The Research Orientations of East Asian Studies on People’s Political Regime Preference: A Nascent Analysis from Perspectives of Illusion and Reality

Title

The Research Orientations of East Asian Studies on People’s Political Regime Preference: A Nascent Analysis from Perspectives of Illusion and Reality

Author

Wen-Cheng CHEN

Page

213-260

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.202212_19(2).0006

Abstract

What is the favorite political regime of East Asians? There are two basic research orientations revealed in academic community of this field in terms of research method: for this paper’s research purpose, one is called “democratic regime preference orientation” and the other is called “concealed regime preference orientation.” The fundamental data, on which the former orientation scholars rely, are derived from the answers of those respondents who are asked with D-word statements. Those data, however, are illusory because the respondents are poorly informed about political regime identification. And thus, the literature based on unreliable data is meaningless in nature, even though the result of empirical assessment by those data showed that 66 percent of East Asians prefer democratic regime when we assess them from indicators of cognitive, institutional and behavioral level respectively. By contrast, the data that “concealed regime preference orientation” scholars collect are derived from the answers of those respondents who are asked by statements without D-word. Because the questions are focused on extant regime in which respondents live, the answers respondents made are based on their clear and concrete experiences, so they are meaningful in nature. Under these circumstances, the respondents need not have any capacity of regime identification. And then, the literature based on the realistic data is relatively reliable. Accordingly, this paper finds that, the regime preference of East Asians is tripartite: some people favor democratic regime, some support hybrid regime, and some others prefer authoritarian regime. Significantly, the ratio that people support hybrid and authoritarian regime is higher than seventy percent, but that of those who favor democratic regime is about forty percent. In other words, each hybrid and authoritarian regime in East Asia has been consolidated, but countries adopt democratic regime in the region are assessed as “fragile democracies.” Finally, this paper makes suggestions in two ways: academically, scholars should focus on extant regime studies when they try to delve into East Asians’ preference of political regime, because they are meaningful; scholars of “democratic regime preference orientation” should make some reforms about research methods; and scholars in this field must embark on studying issues about people’s capability of regime identification. Practically, leaders in the real world should make efforts to accelerate the quality of governance whatever political regime they favor. For the legitimacy of any given regime is eventually evaluated by people in terms of the good governance.

Keyword

democratic regime preference, concealed regime preference, democratic cognition, democratic institution, democratic behavior

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