Michael Auslin: Turkey and Japan at the Crossroads
[Michael Auslin is director of Japan studies at the American Enterprise Institute.]
In the 1960s, American political scientists became fascinated with political modernization in Turkey and Japan. They wanted in particular to discover the precedents that allowed two very different societies — one a centuries-old multiethnic empire, the other a feudal, isolated group of islands — to shake off the fetters of tradition and radically remake their political, economic, and social systems in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This month, as citizens in both Turkey and Japan cast votes that will help determine the future of their countries, political analysts should look once again at the antipodes of Asia to see where democracy is heading in two of the world’s most important societies....
The democratic dramas playing out in Turkey and Japan are important for those watching the tide of liberalism around the world. Should one bookend of Asia turn away from liberal norms while the other fails to reform its stagnant economy, the democratic model will suffer. This is all the more worrisome as the world watches the resurgence of authoritarian regimes in China, Iran, and Russia. The insulting dismissal of Turkey’s EU application by France and Great Britain has shown how capricious the club of “advanced” nations can be. At the same time, the Eurozone crisis and China’s economic eclipse of Japan has called into question the ability of representative regimes to maintain economic growth. The result is a general skepticism of democracy and liberalism just at the moment when democratic nations must join together to repulse the challenges to their systems and the world order that has guided international development since the 1940s....
Read entire article at National Review
In the 1960s, American political scientists became fascinated with political modernization in Turkey and Japan. They wanted in particular to discover the precedents that allowed two very different societies — one a centuries-old multiethnic empire, the other a feudal, isolated group of islands — to shake off the fetters of tradition and radically remake their political, economic, and social systems in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This month, as citizens in both Turkey and Japan cast votes that will help determine the future of their countries, political analysts should look once again at the antipodes of Asia to see where democracy is heading in two of the world’s most important societies....
The democratic dramas playing out in Turkey and Japan are important for those watching the tide of liberalism around the world. Should one bookend of Asia turn away from liberal norms while the other fails to reform its stagnant economy, the democratic model will suffer. This is all the more worrisome as the world watches the resurgence of authoritarian regimes in China, Iran, and Russia. The insulting dismissal of Turkey’s EU application by France and Great Britain has shown how capricious the club of “advanced” nations can be. At the same time, the Eurozone crisis and China’s economic eclipse of Japan has called into question the ability of representative regimes to maintain economic growth. The result is a general skepticism of democracy and liberalism just at the moment when democratic nations must join together to repulse the challenges to their systems and the world order that has guided international development since the 1940s....