East Asia’s new democracies: an introduction

The third wave of democratization, begun in Portugal in 1974, has ignited a sequence of democratization and liberalization in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and more recently East-Central Europe. Within East and Southeast Asia, the process commenced with the 1986 People’s Power Revolution in the Philippines and was succeeded by Korea’s eight-point reform in 1987, the repeal of martial law in Taiwan in the same year, the introduction of two-party electoral competition in Mongolia during 1990, Thailand’s return to civilian rule in 1992, and the downfall of the Suharto regime in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong have also witnessed a certain measure of liberalization.