Asian democracy cannot slavishly copy West

• Source: Global Times
• [08:19 December 02 2009]
• Comments

By Zhang Weiwei

The election-linked massacre in the Philippines last week shocked the world.

The grim fact is that there have been almost 1,000 political murders in the country since 1986.

When I visited the Philippines in 2005, I asked many local residents why there were so many political murders there.

A friend, who is well informed on Philippine politics, told me that, "Political posts are source of great riches for politicians, thus many of them often take great risks to hire killers to murder their opponents and journalists who dare to expose the truth."

The Philippines used to be considered Asia's "showcase of democracy" by the US. It copied the US's political systems, including separation of powers, separation of the state and religion, and constitutional democracy.

However, for almost a century, the country's political power lies in the hands of a few flamboyant clans. Behind the recent massacre, it is a fight among powerful political clans.

The Philippines used to be the economically strongest country next to Japan in the region, but the US-style democracy did not bring it prosperity and affluence as its people wished. Instead, instability and poverty dragged behind the whole country.

Many Asian countries and regions also adopted Western political systems. But considering their conditions in recent decades, one could fi nd that these "democratic" regimes have not done well. They are generally faced with divided society, extreme corruption and an economic downturn.

These are the typical syndromes of Western-style democracy in the Third World.

Countries like India languish in government inefficiency, severe corruption and being too weak to eradicate poverty. Even South Korea, which adopted Western political systems after its economic takeo¢ , is confronted with similar difficulties.

According to mainstream Western theories of democracy, a low quality of democracy is attributed to two factors. The fi rst is a lack of independent judicial power and the spirit of the rule of law.

Famous jurist Harold J. Berman once said that the law must be believed in, or it will exist in name only. Asian communities are generally empty of Western-style tradition of the rule of law.

The second factor is inadequate civil culture. Civil culture is specific customs and attitudes, characterized by rationality and tolerance.

Due to the absence of civil culture, it's easier for politicians to fool the people and propagate populism. As a result, people's collective interests are damaged.

Sure, we need to intensify our work to strengthen the independence of the judiciary, promote the spirit of the rule of law, and develop civil culture, but the sharp cultural di¢ erence between Asian and Western communities should also be taken into consideration.

Customs, habits and systems in the West are individualoriented, while in Asian countries, they are based on family and family-derived interpersonal relationships.

The best approach toward democracy is to consider one's own culture and traditions while carrying on institutional innovation, so as to draw on the advantages of democracy and avoid the pitfalls of change, instead of blindly transforming one's culture to adapt the political systems set in Western cultures.

An overall imitation of culture can never succeed. Many developing country that copies Western systems ends up in failure.

They could neither eliminate corruption nor resolve modernization problems. There is no such model of democracy that fits every nation.

Moreover, Western political systems are the fruit of the West's historic evolution, and still have a large amount of problems.

In general, we ought to strike out in another direction toward democracy. Maybe we can align with such a way of thinking: Since Western democracy has been simplifi ed into procedural democracy, we can do it conversely, exploring new democratic procedures and forms oriented to the definition of democracy.

Democracy should be a combination of procedural democracy and essential democracy, with essential democracy being dominant.

It should embody the values it serves, especially people's willingness to realize national prosperity and high quality of people's lives.

As for the procedure and form of democracy, di¢ erent countries could explore this in different ways. No one can monopolize the process.

The author is a senior research fellow at the Modern Asia Research Center, Geneva University, Switzerland.
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