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Human rights, democracyand development: Thedebate in East AsiaRosemary Foot aa Director of the Asian Studies Centre , StAntony's College , OxfordPublished online: 26 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Rosemary Foot (1997) Human rights, democracy anddevelopment: The debate in East Asia, Democratization, 4:2, 139-153, DOI:10.1080/13510349708403518

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510349708403518

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Human Rights, Democracy andDevelopment: The Debate in East Asia

In the last few years, certain East Asian1 elites have claimed there exists aset of common or shared Asian values that justifies their own specialinterpretation of human rights and the rejection of Western conceptions ofliberal democracy. The most vocal elements in this debate have beengovernment officials in Singapore, Malaysia and China. However, othergovernments in Asia have become associated with the argument in partbecause Asian states adopted by consensus the Bangkok Declaration onHuman Rights in April 1993 which asserted that while human rights wereuniversal 'they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolvingprocess of international norm setting, bearing in mind the significance ofnational and regional particularities and various historical, cultural andreligious backgrounds'.2 Moreover, delegates to that conference alsoemphasized the right to development as a universal and inalienable humanright, in effect giving such a right priority over those associated withdemocratic freedoms.

This 'Asian values' debate has received enormous attention in the pressand increasingly in the academic literature because it represents, currently,the most significant and sustained challenge to universal conceptions ofhuman rights, in the absence of a confrontation with the former Europeancommunist bloc. Although the argument between universalists andparticularists is hardly a new one, and indeed has been a debating point inWestern political thought for at least two centuries,3 this new phase in theargument has promoted the view that the West and Asia are on a collisioncourse, and that there is some substance to the notion that we are on the roadto a 'clash of civilizations' .4 The aim of this article is to set out some of thereasons for the significance of this debate, to outline the 'Asian' case, toprovide an explanation of why it is being promulgated now and in such aconfrontational way, and to offer a critique of it in an attempt to shore upthe commitment to universality.

Rosemary Foot is the John Swire Senior Research Fellow in the International Relations of East Asia,and the current Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford. An earlierversion of this article was given as a paper at a St Antony's seminar series on 'Democracy andDemocratization'. The author would like to thank all those who participated in this series for theircomments, and especially Laurence Whitehead and Marc Williams for their written suggestions.

Democratization, Vol.4, No.2, Summer 1997, pp.139-153PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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The Importance of the 'Asian Values' Debate

The articulation by a number of East Asian elites of an oppositionaldiscourse is important for reasons connected with the arguments themselvesand because it is promoted most strongly by representatives of economiesthat have been stunningly successful over the last several years, and in thecontext of relative political stability and public order. Such economicsuccess amidst order inevitably increases the level of interest in thearguments, especially on the part of those searching for the key todevelopment and growth. The content of this debate is important, then,because it reinvigorates a discussion about the relationship between humanrights, democracy and economic development - whether all these goodthings do go together and if so in what kind of order.

The post-cold war era has witnessed the re-emergence of the claimwithin the West and in the international financial institutions thatdemocratic good governance is not an outcome or consequence ofdevelopment, but a necessary condition of it. It is an argument that remainscontentious, partly because academic work points to the complexity ofmeasuring such interrelationships, and partly because it seems politicallymotivated, given that it is a reversal of the claim made in the 1960s and1970s that development had to be viewed as a necessary condition for theimplementation of human rights and democracy.5

The 'Asian values' argument also feeds into concerns in the West aboutthe economic effects of its post-war welfare policies. With western welfaresystems under strain, not least because of the ageing population structureand, with an economic pie that expands at too slow a pace to take accountof burgeoning social needs, there is a concern that the West's societies havebeen too wrapped up with the political and procedural aspects of democracyand have neglected the question of what these polities have been set up todeliver in the socio-economic realm. This unease reinforces the point thatsome Asian elites make that debates about democracy should turn rathermore on the outcomes that are delivered than about the methods of rule.

Furthermore, if it is accepted that the debate on democracy should focusmore on outcomes, then it raises questions about who is the model now: hasthe 'soft authoritarianism' of Singapore become an increasingly viablealternative to Western liberal democracy?6 Since one of the distinguishingfeatures of the twentieth century has been the striving for economicdevelopment, and the categorizing of states as, for example, 'advancedindustrial' or 'least developed', then the discovery of 'miracle' growthpatterns7 will inevitably lead to a search for the particular features that areassociated with it.

