Kingston, Jeff. "Democracy and Nationalism" In Nationalism in Asia: A History Since 1945, by Jeff Kingston, 88-117. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016.

Kingston, Jeff. "Democracy and Nationalism" In Nationalism in Asia: A History Since 1945, by Jeff Kingston, 88-117. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016.

• Democracy is usually seen as a system of government that fosters tolerance, individual liberty, and pluralism. There is not, however, necessarily a connection between democracy and liberal values, as free and fair elections can still produce illiberal democratic governments. Democracies crackdown on press rights, oppress minority groups, and tolerate corruption (88-89).
• Nationalism poses a particular threat to liberal values in democracies, as nationalist slogans and collective identity can often rally voters to support policies that violate individual and minority rights (89-90, 100).
• Many prominent Asian leaders in the period immediately following decolonization felt that democracy had shallow roots in Asia. To some, like Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, this was a call to further democratize their countries, but to others, like Lee Kuan Yew, it implied that Asia should reject democracy and instead adopt autocratic governments more in line with Asian history and traditions (90-91).
• Despite dire predictions about the incompatibility of democracy and 'Asian values', democracy has succeeded in many parts of Asia, especially since the 1980s. Even in authoritarian nations like China, Thailand, and Myanmar, people have repeatedly challenged authoritarian governments in attempts to establish democracy (91).
• The term 'Asian values' was coined in the 1990s by autocratic governments to justify their continued rule by arguing that democracy and human rights are Western concepts, not universal ones, and fundamentally incompatible with Asian culture. These regimes argued that only their style of government was able to produce social and economic development in Asia (92).
• Critics of 'Asian values' have noted that the idea of Asia sharing a common culture in ridiculous considering the continent's diversity, especially since the values often draw from Confucianism, which was historically restricted to East Asia. They also point to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis as evidence that autocratic governments do not guarantee economic growth (92).
• China has firmly resisted the trend of democratization in Asia since the 1980s, crushing the Democracy Wall Movement in 1989 and suppressing protests in Hong Kong in 2014 for increased democratic rights. Additionally, the Communist Party has created a durable system were many have a stake in preserving the authoritarian government (93).
• China is a one-party dictatorship that seriously curbs its citizens' individual liberties and freedom of expression; it does not practice any meaningful form of democracy. It maintains support by providing economic growth and societal stability, both of which it warns would disappear in its absence. This is combined with a large secret police force to crack down on dissenters (94). The author warns that China's political stability may decrease in the future as the Communist government becomes increasingly unable to supply higher quality of living or redress economic inequality (95).
• Mao echoes previous Chinese leaders in his assertion that China cannot be strong without an autocratic government and that democracy would only lead to division and strife (96). The Communist Party today views Mao's legacy as mixed and seeks to avoid the kind of chaos and upheaval that he represented (97).
• Liberalization in the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev during the late 1980s, and especially his visit to Beijing and normalization of relations with China, inspired Chinese students and liberals to seek similar reforms from their own government (95-96).
• After days of protests in Tiananmen square, Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng declared martial law on 4 July 1989, killing several hundred or up to a thousand protesters while cleaning Tiananmen square. This was followed by wider arrests and the purging of many liberal sympathizers from the Communist Party (95-96).
• China has continued to resist attempts at democratization and liberalization following 1989. Threats to Party rule, such as the writings of Liu Xiaobo, are censored and their authors imprisoned, as China views these activities as analogous to the gradual liberalization that preceded collapse in the Warsaw Pact (96).
• The rise of the internet has created new opportunities for Chinese to question the government and its policies. Social media and the proliferation of small blogs have allowed information and grievances to spread far more quickly, making effective censorship difficult. This has prevented the Party from controlling the narrative, exposing it to popular demands in domestic and foreign policy, and giving Chinese access to non-official sources on controversial events and topics (97-98).
• The Party is aware of the public relations damaged created by social media and the internet, and is seeking to address this by allowing limited criticism, trying to be more responsive to local grievances, particularly on environmental issues, and emphasizing its paramount role is stably governing the country (98-99).
• Under Xi Jinping, censorship of the internet has been expanded, with the government mandating the registration of all bloggers. China has also taken robust measures to enforce its internet firewalls, banning the use of VPNs in 2015 and dismantling many of these services (99-100).
• Since his ascension to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has attempted to raise the Party's public profile with an anti-corruption campaign specifically targetting elite corruption; so far he has arrested a number of regional Party bosses and a Politburo member. He has kept to the preexisting strategy on combatting democratization (99).
