Can there be a grand theory that can help us make coherent sense of the unique patterns generally found in Asian countries in areas as diverse as state—society relationship, economic development, democracy, governance, and public policy? In this ambitious and thought-provocating book, Bruce Gilley argues that what he calls the “Asian Governance Model” (hereafter the AGM) can fulfill this seemingly impossible task. Gilley’s central argument is that variegated religious and cultural traditions in Asia notwithstanding, countries in the region have developed a shared political culture that prizes the state—run by virtuous political leaders and public officials committed to the common good and constrained by the social norms of accountability—as the key vehicle toward national integrity, political stability, and economic development. This shared political culture obtains even when their regimes have been democratized, their economies are largely market friendly, and their governance has been decentralized. Underlying this empirical observation is the claim that the AGM can both explain the internal political dynamics of the region, which can hardly be captured by its liberal alternative, and provide an evaluative framework by which to assess the Asian practice of governance on its own terms.
In a sense, the book’s specific vindications of the AGM hinge critically on the author’s overarching claim about the distinctively Asian mode of state—society relationship, and indeed this is the topic with which Gilley begins the first substantive chapter (Chapter 2). After singling out the ideal of the rational, unified, and strong state, which has normative supremacy over society, as the most salient political feature that Asian countries historically share, he argues that modernization of Asian states has been propelled not by bottom-up changes from civil society but through “self-renewal” of the states, from Oriental despotism to “refined Oriental despotism,” according to which “strong states, acting under norms and laws, govern through bureaucracies and according to a conception of the common good” (p. 27). What characterizes Asian societies is the Hegelian embeddedness of society in the state, which enables the latter to remain “dominant but not intrusive or abusive” (p. 38).
In Chapter 3, Gilley discusses economic development from the Asian perspective of state—society relationships. He argues that the society’s normative dependence on the state in Asia facilitates a so-called pro-growth alliance between state and society, engendering a particular mode of politics in which the state, while maintaining its social dominance, induces society to participate in the cooperative venture toward national stability and prosperity. The contentious politics is still there but, according to Gilley, even it unfolds within pro-growth social values to which both state and social actors are precommitted. That is, in Asia, contentious politics is “organized” by the state itself, socially constrained by the norms of accountability in delivering public goods, and it ultimately contributes to “developmental citizenship,” a citizenship “mainly conceived in terms of rights and obligations relating to economic development” (p. 81).
In Gilley’s view, democratization in Asian countries, such as, but not limited to, Indonesia and the Philippines, is another way in which the state-organized contentious politics was expressed. What is notable in democratic transition in the Asian region, he argues in Chapter 4, is that the Hegelian organic unity between state and society renders it “strongly continuist” (p. 99), that is, without a radical breakup with the authoritarian (even ancient) past. The reason is that in Asia, democracy has been pursued as an “indigenous response to new governance challenges” (p. 102) in the era of globalization. As a form of paternalistic meritocracy, argues Gilley, “[democracy] has always been understood as state-preserving, developmental, majoritarian, and consensus-based in its essentials” (p. 103). In short, in Asia, democracy is valued largely for instrumental reasons (i.e., for internal governance purposes), and the contentious politics spurred by democratic movements are deeply oriented toward shared national purposes. The author is convinced that this sort of the state-led, governance-motivated democratization—what he calls “responsive transition” (p. 114)—would be attractive to authoritarian regimes such as China and Vietnam.
In Chapter 5, Gilley turns to the question of governance. He argues that the strongly bureaucratic tradition in Asia gave rise to so-called developmental administration (p. 146), even in those countries that have undergone the recent new public management (NPM) revolution. In fact, he continues, NPM, when employed in Asia, has created a unique mode of networked governance in a way that revitalizes the traditional ideas of good governance and moral mechanisms of accountability, rendering otherwise contentious negotiations between state and society more manageable and effective (p. 152). Here, special attention is paid to the fact that in the course of governance-oriented democratization and public administration reforms, legislatures, courts, and civil societies played mainly “remonstrative” functions in their contentious engagements with the state and rarely asserted themselves as the state’s (i.e., the executive’s) arch opponents.
The harmonious network governance that the AGM generated has made the nature of public policy in Asia more growth oriented than distributive, and this is the main focus of the sixth and final chapter. According to Gilley, at the center of public policy in Asia is what some scholars call “welfare developmentalism,” the position that ties “social spending closely to employment and productivity, designing programs with an eye to avoiding welfare dependency and introducing programs on the basis of economic logic rather than social rights” (p. 191). Once again, Gilley reminds the reader that the contentious politics in Asia revolves not so much around individual or group “rights” but around the proper (and socially expected) function of the state in promoting genuine public interests (p. 196). He concludes this chapter (and the book) by stressing the domestic origins of democratization and governance reforms in Asia and how the same domestic factors constrain aggressive behaviors of the states in the region, thus contributing to global peace.
Overall, I find Gilley’s argument quite insightful. His greatest contribution lies in drawing attention to the primacy of politics in Asian politics, especially its remarkable ability to appropriate modern social, political, and economic institutions in a way aggregable to existing cultural norms and practices, as well as to orient social contestations toward the state’s overall purposes. Moreover, the AGM makes possible a coherent understanding of the otherwise odd juxtapositions prevalent in Asia—between the strong state and the strong market, between persistent state dominance and increasing decentralization of government, and between the strong state and ceaseless social contestations. Of course, it is an open question whether China’s democratic transition will be as smooth as Gilley conjectures, or whether social contestations in Asia are as tractable as he claims.
That being said, the book’s provocative nature comes from the theoretical underpinning of the AGM. What is truly remarkable (in both positive and negative senses) about The Nature of Asian Politics is that it derives its theoretical inspirations from such classical figures in sociology and political science as Montesquieu, Hegel, Weber, and Wittfogel, commonly known as “Orientalists.” Admittedly, it is their monolithic and static understanding of “Asia” that brings these figures, with all their differences, into one group. Gilley’s guiding ambition is to draw on the thesis of Oriental despotism as a methodological tool and develop it into a new analytical concept called “refined Oriental despotism.” Nevertheless, it is dubious whether this controversial strategy, positing uninterrupted historical continuity between ancient and contemporary “Asia,” is necessary in making his core argument focused on shared governance style in contemporary Asian states. By tracing the AGM back to ancient Asia and by presenting “Asia” as a self-reproducing social reality, however, the author risks another form of Orientalism, not of his preferred methodological version but of a normative kind that is likely to reify Asia into a static category of social analysis, despite his desire to represent “Asia” on its own terms. Much gets obscured, rather than revealed, when it is assumed that there is no qualitative distinction among Chinese Confucianism, Indonesian Islam, and Thai Buddhism as long as they all buttress a strong state or virtuous political leadership.
This is not to say that to think about modern Asia as a political concept reflecting its increasingly shared political practices and governance styles is impossible or unimportant. My point is that Gilley could have made his core argument, which connects political culture to governance style more effectively and convincingly, even if he did not take the dangerous path of Orientalism. Despite this quibble with the book’s methodological strategy and basic assumptions, I find it full of interesting observations and compelling qualitative analyses. This is a must-read for anyone interested in Asian politics, especially those who are struggling with Asia’s nonliberal path toward political changes, social reforms, and economic development.