With respect to the East Asian argument on human rights, this claim

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either to cultural particularism or to the need for the sequencing of rights isobviously a challenge to the universalist message at the heart of the concept.It had previously been argued that within the limits of global human rightsstandards, there could be some acknowledgement of cultural difference. AsR.J. Vincent put it, the United Nations in its encouragement of theestablishment of regional human rights frameworks was recognizing theirrole as 'local carriers of a global message'.8 Now it seems that regions, withsome of the Asian states as active proponents, have re-emerged as vehiclesfor the promotion of conflicting concepts of human rights. Geoffrey Besthas argued in reference to statements of the kind that marked the end of theBangkok conference, they represent a version of the idea that 'universalitycan mean no more than a plurality of mutually-tolerant national and/orregional variants'.9 Thus, the international legal order that has been sopainstakingly built in this area is under vigorous attack.

The Nature of the East Asian Debate

The 'Asian values' debate - at least at the level of political elites - tends topose the argument over what constitutes human rights and democracy inpolarized terms. It contends that Asia and the West are strikingly differentkinds of societies; indeed, for some that Asia might be superior given thatits industrious, hard-working, chaste, family-centred populations comparefavourably with the lazy, high spending, low investing, violent and self-centred populations typical of Western societies.10

In slightly less polemical form, it is argued that Asian states give priorityto the community and family rather than the individual. They strive forconsensus, harmony and political stability rather than opposition andcontention. They prefer strong governments rather than the messiness andunpredictability of political pluralism. And they derive comfort fromestablishing governments that are led for long periods by benevolentfigures, who recognize their duty to do right by the people, and who in turnwill deserve the trust and respect of the population. Government leadersthus have a protective and tutelary function, and there is a high expectationthat such rulers should demonstrate the ability to construct wise policies andto maintain a high standard of moral behaviour."

On the question of human rights, there is an acknowledgement of theneed to respect the dignity and worth of the human person, but the view isthat this is best achieved by political regimes dedicated to social order andrapid economic growth - hence the emphasis on freedom from hunger, andthe right to development. Political instability, poverty and economicinsecurity are seen as major causes of human rights abuses. Thus, theargument runs, there should not be a focus on individual rights but on

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collective rights; better still, there should be an emphasis on duties andobligations rather than rights because the latter are seen as adversarial andconfrontationalist, and as being close to becoming demands. Duties andobligations, on the other hand, are perceived as conducive to the promotionof harmony and stability, as helpful to the building of reciprocal relationsand to the fostering of a climate of accommodation.12 Asians, it is argued,value order above individual rights and are willing to accept that there is atrade-off between the two.

To bolster these arguments, many of these governments would point toimproved literacy levels, longer life expectancy, and rising Gross NationalProduct (GNP) per capita as evidence that human rights, defined incommunitarian ways or in quality of life terms, have improved. As theChinese government's December 1995 White Paper on human rightsclaimed, a paper which begins by noting there has been a quadrupling ofGNP between 1980 and 1995:

The Chinese people's life has improved greatly and they are workinghard to achieve a comfortable life. Today political stability, economicdevelopment and social progress are characteristics of China's newsocial order, along with ethnic unity, domestic harmony and acontinually rising standard of living, thereby demonstrating theoverall improvement in human rights.13

Singapore officials, too, are keen to point to the country's GNP havinggrown 35-fold over the period 1965 to 1992; to its full employment; its highforeign reserves; and the growth in the numbers of home-owners andshareholders, to name but a few of the benefits that have accrued over thepast 30 years. Even if that might have come at the expense of constraints onfreedom of expression, restrictions on rights of association, and the use ofdetention without trial, the economic results are perceived to justify suchcurtailment of liberties.14

The Intensification of the Debate

Positive and negative elements explain the intensification of thesearguments in the first half of the 1990s. Undoubtedly, the dramaticeconomic success of many if not most of the economies in East Asia hasgiven rise to greater political confidence and to the belief that as theirrelative power has increased so should their ability to construct theinternational normative agenda. Why should the human rights discoursecontinue to be set, they argue, by Western countries experiencing socialbreakdown, a decline in moral authority, and a growing distrust in their ownlong-established liberal-democratic institutions?