• The Xi government has dismissed or arrested a number of academics who challenged the Party to democratize or exposed hypocrisy regarding the Constitution. His government has also prohibited the discussion of a number of liberal issues in schools or universities (117).
• India has a liberal Constitution and formal rights, but governance and electoral practice seriously erode the substance of Indian democracy. The latest trend has been the election of the BJP in 2014, bringing to power a Hindu Nationalist party that actively seeks to erode liberal values (93, 105).
• Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, sought to make India into a secular democracy and prevent the rise of Hindu nationalism. This impulse was at its most extreme in the immediate aftermath of Partition, when many elements of Congress supported sectarian violence against Muslim in retaliation for Pakistani treatment of Hindu minorities (105).
• The Indian National Congress was dominated Indian politics since independence, as the prime ministership passed largely within the Nehru/Gandhi family line. The Emergency, a period of 19 months when democracy and associated civil rights were suspended, trashed Congress's reputation and led to its first electoral defeat, in 1977 (105-106).
• During the Emergency, hundreds of thousands were arrested without trial and over 5 million forcibly sterilized. Sikhs were particularly targeted since the major Sikh party, the Akali Dal, attempted to become a locus of opposition. Over 40,000 Sikhs were arrested during the period and it sparked a bloody guerrilla war in Punjab that ultimately led to her assassination by Sikh bodyguards in 1984 and subsequent riots that killed thousands of Sikhs (105-106).
• The Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] is the main force of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, in Indian politics. Although it ultimately seeks to make India a Hindu state rather than a secular one, the BJP has moderated many of its positions to become more electable (106).
• The BJP is a branch of a larger group of Hindu nationalist organizations called the Sangh Parivar. These groups, including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and Bajrang Dal, shift civil society towards Hindu nationalism and foment violence against Muslims, Christians, and other unwelcome minorities (106-107).
• Hindu nationalists have been able to mobilize around powerful symbols and widespread public support, as demonstrated by the public outcry regarding the Ayodhya mosque. Tensions over the Ayodhya mosque, deliberating stoked by BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani during his 'chariot ride' across the country to Ayodhya, in the early 1990s marked the political party's rise (107).
• Narendra Modi, elected prime minister in 2014, has focused less on traditional Hindu nationalist issues and more on economic and social development and against corruption. This change is because the BJP has realized that Hindu nationalism appeals to too narrow a social base and that other issues are needed to win elections (107-108).
• Although no longer at the forefront its policy, the BJP is still Hindu nationalist. Prime Minister Modi himself presided over Gujarat during a pogrom there in 2002 and was complicit in allowing  widespread violence against Muslims (108).
• The BJP supports an active and vigorous Indian security policy. It was under the BJP that India tested nuclear weapons in 1998, the first since its invention of nuclear weapons in 1974 (108).
• Japan has been a democracy since the late 1800s, despite its government being highjacked by the armed forces in the 1920s onward. The 1947 Constitution imposed by the USA created a stable democratic structure. Japanese politics are securely democratic, but apathetic with low voter turnout and a few substantive difference between the Liberal Democratic Party and its major rivals (93).
• The US occupation of Japan successfully inculcated democratic values while maintaining strict censorship regarding American war crimes and blaming all wartime devastation on the militarists in Japanese government. Fearing that poor economic conditions would feed into a powerful leftist union movement, the US occupational authorities allied themselves with conservative elements of the former imperial government to rebuilt Japan (101-102).
• The Liberal Democratic Party has dominated Japanese politics since its foundation in 1955 with monetary assistance from the CIA. It combined conservative economic policies, unapologetic Japanese nationalism, and support for the alliance with the US. These policies, particularly anti-union actions and rearmament to assist the US, were often deeply unpopular in Japan (102).
• The Liberal Democrats never really accepted responsibility for Japanese crimes during the Second World War. This was represented by Kishi Nobusuke, their first prime minister elected in 1957, who was himself a Class A war criminal narrowed spared prosecution (102).
• The Liberal Democrats competed with the Socialist Party for power during most of the postwar period, with the Socialists opposing their whitewashing of Japan's wartime conduct and advocating for the removal of the Emperor. Liberal Democratic plans to restore Japan as a full military ally of the USA and its complicit in union busting throughout the 1950s and 1960s were also major issues between the parties (102-103).
• The Liberal Democrats remained in power during the 1950s and 1960s because they were able to create the 'Japanese miracle' of rapid economic growth. Japan was able to double average income in 7 years. This prosperity was able to secure support for the government despite its unpopular security policies (103).
