‘East is East, and West is West’? Reimagining Asian Exceptionalism and the Study of Democratization

Abstract

The rich country-specific inquiries of Asian studies built a large stock of information that magnifies the exceptionalism of Asia’s experiences (see also Acharya 2001). This contrasts against systematic treatments of the large- and medium-N varieties associated with disciplinary emphasis on theory-building and empirical predictions in comparative studies. Of course, theory-building is not fundamentally at odds with information-gathering and vice versa. Yet, a successful mediation between theory-building of comparative studies on the one hand, and focused small-n or country-specific Asian scholarship on the other, remains the exception rather than the rule. Instead, tensions dog Asian studies regarding what and how to front scholarship – as part of theory-building exercises versus underlining and differentiating Asian studies – to the latter’s detriment as its “noticeable inhospitable”-ness to theory-building increasingly sidelines its scholarship.