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However, other elements are less a reflection of assertiveness derivingfrom a deeper political confidence and display more of a defensive reactionto domestic and international pressures. Rapid socio-economic change hasshaken up these societies more fundamentally than any other factor. Indeed,Kishore Mahbubani, permanent secretary in Singapore's Ministry ofForeign Affairs, has described economic development as 'probably the mostsubversive force in history'.15 Foreign capital, for example, has not acted asa neutral force but has brought with it values that have undermined localvalues and cultures, steadily integrating certain sections of the populationinto a cosmopolitan, global culture.

Globalization weakens family and traditional structures leaving avacuum at the societal level unless these structures are replaced with newassociational ties. For some East Asian societies that vacuum may well havebecome a stark reality. In Singapore, for example, a 1990 survey of opinionreported that 43-8 per cent of the population feel '"politically alienated" inthe sense of a "difference between perception of citizens' influence onnational issues, and the perception of how much influence citizens shouldhave on national issues'". In addition, there is a perceived lack of a feelingof belonging: as the Minister for Information and the Arts (BrigadierGeneral George Yeo) put it in June 1991, Singapore had created 'not anorganically integrated community but a "five star hotel", where residentsmight like to spend a vacation but not a lifetime'. This belief is bolstered byevidence about emigration: even Prime Minister Goh has lamented the factthat all his school friends are in either the United States or Australia,16

seemingly failing to note that they had chosen to go to those same societieswhich his country's officials had typified as being morally andeconomically bankrupt.

In addition, the end of the cold war and with it the loss of the restraininginfluence of superpower rivalry has made the West more interventionist.There has been a perceived expansion in western governments' globalnormative ambitions to include the policy of 'democratic enlargement'associated with the Clinton administration." The International MonetaryFund and the World Bank have each become associated with governance-related questions. And in the absence of the cold war fear that countriessubject to pressure would turn to the Soviet bloc for succour, the West seemsmore willing to try to exercise leverage to fulfil these new objectives. AsPrime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia put it at the Non-Aligned Summit inDjakarta in September 1992: 'Without the option to defect to the other side,we can expect less wooing but more threats'.18

Conditionality and its embodiment of ideas about 'good governance'which move the concept beyond its narrow form of administrative ormanagerial competence to include, in its most expansive form, some

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suggestion that aid recipients must demonstrate a commitment towards theestablishment of Western-style democratic practices, is particularlyresented.19 It is also seen as disingenuous and is interpreted as a means ofreducing the competitiveness of these successful Asian economies, becauseAsian leaders assume that political change will undermine stability andhence the continuation of economic advancement.

It is perceived as hypocritical given the West's past role as colonizers,supporters of racism, and perpetrators of the holocaust,20 together with itsmore recent inconsistencies in behaviour with respect to Bosnia, Algeriaand Iraq. It is feared as an attack on the international norm of statesovereignty, a norm that these states have been particularly keen tosafeguard given their relatively recent struggles for independence andconcerns for national resilience and national unity. Finally, it is seen as apartial argument, for where is democracy when it comes to internationalfinancial institutions or the UN Security Council? As Mahathir has argued:'They talk about democracy and the need for us (the Third World) topractise democracy but, on the other hand, when it comes to internationaldemocracy, there is no one country one vote, it is a question of how strongyou are.'21 Democracy for the West, then, is seen to stop at the water's edgeand not to filter out into the international realm.

A Critique of the 'Asian Values' Position

Clearly, some of these criticisms are weighty and have been made before byscholars from the West as well as elsewhere. As Andrew Hurrell has argued,for example, in reference to the move to apply human rights or pro-democracy conditionalities to the economic relationship between states, it isextremely difficult to maintain either consistency or coherence in such apolicy in the face of cross-cutting interests. There have been many examplesin the post-cold war era where this inconsistency has already beendemonstrated.22 However, although we might note the power of some ofthese criticisms of Western behaviour, these essentially politicalexplanations for the character and presence of this 'Asian values' argumentundercuts the claims for cultural exceptionalism or historical particularism.Many of these points of criticism relating to hypocrisy in fact suggest anunderlying common moral ground between the West and Asia.23

The East Asian attachment to the norm of state sovereignty neglects anyreference to its original Western provenance. The cultural or values aspectsof the argument, promoted particularly strongly by Singapore, areadditionally damaged when ostensible and sometime supporters of theposition, notably China, claim that economic and social development has tobe achieved before full political and civil rights can be put into place. As has

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recently been argued in China's 'White Paper' in its promise of a betterfuture in the country: 'some human rights situations are not so satisfactorybecause of the limitations of history and level of development'.24

Two other key features also undermine the East Asian case: mattersconnected with the diversity of Asia; and the misrepresentation of the'other' in this debate, that is, the West.

