Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context

Abstract

Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context. By Daniel A. Bell. Princeton, New Jersey and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. Hardcover and softcover: 379pp. The issues surrounding transferability of liberal democratic governance to non-Western societies have been at forefront of normative studies in vast literature on democratization and democratic theory, particularly since end of Cold War. This period has also coincided with U.S. foreign policies of democratic enlargement and transformation, together with robust role played by international non-government organizations in facilitating development and institutionalization of liberal democracy and civil society in societies around world. Paralleling these developments in international relations has been unprecedented economic growth and development witnessed in many East Asian societies in this age of economic globalization. It is at interface between universal spread of liberal democratic thinking and rise of East Asian economies that issue of transferability of liberal democratic governance has become a significant area of intellectual and scholarly inquiry for students of democratization, political theory and philosophy, and Asian governments, politics, and philosophy. Daniel Bell's recent work, Beyond Liberal Democracy, makes a significant contribution to this area of study and it ought to be read by scholars who are undertaking research in this area. This work is a culmination of at least a decade of thinking and writing by a scholar who has observed closely many intellectually significant issues that have arisen from political developments in East Asian societies during this period. Although some of themes in this work have been examined by Bell in his previous works, most notably in East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), this latest work covers a broad range of new issues. This combined with elegant narrative form in which Beyond Liberal Democracy is written makes for an interesting and timely piece of scholarship that should attract a wide readership. Organizationally, book is divided into three parts, each addressing of components identified by Bell to be the main hallmarks of liberal democracy--human rights, democracy, and capitalism (p. 9), in other words, constituent parts of democratic capitalism. Operationally, Bell has delineated these three areas by examining (1) Human Rights For An East Asian Context, (2) Democracy For an East Asian Context, and (3) Capitalism For An East Asian Context. Clearly ambitious in its scope, Beyond Liberal Democracy is product of Bell's efforts to consolidate in comprehensive work many issues that have arisen in recent years following counter-arguments provided by political, cultural, economic, and normative experiences of East Asian societies. In this sense, readers would benefit from being exposed to intellectual evolution of many issues raised in debates surrounding transferability of liberal democratic governance, as seen from East Asian perspective. While Bell does an adequate job of laying out these arguments in a fair and balanced way, nature of questions raised preclude any definitive or conclusive arguments that would lay these issues to rest once and for all. Indeed, could speculate that rather than to aim for latter; Bell's real contribution with this book is to raise some of fundamentally significant questions that subsequent works in this area of study would have to address and with which future scholars would have to contend. The main argument in Bell's book is that when it comes to question of transferability of liberal democratic governance, one size doesn't fit all (p. 1), and that Western advocates of universality of liberal democracy who miss this important insight often do so through an almost unconscious sense of cultural parochialism shaped by Western intellectual development of ideas associated with liberal democracy. …