• The Liberal Democrats were able to further preserve power by reinventing themselves in the 1970s when the extent of environmental and health damage caused by Japanese industries became apparent. Despite having close connections with major industries, the Liberal Democrats fought to clean up industrial practice and passed health and environmental regulations (103).
• The Socialists ceased to be a powerful force by the late 1970s and had faded into obscurity by the 1990s, taking up a tiny portion of seats in the Diet (115).
• There have only ever been two periods of modern Japanese history when the Liberal Democrats were not in government: in 1993, when a grand coalition of opposition parties took control, and in 2009, when the Democratic Party of Japan won power (103).
• In 1993, economic mismanagement surrounding a real estate bubble combined with a high-profile scandal involving Liberal Democratic leaders, major corporations, the Yakuza, and kickbacks in the construction industry. As a result, a grand coalition of the opposition briefly formed a government (103).
• In 2009, concerns about income inequality provoked by the increasingly neoliberal slant of Liberal Democratic policies in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis led to the landslide victory of the Democratic Party of Japan, which promised social democratic welfare measures. The Democratic government was inept in making its reforms, however, while also alienating the US over the Okinawa naval base, sparking tensions with China over disputed islands, failing to facilitate economic recovery, and mishandling the Fukushima nuclear disaster. All of these factors combined to enable a Liberal Democratic victory in 2012 (103).
• The decades of nearly uninterrupted Liberal Democratic rule have created a sense of inevitability and contributed to voter apathy. The bureaucracy has also become adapted to Liberal Democratic government and there is a sense that it will continue the same policies even if another party was in power. These combined to make Japanese government unresponsive and technocratic, despite being a democracy (104).
• Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has brought the military and Japan's wartime conduct back to the fore of Japanese politics. He is trying to remove Article 9 of the Constitution to allow Japan to reestablish a formal military, and is attempting to whitewash the formal history surrounding Japanese war crimes (104).
• Some commentators have noted that the extreme disorganization of the opposition since the Democratic Party of Japan's lackluster government combined with Prime Minister Abe's active push to engage in collective defense have created a 'crisis of democracy' in Japan were the formal institutions and practices of democratic governance are being subverted (104).
• South Korea established its democracy in 1987 after student protests overthrew the military dictatorship, having previously languished under Japanese colonial rule and military rule. Politics is dirty and voters express deep concerns with the conduct of Korean politicians, but support for democracy is widespread (93-94).
• Korea faced partition between rival American and Soviet occupations following the Second World War, prompting opposition by Korean nationalists against both sides. On the American side, this played out as a leftist insurgency against an American-backed military government composed of former Japanese collaborators (109).
• The leftist insurgency broke out in rebellion on Jeju island in 1948, prompting a brutal response by the South Korean military government. As many as 30,000 were killed by South Korean soldiers and 70% of villages on the island were destroyed during the fighting. The massacres were covered up until democratization in 1987 and Jeju residents did not receive an official apology until 2003 (109).
• As a result of the Korea War, both Koreas remained highly militarized and their regimes were backed to the hilt by their, respective, American and Soviet allies. America selected Syngman Rhee to lead South Korea, and his regime was autocratic, corrupt, and deeply unpopular (109).
• A heavily rigged election in 1960 sparked major street protests than led to Syngman Rhee's replacement with Park Chung-hee. The economy prospered under Park Chung-hee, but he was still deeply authoritarian and his government routinely beat, jailed, and tortured dissenters (109-110).
• Park Chung-hee was assassinated by his intelligence chief, Chun Doo-hwan, in 1979, who then held rigged elections to declare himself president. His government killed hundreds while crushing a student protest for democracy at Gwangju in 1980, staining his rule. The Chun government also jailed over 60,000 citizens under the pretense of 'reeducating' communists (110).
• The Chun government ended in 1987, when widespread protests in favor of democracy erupted at the same time that international attention was fixed on South Korea due to its hosting of the 1988 Olympic Games. Chun Doo-hwan stepped down and allowed elections, which his handpicked successor, Roh Tae-woo, won because the two democratic opposition leaders divided the vote (110).
• Kim Young-sam was elected president in 1993, marking the first democratic transition of power in South Korea. His fellow opposition leader, Kim Dae-jung, was elected in 1998 and began a process of national reconciliation, pardoning Chun Doo-hwan (110).
• Since the 1990s and 2000s, South Korea is remarkably robust with citizens playing a very active role in holding politicians accountable. This accountability often involves punishing former politicians for political gain and can be merciless. Citizen inquiries drove former President Roh Moon-hyun to suicide in 2009, after which the rival government of Lee Myung-bak investigated his family on bribery charges. Lee Myung-bak then faced his own corruption inquiry in the early 2010s (110).
