How has economic developement affected the process of democratization in Southeast and East Asia? The contributions in this volume represent one of the first efforts to answer this question from the vantage point of the region. In this book, scholars of Southeast and East Asian politics discuss the rise and fall, or stabilization and modification, of democracy amidst socio-economic changes and class transformations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, Taiwan and South Korea. The approche taken by the contributors gives a fine balance between democratization as a consequence of socio-economic developement and as a political-ideological process.