Abstract
A Empirical Study on the Democratic Quality of Political Regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand
Choi, Kyung-Hee
This study purports to delineate major politico-economic determinants of the democratic quality of the 4 Southeast Asian political regimes, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, through an empirical-comparative analysis.
The democratic quality, which is the dependent variable, was operationally defined in terms of the representativeness and the responsiveness of political regime, while seven factors-industrial structure change, income allocation, role of the state, role of the capital, role of the labor, level of the civil liberty, globalization- were selected as explanatory variables. Five tentative casual model were then constructed and statistically tested by employing multiple regressions analysis.
From the analysis, one may conclude that from 1985 to 2000 the democratic quality of the 4 southeast asian political regimes has depended primarily more on the social-structural factors than on the civil-society factors. In a global scale, the levels of democratic quality of these nations are not so high as the POLITY Ⅳ index indicates. It is, however, the focal point as well as the theoretical contribution of this study that the macro-structural factors, not the civil-social factors, could exercise decisive role in determining the degree of democratic quality in case of the non-Western political regimes.
Key words : democratic quality, empirical area studies, social-structure change, civil-society, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand.
Abstract
A Empirical Study on the Democratic Quality of Political Regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand
Choi, Kyung-Hee
This study purports to delineate major politico-economic determinants of the democratic quality of the 4 Southeast Asian political regimes, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, through an empirical-comparative analysis.
The democratic quality, which is the dependent variable, was operationally defined in terms of the representativeness and the responsiveness of political regime, while seven factors-industrial structure change, income allocation, role of the state, role of the capital, role of the labor, level of the civil liberty, globalization- were selected as explanatory variables. Five tentative casual model were then constructed and statistically tested by employing multiple regressions analysis.
From the analysis, one may conclude that from 1985 to 2000 the democratic quality of the 4 southeast asian political regimes has depended primarily more on the social-structural factors than on the civil-society factors. In a global scale, the levels of democratic quality of these nations are not so high as the POLITY Ⅳ index indicates. It is, however, the focal point as well as the theoretical contribution of this study that the macro-structural factors, not the civil-social factors, could exercise decisive role in determining the degree of democratic quality in case of the non-Western political regimes.
Key words : democratic quality, empirical area studies, social-structure change, civil-society, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand.