Road to good governance and modernization in Asia: ‘Asian values’ and/or democracy?

Abstract

Democracy is often considered a constitutive part of ‘good governance’, especially under the auspices of Western hegemony. Asian leaders have posed ‘Asian values’ as an alternative to democracy. Actually, Asian culture is heterogeneous, intricate and evolving. Even if ‘Asian values’ may be held by some to be obstacles for the development of democracy at this point of history, no one can be sure that this will definitely be the case in future. This article looks at the relationship between democratization and modernization following ‘Asian values’ discourse. Given the fact that both Asians and Westerners are human beings, sharing more commonalities as humans than differences, thus, to insist that Asia and the West should walk totally different paths of development is to exaggerate the cultural differences between the East and the West, while to assert that the Asians will follow the exact footsteps of the West is, indeed, hard determinism.

Keywords:

• democracy
• Asian values
• modernity
• good governance
• theoretical discussion
• philosophical discussion

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Sima Sengupta for critical reading and editing of this article.