Deliberative Democracy in Asia

Baogang He, Michael Breen, James Fishkin, Baogang He, Michael Breen, James Fishkin

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367609009
• eBook ISBN: 9781000427301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Featuring cases from India, China, Nepal, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Mongolia and Malaysia, the authors demonstrate and compare the differing uses of public deliberation in Asia.

Many countries in Asia have long traditions of public deliberation, in both democratic and undemocratic settings, some of which continue today. Yet in the face of pressures from complex governance, popular protests and democratization, certain deliberative practices – notably deliberative polling – have been 'parachuted' into the region without regard to historical or traditional practices of deliberation. And, the motivations differ. Some states have made use of public deliberation in order to contain dissent, while others have more emancipatory goals in mind. The contributors to this book take a comparative perspective on the emergence and evolution of deliberative practices in Asia, and their relationships with democracy. They analyse the main motivations for introducing public deliberation in different political regimes and the effectiveness of public deliberation in Asian countries for solving problems and improving governance. In doing so they evaluate whether deliberative democratic tools, can apply to all societies regardless of their political and cultural differences.

Essential reading for students and scholars of Asian Politics, this book will also be of great use to all political scientists with an interest in deliberative democracy.

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Deliberative Democracy in Asia

Past, Present and Future

Baogang He and Michael G. Breen

DOI: 10.4324/9781003102441-1

Setting the Scene and the Aims of the Book

Over the past two decades, a wide range of consultative and deliberative meetings have been introduced in Asia. From the reinvigoration of traditional village deliberation to the introduction of Western models of Deliberative Polling®, public participation is burgeoning. Nevertheless, the scholarly work on Asian deliberative democracy is lacking. Although there is a growing body of literature on some Asian countries, the Asian story of deliberative democracy has seldom been heard as a whole. This edited volume is the first to take a comparative perspective on the emergence and evolution of deliberative practices in Asia, and their relationship with democracy. It analyses the main motivations for introducing public deliberation in different political regimes, the effectiveness of public deliberation in Asia, and whether deliberative democratic tools, in particular the Deliberative Polling technique, can apply to all societies and cultures, regardless of their political and cultural differences. In doing so, it examines the prospect of deliberative democracy in Asia.

Featuring cases from India, China, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Japan, Mongolia, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, the edited book reveals the differing uses of public deliberation, from the control of dissent to the empowerment of the public, the impact of traditions, cultures and political regimes, and provides insights into different applications of public deliberation across the region.

This book also features renowned figures in the field of deliberative democracy in Asia and the world, such as James Fishkin, Yasunori Sone, Garry Rodan and Mark Warren, bringing together cases from across Asia to address critical questions concerning the past, present and future of deliberative democracy in Asia. It includes academic specialists and practitioners working in fields of development, public consultation and constitution-making. Although Asia has both an extensive experience and tradition of both public and elite deliberation, scholarly analysis has been limited. Most of the research to date has been by the contributors to this volume.

This volume shows how participatory and deliberative institutions are pursued and promoted by national or local leaders, as well as by rural and urban residents in Asia. It focuses on deliberative processes, deliberative institutions, deliberative democratisation and their contribution to governance in Asia. Currently, most research work often examines an individual case of deliberative democracy practice in one Asian country. This edited book aims to develop a comparative study and create new knowledge of deliberative innovations in Asia.

This chapter has six sections. Section 1 provides an overview of the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. Section 2 addresses the question of why Asia needs public deliberation to develop, improve and deepen democracy. Sections 3, 4 and 5 examine the issues concerning deliberative traditions, the current state of affairs, and prospects of deliberative democracy in Asia respectively. Section 6 offers an abstract of each chapter.

The Theory and Practice of Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy can be described as an ideal or approach that emphasises the role of deliberation among equals, that induces reflection, and that results in binding and legitimate decisions. Decisions should be based on the “power of reason,” rather than political, economic, or military power. A deliberative democracy can use a variety of methods towards reaching collective decisions. Bachtiger and Parkinson (2018), for example, argue that a deliberative democracy is one where “deliberativeness” – reason giving and mutual reflection - is integral to the overall working of a democratic system. Deliberation can be defined separately, as “mutual communication that involves weighing and reflecting on preferences, values, and interests regarding matters of common concern” (Bachtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren 2018, 2).

