a function of variations in the type of colonial rule and the duration of colonial control. British or Spanish rule, as well as the relative absence of European intervention into the polity, is associated with a lower risk of state failure, while French or Portuguese rule is associated with a higher risk. The findings imply that we need to reconsider our understanding of state failure; its very existence and persistence in the modern world are influenced by the historical process of colonialism and its institutional legacies.
Recently, economic accountability theory as a means by which to hold political leaders accountabl... more Recently, economic accountability theory as a means by which to hold political leaders accountable in the industrialized world has been generalized in transitional democracies. The theory advances how mass publics in young democracies evaluate and assess the performance of chief executives based on sociotropic or pocketbook economic evaluations and the occurrence of pivotal political events. The study finds that self-placement on poverty among Filipinos and primordial assessments of hunger are predictors of presidential approval. Pivotal political events involving attempted coups, corrupt practices and executive level malfeasance are not likely to affect presidential approval ratings over time. Furthermore, changes in the national economy have no association with Philippine presidential approval ratings from 1986–2009. The results of the study suggest that political and economic theories of accountability as applied to the developing world should be reassessed by taking into account...
THE PEOPLE POWER UPRISING of 1986 that reinstalled democracy in the Philippines after fourteen ye... more THE PEOPLE POWER UPRISING of 1986 that reinstalled democracy in the Philippines after fourteen years of martial law marked the start of the third wave of democratization in East Asia (Carothers 2002; Lapitan 1989). Among third-wave democracies globally, the Philippines was the first make the transition through mass protest. The Philippine transition was cited as an inspiration for the protest movement in Czechoslovakia that toppled the communist regime and for the 1989 prodemocracy movement in China's Tiananmen ...
Liberal Interventionism and Democracy Promotion, Mar 16, 2012
The United Nations, as an international organization, has been hesitant in sponsoring democracy p... more The United Nations, as an international organization, has been hesitant in sponsoring democracy promotion programs since its founding in 1945. Partly due to the membership of communist states within the Security Council, there was a tacit agreement among all member states that its primary mission is to secure domestic peace within borders and to engage in nation-building efforts so that postconflict states do not revert back to war (Joyner 1999). For many years, illiberal states within the secretariat and the Security Council have ...
How do attachments to political parties among the mass publics of East Asia affect the process of... more How do attachments to political parties among the mass publics of East Asia affect the process of democratization in the region? Analyses of the East Asia Barometer surveys reveal that partisanship motivates East Asians to endorse the democratic performance of their political system and embrace democracy as the best possible system of government. These findings accord, by and large, with the socialization, cognitive dissonance, and rational choice theories of partisanship.
This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It... more This chapter examines the processes of democratization in East Asia over the past two decades. It first provides a historical background on transitions to democracy in the region before assessing the extent to which third-wave democracies have consolidated by appraising the quality of their performances. Analyses of Freedom House and the World Bank data show that the East Asian region has been slow in responding to the surging wave of global democratization in terms of not only transforming authoritarian regimes into electoral democracies, but also consolidating electoral democracies into well-functioning liberal democracies. The Asian Barometer surveys, on the other hand, reveal that the mass citizenries of China and Singapore endorse their current regime as a well-functioning democracy, and are not much in favour of democratic regime change in their country. The chapter concludes with a discussion of prospects for democratic regime change in China and Singapore.
Extant research in comparative politics has examined the role of institutional frameworks such as... more Extant research in comparative politics has examined the role of institutional frameworks such as constitutional design, the nature of the electoral systems, parliamentarism and federalism on the quality of governance. Understanding variations on effective democratic governance has assumed a state-centric approach that has largely neglected how strong legislatures can drastically affect political outcomes. This study finds empirical evidence that the strength of national legislatures (in terms of its influence over the executive, institutional autonomy, its specified powers and institutional capacity) is correlated to effective democratic governance as measured by voice and accountability, governmental effectiveness, regulatory quality, control of corruption and rule of law entrenchment based on a cross-national analysis of 150 countries with available data from the period 1996–2016. The results hold even when the sample is restricted to developing countries, where party systems are...
Critics of Philippine democracy have pointed out that the unitary system employed since the count... more Critics of Philippine democracy have pointed out that the unitary system employed since the country became a sovereign state in 1946 led to the prolonged underdevelopment of sub-national regions (provinces). Hence, policy makers have put forward the argument that a shift to a Federal system is necessary because of the imperial Manila syndrome. This is the notion that political, economic, and social underdevelopment is more prevalent the farther away a province is from the capital, Metro-Manila, which has been a longstanding theory of ‘core-periphery’ dynamics in political geography. Using sub-national data derived from Philippine provinces, the study finds that provinces farther away from Manila in terms of geodesic distance are indeed disadvantaged not only in terms of economic, poverty, and human development indicators, but also in terms of dependence on internal revenue allotments which inhibits local growth. Physical distance from the capital also decreases rural funds for provi...
Migrant remittances have been linked to improving the quality of government and political account... more Migrant remittances have been linked to improving the quality of government and political accountability in the developing world. The argument is that migrants have the capacity to withhold remittances to their families when they deem that their local governments are blighted with corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency. Relatedly, migrants also empower citizens in sub-national regions by providing funds to family members who become less beholden to clientistic ties with political parties which concomitantly foster state-level corruption. Thus, relatives of migrants also become social agents who will increasingly expect better governmental performance and demand higher levels of political accountability at the sub-national level. Using data provided by the Philippine National Statistics Office and the National Statistical Coordinating Board of the Philippines (NSCB hereafter), the study provides empirical evidence that the number of migrants (by province) and the amount of remittan...
Uploads
Papers by Rollin Tusalem