On all counts - religious, linguistic, ethnic, economic and political -East Asia is an enormously diverse region. Even the common Confuciantradition in North-east Asia has given way to cultural variation. In South-east Asia, countries are particularly heterogeneous, with all the world'smajor religions present here. Economically, there are countries such asJapan with a GNP per capita (1993 figures) of US$31,490, compared withUS$2,110 in Thailand and US$170 in Vietnam.23

Additionally, a great range of political systems is represented from therecognizably democratic Japan at one end of the political spectrum, to thetotalitarian North Korea at the other end, with various soft and hardauthoritarian regimes in between. We also have a number of countries thathave rapidly democratized recently - South Korea and Taiwan being themost notable examples. There is little or nothing in the 'Asian values'argument to help explain this latter phenomenon, although rather frequentreference to the damage it is likely to cause to the future growth and stabilityof these countries.

Moreover, although we have heard much from governing elites in EastAsia, clearly there are alternative voices in the region, whether that is theNobel Peace Laureate and leader of Burma's National League forDemocracy party, Aung San Suu Kyi, or the opposition politician, Kim DaeJung, in South Korea. Kim has explicitly argued against Lee Kuan Yew'sdepiction of the cultural differences between the West and Asia, insteadmaking the case that 'Asia has a rich heritage of democracy-orientedphilosophies and traditions'.26 Aung Sun Suu Kyi's scepticism of the Asianvalues argument is also plain: in her view, 'when democracy and humanrights are said to run counter to non-western culture, such culture is usuallydefined narrowly and presented as monolithic'.27

There are in addition the various regional non-governmental humanrights organizations that have spoken out on this issue. Those who wererepresented as observers at the Bangkok meeting bluntly stated that theofficial Bangkok Declaration, quoted earlier, reflected 'the continuedattempt by many governments of the region to avoid their human rightsobligations, to put the state before the people, and to avoid acknowledgingtheir obligations to account for their failures in the promotion and protectionof human rights'.28

Responding to the alleged attack on state sovereignty that human rights

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standards have been said to pose, the NGO Declaration turned thatargument on its head, claiming that it was precisely the universal nature ofsuch values and concerns that would act to protect sovereignty.29 In 1994,the South-east Asian NGOs' Forum on Human Rights and Development,issued a somewhat different challenge: while accepting the need to link civiland political rights with social and economic rights, they then 'drew on thisprinciple to call for more equitable distribution of income, environmentally-sustainable development, and the removal of gender discrimination'.30 Thus,the diversity argument suggests there is no uniformity of view or culture orcircumstance, other than a spurious one imposed by the fact that a vocalruling elite in certain of the countries claims it to be so.

Similarly, the depiction of the West that is on offer is also too uniform.It overstates the individualism of Western society and of its traditions ofthought. The debate ignores the existence of the struggles for economic andsocial rights that have taken place in the West; the clear relationshipbetween rights and duties in Lockean conceptions of rights; and theacknowledged difficulties of striking the correct balance between order andrights - a balance that has particularly concerned Western conservatives."

Indeed, it is not only conservatives that have cast their eyes eastwards insearch of a way to balance the tension between individualism and thecollective interest. In Britain, for example, the leader of the Labour Party,Tony Blair, claimed to have found some of the measures needed to resolvethis tension during his 1996 visit to Singapore.32 It is also worth noting thatthe 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself in its 29th Articleallows for limitations on the exercise of rights and freedoms in order tosecure 'due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others'and to meet the 'just requirements of morality, public order and the generalwelfare in a democratic society'.

One definition of democracy that appears to be more culturally sensitivethan usual and which therefore might prove helpful in reconciling positionsin this debate has been offered by Edward Friedman. For Friedman,democracy should be 'understood as experientally fair rules by whichcitizens choose officials to run government in an accountable manner'.33

Such a definition encourages us all to look beyond this official discourseand to enquire into the actual lived experiences of many peoples in EastAsia and beyond.34 We can then ask a series of empirical questions: forexample, has the promotion of economic and social rights actually been thefocus of attention and concern in these countries (and here the NGOchallenge referred to earlier may be relevant)? Has administrative detentionand press censorship been used circumspectly or above and beyond what isnecessary to sustain consensus and harmony? Has the state in its concern forcollective rights provided a mechanism for hearing the voice of the

