Introduction: Political Parties and Democracy in Western Europe and East and Southeast Asia

Abstract

The present volume is a selective exploration of how similar and how different are the parties of ten Western European and East and Southeast Asian countries in the early years of the twenty-first century with regard to their society, structure, goals, and leadership types. The countries of these two regions should be broadly considered to hold free elections and practice democratic representation. However, they have differed widely in the history of their political institutions and in the introduction of a liberal democratic or at least pluralistic form of government. All the countries of Western Europe became liberal democracies in the 1970s, but liberal democracy prevails in only about half the countries of the Pacific rim.