Rapid economic pluralization in East Asia has empowered local and medial groups, and with this change comes the need to rethink usual notions regarding ways in which "e;democracies"e; emerge or "e;citizens"e; gain more power. Careful examination of current developments in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia show a need for expansion of our understandings of democracy and democratization. This book challenges traditional ways in which political regimes in local as well as national polities are conceived and labeled. It shows from Asian experiences that democracy and its precursors come in more forms than most liberals have yet imagined.In reviewing recent experiences of countries across East Asia, these chapters show that actual democracies and ostensible democratizations there are less like those in the West than the surprisingly consensual and standard political science of democratization suggests. This book first examines the extreme variation of democracy's meaning in many Asian states that hold contested elections (South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand). Then it focuses on China. It analyzes a range of grassroots forces driving political change in the People's Republic, and it finds both accelerators and brakes in China's political reform process. The contributors show that models for China's political future exist both within and outside the PRC, including in other East Asian states, in localities and sectors that already are pushing the limits of the powerful, but no longer all-powerful, Chinese party-state.With contributions from leading academics in the field, Democratization in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia? will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, comparative politics, and democratization more broadly.

1. Diverse Routes to Democracy: An Introduction, Lynn T. White III Part I: Variety among Asian Democracies and Democratizations 2. South Korean Democracy in Light of Taiwan, Erik Mobrand 3. Taiwan's Democratization and Mainland China's Future, Shelley Rigger 4. Strategic Hypocrisy: Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Commerce in Archipelagic Southeast Asia, Justin V. Hastings 5. Democracy and Inequality in Thailand: The Rise of the Red Shirts, Erik Martínez Kuhonta Part II: Constitutional and Legal Proto-Democratic Changes in China 6. The Local Factor in China's Intra-Party Democracy, Cheng Li 7. Why Did China's Reform Start from the Provinces? De facto Federalism and its Limits, Yongnian Zheng and Cuiwen Weng 8. Law and Democracy in China: A Complex Relationship, Jacques deLisle 9. Suing the Government in China, Neysun A. Mahboubi 10. Petitioning as Policy Making: Chinese Rural Tax Reform, Jing Chen Part III: Proto-Democratization in Chinese Civil Society 11. The Fragmented State in Action: The Production and Governance of Art Districts in Beijing, Yue Zhang 12. China Invests Overseas: Does the Strong State Help China's Outbound Investment?, Min Ye 13. All the News, All the Politics: Sophisticated Propaganda in Capitalist-Authoritarian China, Guoguang Wu 14. Chinese Nationalism Reconsidered-Or, a Case for Historicising the Study of Chinese Politics, Ja Ian Chong 15. How the Internet is Changing China, Kate Xiao Zhou with Stephen Zierak.