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community or for protecting the rights of ethnic minorities? Where we findan emphasis on duties rather than rights, has the fulfilment of dutiesunderpinned reciprocity and mutuality or has it become a means ofreinforcing subordination and perpetuating inequality?35

For at least one author who has examined the Asian values perspective,the strong states of the area have not shown a determination to buildconsensus but a desire to impose 'single, state defined, ideologies'. Neitherhave they explored some of the anomalies and contradictions that can lie atthe heart of certain of the claims. To give two examples, while the familymay work as a model of co-operation that shows concern for its owncollective interest, it can 'also be seen as a model of patriarchal authority'and as a unit that 'sits uneasily with the notion of broader communitarianvalues'. Similarly, the stress on the market mechanism in these societiespoints to a tension between the private and the collective interest.16

Democracy and Development

Such questions and tensions are often not dwelt on when contemplatingcertain of the East Asian societies because their economic success has beenseen to vindicate the less savoury aspects of their behaviour. Notsurprisingly, and as noted earlier there has been world-wide interest in theeconomic successes of the High Performing Asian Economies, to use a termcoined by the World Bank in its 1993 report on this group of states." Andsome East Asian governments have not been slow to point out that the secretof their success lies in the fact that economic reform preceded politicalreform, and that in order to ensure the continuation of impressive growthrates then limitations on human rights will continue to be necessary. AsBilahari Kausikan, the director of the East Asian and Pacific bureau of theSingaporean Foreign Ministry, put it in 1993, the historical experience ofmost East and South-east Asian governments has been that order andstability were 'preconditions for economic growth' and that growth hasbeen the 'foundation of any political order that claims to advance humandignity'.38 Undoubtedly, they regard this argument as capable of sweepingaside any domestic or international criticism of their human rights recordsor shortfalls in their democratic practices.

However, the connections between democracy and development are notso easy to untangle. Three models have been available to us at differenttimes.39 The first, and the one preferred by certain East Asian elites, hasargued that democracy is not conducive to development, wheredevelopment means either growth or improvements in quality of life. In newstates it contributes to instability; in more established polities, governmentsare forced to adopt short-term solutions for electoral reasons and are

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beholden to special interests at the expense of the general good.40

However, an alternative model suggests that democracy is conducive todevelopment on two grounds: the first is that a market economy thriveswhere there are institutions that safeguard civil and political rights, and thesecond that development is also more likely to be achieved in societieswhere there is a co-operative rather than coerced citizenry. The third model,an intermediate one, suggests that, while it may well be true that in the longrun democracy and development do go together, we would do better todirect our attention to the many intervening variables that affect therelationship between these two phenomena.

One recent, careful, statistical analysis of the relationship betweendemocracy and development, that also examines different time periods after1945, illustrates the difficulties about being categorical in this area. The one'robust relationship' discovered in this study is that between democracy andquality of life measures of development. However, this analysis was notable to establish a stable relationship over various time periods betweendemocracy and economic growth or between democracy and equality ofincome.41 Other analysts, on the basis of a summary of recent literature onthe topic, have concluded that democracy has no effect on growth of eithera positive or negative kind, and that growth rates are influenced less by thenature of the political regime and more by the political stability of thecountry.42

At first sight, political economists working on East Asia appear toconfirm the validity of the first model outlined above: that democracyhampers development. Stephen Haggard, for example, in his study of theNewly Industrializing Countries (NICs) has argued that

since authoritarian political arrangements give political elitesautonomy from distributionist pressures, they increase thegovernment's ability to extract resources, provide public goods, andimpose the short-term costs associated with efficient economicadjustment. Weak legislatures that limit the representative role ofparties, the corporatist organization of interest groups, and recourse tocoercion in the face of resistance should all expand governments'freedom of maneuver on economic policy.

However, he goes on to make the crucial point that there is no reason whythis outcome should have been optimal in the case of the NICs, given thatother strong states have turned out not to be efficient deliverers of economicgrowth but instead have been predatory or kleptocratic in their behaviour.41

What seems to have been critical for the successful East Asian economieshave been developments - sometimes by accident and sometimes by design- in key sectors such as education or in areas relating to income distribution.

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The role of historical contingency also has to be acknowledged. In SouthKorea, for example, the land reform policies together with the devastationwrought by the Korean War dramatically equalized assets and income thusreducing inequalities as a potential source of instability.

