The Long Struggle: Enlightenment, Counter-Enlightenment, and the Importance of Ideas in Democratization

Abstract

The parts of Asia we are looking at have more than half of the world's population, but the issue of how democratization occurs and why is even bigger than just an Asian matter. It is global, and at its heart is something that has been a controversial process in at least parts of the world for well over two centuries. The following papers show that the diversity of experiences within Asia itself—even within any of its major subregions, East, Southeast, and South Asia—is so great that it might seem foolhardy to claim that some common ideas transcend region and encompass not only Asia but all of humanity. But I want to try. In addition, I want to emphasize, as the other papers on democratization in this issue also demonstrate, particularly the one by Mark Thompson, that insisting on an “Asian” compared to a “Western” vision of what democracy means is drastically misleading. The struggle over conflicting ideas at the heart of the matter has taken place everywhere, and still does.