Democratic transition

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

5 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

07/29/2009

Category :

Political science

Sub category :

Political science

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Summary :

Introduction
The Driven by Growth Model
The political conflict
Japan's period of economic growth
1. The favorable conditions of economic growth in postwar Japan
Crouch and Moley's theory: An analysis
Identifying the conditional obstacles to democratic reform in China
Japan's democratization
Conclusion
Works cited

Abstract

On 9 March, 2009, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that "China will never adopt Western-style democracy with a multi-party system," referring to comments made by Parliament chief Wu Banggou that "Communist party leadership should be strengthened and 'the correct political orientation' maintained" ["China 'will not have democracy,' par. 1-3]. The unprecedented economic growth in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and its maintenance of a one-party totalitarian government, challenges the hypothesis that advanced structural, socio-economic development is correlated with the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic state.

In fact, since the late 1970s and early 1980s, rather than produce political reform, economic growth has resulted in the consolidation of authority by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the expense of the democratic protest-movements of 1987 and 1989. Foreign-investment, the growth of an educated middle-class, urbanization, and a burgeoning free-market have not produced a democratic state in China. As such, the aforementioned hypothesis requires re-evaluation. The essay will focus a comparative analysis on the successful conditions of political transition in Japan, and the authoritarian, one-party situation contrasted by the PRC, to determine whether structural forces enable a multi-party, liberal democratic state.