In the educational field, the adoption of a competitive education systemand the introduction of government-imposed vocational trainingrequirements expanded the numbers of educated workers able to take onnew tasks. By 1965, Seoul's investment in human resource developmentexceeded levels in countries with three times its per capita GNP. Thegovernment's decision to promote heavy and chemical industries expandedthe product base of the economy. Its decision to share in the economic riskswith private firms contributed to a willingness to adopt certain growth-maximizing policies/" All of these policies in combination provided theoptimum conditions for rapid growth in the period after 1965.

Nevertheless, it remains the case that such success was accomplishedunder politically repressive regimes in which the voices of labour and ofother political opponents were heavily circumscribed, a condition whichmay well have facilitated development. A number of the East Asian'miracle' economies did solve their collective action problems throughcoercion. However, as Haggard has stated, 'there are no theoretical reasonsto think that authoritarian regimes are uniquely capable of solving thecollective-action problems associated with development', and he goes on toposit that democratic corporatist measures can provide an alternative meansof mediating state-labour and labour-management relations.45

The academic study of democracy and development thus provides lessthan clear-cut support for the trump card in the 'Asian values' argument: thatlimits on political freedoms have proved vital to economic development.That pattern may have been the actual historical experience of a number ofthe 'tiger' states, but the explanation for the impressive economic results liesnot in the resort to authoritarianism but elsewhere, particularly in specificeducational, industrial and income distribution policies.

Moreover, some in East Asia would argue that true development issomething more than economic prosperity; that it has to embody processesthat give humans a sense of empowerment. Without democratic freedoms,one of the core features of development — the development of the potentialof the human person - remains unfulfilled.46

Conclusion

There is now in place an international and transnational normative agendaon human rights that cannot be denied or avoided. The deepening of thesenorms, their potential for expansion, and the development of the idea of aid

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and trade conditionalities has helped generate this 'Asian values' debate. Ithas also been stimulated by the rapid internal social and economic changethat these societies have undergone. One result has been the construction ofan oppositional discourse on human rights and democracy that is ahistoricalin form: it denies the diversity of experience within Asia and the West,including the range of political philosophies that such countries haveembraced. Such arguments are serving mainly to obfuscate this diversity,and to oversimplify the complex relationship between rights, democracyand development. Some commentators in the West need to be moresensitive to their role in generating this East Asian resentment and to bemore aware of the astuteness of some of the criticisms that are levelled. Butthere are also those in Asia who need to listen to alternative voices in theregion, within their own societies, and in the West itself before they claimeither that the values they espouse are 'Asian' or that development needs toprecede a 'guided' form of democracy.

Other means of reconciling positions are also available. Bothconstituencies in this debate might find it helpful to reflect that whereas theprecise procedures for democracy may differ, we can nevertheless ascertainwhether individuals and groups within different societies perceive theirpolitical systems to be fair, and their leaders to be accountable. We mightalso accept that the claim that human rights are universal does not requireus to abandon our sensitivity to different cultures or to assume that there isor can be cultural uniformity. Universalists can and do accept that there maywell be different means of implementing rights.

For all those who seek to emulate the success of the Asian tigereconomies, it is essential too to be precise about the factors that have led totheir commendable growth rates and improvements in quality of life fortheir citizens. Imprecision runs the danger of privileging authoritarianpolitical arrangements and thus perpetuating or introducing such systems inother regions. It needs to be acknowledged that there is no clear evidencethat either the protection of human rights or the introduction of democracyundermines the prospects for development. Political repression may haveprovided one means for the superficial resolution of collective actionproblems, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. Whatseems to have paid dividends has been the introduction of particular policiesin the key sectors of education, income distribution and industry.

ROSEMARY FOOTSt Antony's College,

Oxford

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NOTES

1. Here, East Asia includes both North-east and South-east Asia.2. The Bangkok conference was held from 29 March 1993 to 2 April 1993, before the June

1993 Vienna World Conference on human rights. Japan supported the consensus in Bangkokbut offered an explanation of its vote, arguing at the conference that human rights areuniversal and that human rights standards are a matter for legitimate appraisal by others. Itsrepresentative also stated that such rights should not be sacrificed in the name ofdevelopment. See the UN documents, A/Conf.l57/ASRM/8; A/Conf.l57/PC/59; andSeiichiro Takagi, 'Human Rights in Japanese Foreign Policy: Japan's Policy Towards Chinaafter Tiananmen', in James T.H. Tang (ed.), Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region(London: Pinter, 1995), p.108.

