Deliberative Democracy in Asia (Politics in Asia)

Featuring cases from India, China, Nepal, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Mongolia and Malaysia, the authors demonstrate and compare the differing uses of public deliberation in Asia.

Many countries in Asia have long traditions of public deliberation, in both democratic and undemocratic settings, some of which continue today. Yet in the face of pressures from complex governance, popular protests and democratization, certain deliberative practices – notably deliberative polling – have been ‘parachuted’ into the region without regard to historical or traditional practices of deliberation. And, the motivations differ. Some states have made use of public deliberation in order to contain dissent, while others have more emancipatory goals in mind. The contributors to this book take a comparative perspective on the emergence and evolution of deliberative practices in Asia, and their relationships with democracy. They analyse the main motivations for introducing public deliberation in different political regimes and the effectiveness of public deliberation in Asian countries for solving problems and improving governance. In doing so they evaluate whether deliberative democratic tools, can apply to all societies regardless of their political and cultural differences.

Essential reading for students and scholars of Asian Politics, this book will also be of great use to all political scientists with an interest in deliberative democracy.

Baogang He is Alfred Deakin Professor, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Chair in International Relations since 2005, at Deakin University, Australia, and was inaugural Head of Public Policy and Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Michael G Breen is a McKenzie Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Melbourne and is the author of The Road to Federalism in Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka: Finding the Middle Ground (2018, Routledge).

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science, is Director of Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy and Chair of the Dept of Communication and in 2014, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.