Democratic Regressions in Asia

The book studies and compares causes, catalysts and consequences of democratic regression and revival in South, Southeast, and Northeast Asia.

The Asia-Pacific presents social scientists with a natural laboratory to test competing theories of democratic erosion, decay, and revival and to identify new patterns and relationships. This volume combines conceptual and comparative research with single case studies. Overall, the collection of studies in this volume captures different forms of democratic regression and autocratization, examine how Asia-Pacific experiences fit into debates about democracy’s deepening global recession and what the Asia-Pacific experiences contribute to the understanding of the causes, catalysts, and consequences of democratic regression and resilience in the comparative politics literature.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Democratization.

Aurel Croissant is Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Science, Ruprecht-Karls-University, Heidelberg, Germany. His main research interests include the comparative analysis of political structures and processes in East and Southeast Asia, the theoretical and empirical analysis of democracy, civil-military relations, terrorism, and political violence.

Jeffrey Haynes is Emeritus Professor of Politics at London Metropolitan University, UK. His areas of expertise are religion and international relations, religion and politics, and democracy and democratization. His publications include more than 50 books, most recently: The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Politics and Ideology (ed.) (2022) and Trump & the Politics of Neo-Nationalism. The Christian Right and Secular Nationalism in America (2021).