3. R.J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, in association with the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1986), p.37.

4. Samuel P. Huntington first made this latter point. See his 'The Clash of Civilizations',Foreign Affairs, Vol.72, No.3 (Summer 1993), pp.22-49.

5. See the review article by Jack Donnelly, 'Human Rights and Development: Complementaryor Competing Concerns?', World Politics, Vol.36, No.2 (Jan. 1984), esp. pp.255-8. SamuelP. Huntington, for example, argued that the processes associated with economic developmentcould cause the disruption of traditional societies, and that this disruption would probablylead to authoritarian rule before the countries emerged prosperous and democratic. See hisPolitical_Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).

6. See the discussion of Fukuyama's position in Denny Roy, 'Singapore, China, and the "SoftAuthoritarian" Challenge', Asian Survey, Vol.34, No.3 (1994), pp.231-42. Richard Robisonhas argued: 'It is in the context of a fundamental, although ongoing, contest between organic-statist, liberal and social democratic variants of capitalism, not in a contest between "East"and "West", that 'Asian values' assumes its significance.' See his 'The Politics of "AsianValues'" in The Pacific Review, Vol.9, No.3 (1996), p.313.

7. I am alluding here, of course, to the title of the World Bank report of 1993: The East AsianMiracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press), but seetoo J. Woronoff, Asia's 'Miracle Economies': Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and HongKong (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1986).

8. Vincent, Human Rights, p.101.9. Geoffrey Best, 'Human Rights as Universal and/or International Norms', paper for

Workshop at London School of Economics and Political Science, 29 April 1994, p.18.10. For one version of this argument see Kishore Mahbubani, 'The Dangers of Decadence: What

the Rest Can Teach the West', Foreign Affairs, Vol.72, No.4 (1993), pp.10-14. And foranother, Bilahari Kausikan, 'Asia's Different Standard', Foreign Policy, No.92 (Fall 1993),pp.24-41. See also Roy, 'Singapore, China'.

11. For useful discussion of these values see Hans Antlov, 'Discourses, Perceptions andPractices of Asian Values Democracy in Indonesia', paper presented at NIA/IIAS/GESEASconference on Democracy in Asia, Copenhagen, 26-29 Oct. 1996, and Yash Ghai, 'HumanRights and Governance: The Asia Debate', Occasional Paper, No.1, for the AsiaFoundation's Center for Asian Pacific Affairs, San Francisco (Nov. 1994), esp. p.7.

12. Ghai, 'Human Rights', p.11.13. BBC Monitoring Report, Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB) Asia Pacific, FE 2497 S2/1

30 Dec. 1995.14. For a discussion of some of these restrictions see Melanie Chew, 'Human Rights in

Singapore: Perceptions and Problems', Asian Survey, Vol.34, No.11 (1994), pp. 933-48. Fora recent if familiar explanation of the factors behind the 'East Asian Dynamo' versus thesluggishness of Western economies, see Lee Kuan Yew's lecture to the Ludwig-MaximilianUniversity in Munich, June 1996, published in Straits Times, 18 June 1996.

15. This is referred to in Michael Freeman, 'Human Rights, Democracy and "Asian Values'",The Pacific Review, Vol.9, No.3 (1996), p.357 in the context of an argument that casts doubton the claim that the protection of human rights is destabilizing for societies.

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16. These points are noted in Chew, 'Human Rights', note 19, pp.946 and 947 including note 20.17. This is noted in Andrew Hurrell, 'Power, Principles and Prudence: Protecting Human Rights

in a Deeply Divided World', in Tim Dunne and Nick Wheeler (eds.), Human Rights, HumanWrongs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Hurrell states: 'The hugelyincreased normative ambitions of international society are nowhere better evidenced than inthe field of human rights.'

18. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, (FBIS) reports, East Asia, EAS-92-173-S 4 Sept.1992, p.2.

19. See the discussion of this point in Adrian Leftwich, 'On the Primacy of Politics inDevelopment', in Adrian Leftwich (ed.), Democracy and Development (Cambridge: PolityPress, 1996), esp. pp.15-16.

20. Ghai, 'Human Rights', p.4.21. FB/5-EAS-92-116 16 June 1992. For an interesting argument on the need to extend

democracy to the international level see David Held, 'Democracy: From City-states to aCosmopolitan Order?' in Held (ed.), Prospects for Democracy: North, South, East, West(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).