• The election of Park Geun-hye divided voters on the legacy of her father's military government, with conservative voters typically remembering the rapid economic growth and liberals the violent state repression. Her election also marked a souring of relations with Japan, as she sought to fight Japan on its colonial history in order to deflect criticism about her father's service in the Japanese army prior to independence (111).
• Democratization has seen the reemergence of tensions with Japan over atrocities during the colonial period and possession of the Dokdo islands, previously hushed up by the military governments. Such issues are particularly volatile because they involve South Korean politicians. The opening of archives in 2005, for example, showed that the Park government had accepted over $80 million from Japan in war reparations earmarked for specific victims of colonial atrocities and then spend it on infrastructure and development projects instead (111).
• Indonesia was initially a democracy following independence, but that state quickly renatured into a quasi-autocratic rule under Sukarno. In 1966, he was overthrown by Suharto, under whom elections were reduced to formality until his ouster in 1998. Indonesia has been democratic since then, but any elements of the dictatorial order under Suharto's military rule remain (94, 111-112).
• Indonesia's initial period of democratic parliamentary rule from 1949 to 1957 was factitious and ineffective (111), as predicted by Sukarno, who believed that majoritarian democracy would conflict with the traditional consensus-based decision-making processes of local communities (112).
• Sukarno declared martial law in 1957 to crush several regional separatist rebellions and disbanded the legislature. Democracy was reestablished in 1959, but under the 1945 Constitution, which granted an enormous amount of power to the executive (112).
• Sukarno supported a blending of militaristic nationalism, Islamic identity, and communism into a syncretic Nasakom ideology as a way to pave over political divisions in Indonesia. This movement never really took, as the militarist, Islamist, and Communist factions all rejected Nasakom (112).
• Indonesia took a turn for the worst in the 1960s as Sukarno escalated a border war with Malaysia in Borneo during a period of considerable Islamist unrest and severe economic collapse (112). 
• In September 1965, the military, in collaboration with Islamist groups, carried out massive attacks against Communists throughout Indonesia under the pretense that the Communists had attempted to overthrow the government. It is unclear whether they was a Communist coup attempt or if this was a fabrication by Suharto. Either way, the military seized effective control and perhaps as many as 1 million suspected Communists were murdered over the course of several months of bloodshed (112).
• The military government branded itself the 'New Order' and, on 11 March 1966, Sukarno officially signed over power to General Suharto. The military governed through rigged elections won by the Golkar party, which all civil servants were mandated to join. It maintained legitimacy through public order, including banning the Communist Party, and solid economic policies designed to raise standards of living (112-113).
• The military dominated all the top levels of government during this period and also had a number of reserved seats in parliament, usually around 15% of the total. The last of these reserved seats were only relinquished in 2004 (113).
• The New Order finally collapsed in 1998 after the regime's mismanagement of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Suharto stepped down in favor his Vice President, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, who allowed free elections in 1999. The elections were won by Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno's daughter, with Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie losing the nationalist vote due to his compromise on Timor-Leste (113).
• Parliament elected Abdurrahman Wahid, the head of a small moderate Islamist party, as president of a coalition government. The country faced widespread chaos, economic collapse, and violence during this period and the leadership was mostly feckless. President Wahid was impeached in 2001 following a corruption scandal (113).
• Megawati Sukarnoputri was then elected president, but proved inept and deeply corrupt. She lost a direct presidential election in 2004 to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. President Yudhoyono was unremarkable and kept Indonesia on a steady path towards democratic consolidation, being reelected in 2009 (113).
• The military has retreated from politics following democratization, but its opinions are still known and politicians often have implicit agreements with the military to not attempt to hold officers accountable for past crimes or to investigate ongoing kickback and corrupt schemes involving the military (113-114).
• Religion is a major force in Indonesian politics, with Islamist parties usually catching between 1/3 and 1/4 of the vote share. These votes are, however, split between many different groups. These Islamist parties usually base their support on providing social services and education not covered by the government. They are opposed to Islamic extremism (114).
• Joko Widodo beat millionaire businessman Prabowo Subianto in the 2014 presidential election, winning despite his position as a political outsider. Joko Widodo won promising populist policies and appealing to dissatisfaction regarding corruption (114).
• Prabowo Subianto was Suharto's son-in-law and commander of special forces responsible for killing civilians during student protests in Jakarta in 1998. These crimes are not, however, remembered by younger Indonesians and his charismatic style led him to hotly contest the election (114).
• President Widodo's party only controls a third of parliament, leading his government hobbled and forced to depend on support from coalition partners. He is also constrained by his party's leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri (114).