Deliberative democratic theory has made great advances over the past 40 years, since the beginning of “the deliberative turn” in the early 1980s (Floridia, 2018). Early proponents like Elster (1998), Cohen (1989), Fishkin (1991, 1997), Dryzek (2000, 1990), Habermas (1996, 1984) and Rawls (1993) contributed to the development of a coherent theory of deliberative democracy, which remains a major field of research today. The turn of the century saw deliberative democratic theory enter an experimental phase and begin to demonstrate how deliberative democracy can work in practice, primarily at the micro-scale through demonstration “mini-publics.”

Deliberative democracy has influenced theory and practice in several areas including participatory budgeting, public policy, global climate, and constitutionalism (Levy and Kong, 2018). Unlike the conventional constitutionalism study which is “conceived narrowly as ways of curbing political power” (2018, 2), deliberative constitutionalism examines how to establish and expand the power of public deliberation in the constitution-making process, how deliberation shapes constitutionalism, and how constitutionalism shapes and affects deliberation. However, deliberative constitutionalism remains “abstract and largely unmoored from any particular legal and constitutional tradition” (Levy and Kong, 2018, 2); it lacks the empirical study of how deliberative constitutionalism can work in divided societies. Several chapters in this edited book examine the mechanisms, roles and functions of public deliberation in the process of constitutionalism in the Asian divided society context.

The most important developments in deliberative democratic theory include John Dryzek’s (2005) seminal work on deliberative democracy in divided societies and Fishkin’s (2011, 2018) Deliberative Polling on constitutional matters. Both address the domination of politicians, political party leaders, and lawyers, and the exclusion of ordinary citizens in constitutional building and design. Their work has stimulated ongoing discussion about whether deliberative democracy can be effective in deeply divided societies, given the potential for increased polarisation and emotive, value-based debates (see Dryzek, 2005, 219–22).

Furthermore, while Fishkin (2009) invented the Deliberative Polling technique and favoured working with the government directly, Dryzek (2005) emphasises that deliberation can be effective in deeply divided societies, if it instead occurs in a “semi-detached” sphere and is not associated with issues of identity and national sovereignty. Dryzek argues that deliberation attached to decision-making results in people (especially elites) being unlikely to change their minds and is instead polarising. He favours local level deliberation and is critical of elite and party-based deliberation.

Two of the most widespread and influential deliberative methods are Deliberative Polling, which is one focus of this volume, and Citizen’s Assemblies. Deliberative Polling was first introduced in Fishkin’s seminal publication Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reforms (1991). Deliberative Polling uses social science methods to ascertain a “more genuine public opinion” – one that is the result of informed reason exchange and reflection.

The Deliberative Polling methodology uses a randomly selected cohort of citizens, who are provided with a balanced and independently reviewed briefing package, prior to deliberating together about a set of issues or problems. The use of a questionnaire that is administered both before and after the deliberation is key to the approach. In this way, and because the sample is representative, opinion change can be detected and extrapolated onto the broader public. Deliberative Polling has been implemented in more than 30 countries across the world, including several countries in Asia. Fishkin argues that Deliberative Polling can be implemented in any context regardless of culture.

Deliberative democratic theory is now taking a systemic turn (Mansbridge et al., 2012). In 2012 Mansbridge and other leading deliberative democracy scholars issued a “manifesto” for a deliberative systems research agenda. A deliberative system encompasses an approach to governing whereby reason-based discussion, reflection and consensus-building are central to policy- and decision-making processes (Bachtiger and Parkinson 2019, Mansbridge et al., 2012). A deliberative system is not necessarily democratic, and deliberation is itself contingent, performative and distributed (see also Curato, this volume).