22. Andrew Hurrell, 'Power, Principles and Prudence'.23. Michael Freeman, 'Human Rights: Asia and the West', in Tang (ed.), Human Rights, p.16.24. SWB, Asia Pacific, FE/2497 S2/1, 30 Dec. 1995.25. Quoted in Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia Yearbook 1996 (Hong Kong: Review

Publishing, 1996), pp.14-15, using World Bank figures.26. Kim Dae Jung, 'A Response to Lee Kuan Yew - Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia's

Anti-Democratic Values', Foreign Affairs, Vol.73 (Nov.-Dec. 1994), pp. 189-94. For afurther valuable reminder of the variation within Chinese culture from late archaic times tothe present day see Mark Elvin, 'Between the Earth and Heaven: Conceptions of the Self inChina', in M. Carrithers, S. Collini and S. Lukes (eds.), The Category of the Person(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp.156-89.

27. Aung San Suu Kyi's address to a meeting of UNESCO's World Commission on Culture andDevelopment, Manila, 21 Nov. 1994, presented on her behalf, and reprinted as 'Freedom,Development and Human Worth', Journal of Democracy, Vol.6, No.2 (April 1995), p.15.

28. Japan Economic Newswire (2 April 1993). According to James Tang, the Asian NGOS wereseen to be the best-organized group at the Vienna world conference, and were the second-largest after the western Europeans. See conclusion in Tang (ed.), Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region, p.195.

29. Best, 'Human Rights'.30. Garry Rodan, 'The Internationalization of Ideological conflict: Asia's New Significance',

The Pacific Review, Vol. 9, No.3 (1996), p.335.31. Michael Freeman, 'Human Rights: Asia and the West' in Tang (ed.), op. cit., esp. pp. 14-19.32. Rodan, 'The Internationalization', p.340; and see also pp.340-46 for a fuller discussion of

Conservatism and 'Asian Values'.33. Edward Friedman, The Politics of Democratization: Generalizing East Asian Experiences

(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), p.2.34. Antlov suggests a need to examine three levels: official discourse, perceptions of this

discourse, and political practice.35. Yash Ghai develops a powerful critique of the 'Asian values' debate, a critique which I have

drawn on extensively here. See Ghai, 'Human Rights', esp. pp.9-12.36. Robison, pp.311-12.37. There is, of course, a literature that casts doubt on the 'tiger' economies' continuing ability

to grow at such impressive rates. For the most oft-quoted example see Paul Krugman, 'TheMyth of Asia's Miracle', Foreign Affairs, Vol.73, No.6 (1994), pp.62-78. See alsoChristopher Lingle, 'The End of the Beginning of the "Pacific Century"? ConfucianCorporatism and Authoritarian Capitalism in East Asia', and the counter argument by Yu-Shan Wu, 'Away from Socialism: The Asian Way', both in The Pacific Review, Vol.9, No.3(1996), pp.389-409 and 410-25.

38. Bilahari Kausikan, 'Asia's Different Standard', Foreign Policy, No.92 (Fall 1993), p.35.39. See Svante Ersson and Jan-Erik Lane, 'Democracy and Development: A Statistical

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Exploration', in Leftwich (ed.), Democracy, esp. pp.47-9, for an exposition of the threemodels.

40. As Lee Kuan Yew put it in a recent speech: 'in a system of one-man [sic]-one-vote, when the[welfare] recipients outnumber the givers, reform is not easy to push through', Straits Times,18 June 1996.

41. Ersson and Lane, in Leftwich (ed.), Democracy,42. Alberto Alesina and Roberto Perotti, 'The Political Economy of Growth: A Critical Survey

of the Recent Literature', The World Bank Economic Review, Vol.8, No.3 (Sept. 1994),pp.351-71. I am grateful to Professor Robert Cassen of St Antony's College for pointing metowards this article and others on the topic.

43. Stephen Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the NewlyIndustrializing Countries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp.262 ff.

44. Joon-Kyung Kim, Sang Dal Shim and Jun-Il Kim, 'The Role of the Government inPromoting Industrialization and Human Capital Accumulation in Korea', in Takatoshi Itoand Anne O. Krueger (eds.), Growth Theories in Light of the East Asian Experience(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), Ch.7. Also Haggard, Pathways, esp.p.240.

45. Haggard, Pathways, pp.256 and 267.46. Aung San Suu Kyi, 'Freedom, Development', p. 18.

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