Public deliberation is not necessarily democratic either. He and Warren (2011) introduced the concept of authoritarian deliberation, through an analysis of China. Authoritarian deliberation “combines authoritarian distributions of the power of decision with deliberative influence” (He and Warren 2017, 156). He and Warren (2011; 2017) argue that the introduction of deliberative methods in China was primarily functionally driven and that it could serve to either consolidate and stabilise authoritarianism or lead to the incremental democratisation of the regime. Several of the case countries considered in this volume, most notably Singapore and Malaysia, are sometimes described as semi-democratic, technocratic or authoritarian (e.g. Case 2007, Rodan 2018). So what makes deliberation democratic?

According to Warren (2017) to be considered democratic, a system must serve three functions: it must empower inclusion; enable collective agenda and will formation; and organise collective decision-making. He highlights that deliberative approaches are not suitable for furthering all democratic objectives, that each mechanism (e.g. voting, deliberative mini-publics) has different strengths and weaknesses and that there could be “institutional mixes of practices that would maximise a political system’s democratic problem-solving capacities” (Warren, 2017, 39). Warren identifies seven generic political practices, including elections and deliberation.

Why Deliberative Democracy in Asia?

There are many concepts of democracy. The most commonly held view equates democracy with (free and fair) elections and majoritarian rule (e.g. Dahl, 1989, Przeworski et al., 2000), which are the basis of most contemporary measures of democracy (e.g. Marshall, Gurr and Jaggers, 2019, Freedom House, 2019). Following this conceptualisation of democracy, we have observed a deepening of democracy in North East Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Mongolia), but democracy is in trouble in many parts of South and South East Asia (Freedom House, 2019). Elections have placed in power nationalist, populist and military-backed regimes, and in many countries, human rights are under threat. In Malaysia, hopes that the 2018 election had heralded a new democratic era were dashed when the vanquished former Barisian Nasional coalition returned to power, despite it lacking an apparent parliamentary majority. Myanmar’s military continues to stonewall democratic reform and perpetuated large-scale atrocities on Rohingya people. Thailand remains largely under military rule (even after elections), while Cambodia and Bangladesh have both used extrajudicial means to restrict opposition movements and predetermine election outcomes. The populist President Duterte of the Philippines has become well-known for state-sanctioned human rights abuses as part of his war on drugs. In India, Prime Minister Modi has used his huge majority to lead a Hindu nationalist agenda that has resulted in an eruption of violent protests right across the country. In Sri Lanka, the electorate returned alleged war criminals to power, in polls called after the unconstitutional dismissal of the prime minister by the then president. These are just some examples.

The world and Asia have witnessed the crisis of democracy. The quality of democracy has declined in India, Cambodia and Myanmar. Thailand has experienced further setbacks and the retreat of democracy, and China has resisted democratisation. The crisis of democracy is worsening in the public sphere: fast and fake information invades and occupies social media just as fast food fills people’s stomach (see also Sone, this volume). To deal with the crisis of Asian democracy, Khanna (2019, 302) describes a new process of gradual shifting from democracy to technocracy in Asia. While there are elements of emergent technocracy in Asia, technocracy itself faces the challenge of complexity governance, information management and citizen’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• 1. Deliberative Democracy in Asia: Past, Present and Future
• 2. Village Deliberative Democracy and Village Governance in China
• 3. Indonesia: Deliberate and Deliver – Deepening Indonesian Democracy through Social Accountability
• 4. Deliberative Democracy in Indian Villages
• 5. Nepal: Participatory and Deliberative Constitution-making in a Divided Society
• 6. Deliberative Democracy versus Elite Deliberation in Malaysia
• 7. Consultation as Non-Democratic Participation: Singapore and its Implications
• 8. The Philippines: An Uneven Trajectory of Deliberative Democracy
• 9. Democracy and Deliberative Polling in Policymaking in Japan
• 10. Deliberative Democracy in South Korea: Four Deliberative Polling Experiments
• 11. Deliberative Polling on the Amendment of the Press Law and the Audio-Visual Broadcasting Act in Macao
• 12. Mongolia: Piloting Elements of a Deliberative System
• 13. Conclusion: Comparative Questions About Deliberative Democracy in Asia
• Index