Presidentialism and Democracy in East and Southeast Asia

Presidentialism and Democracy in East and Southeast Asia examines the impact of presidential systems on democracies by examining three distinct literatures – the perilousness of competing legitimacies of the executive and legislative branches, issues of institutional design (particularly regarding semi-presidentialism), and the rise of executive aggrandizement. Despite often intense political conflict and temporary instability in the East and Southeast Asia, presidential systems of various types – from relatively "pure" forms to semi-presidentialism and other hybrids – have largely been resilient. Although there are signs of growing autocratization in several cases, presidentialism, associated with both accommodation and conflict, has usually not driven it. This book’s contributions to presidentialism debates will be of interests to students and scholars of comparative politics while it also offers detailed analysis of the presidency in these East and Southeast Asian cases.

List of tables Preface and acknowledgements List of contributors 1. Presidentialism and democracy in East and Southeast Asia: Between resilience and regression Marco Bünte and Mark R. Thompson 2. South Korea: Presidentialism in historical and sociological perspective Erik Mobrand 3. The Philippines: Imperiled and imperious presidents (but not perilous presidentialism) Mark R. Thompson 4. Indonesia: Presidential politics and democratic regression Dirk Tomsa 5. Indonesia: Tales of presidentialization Andreas Ufen 6. Taiwan: The limited but beneficial role of semi-presidentialism Christian Schafferer 7. Timor-Leste: Semi-presidentialism and the tribulations of a new democracy Rui Graça Feijó 8. Myanmar: Hybrid presidentialism and democratic breakdown Marco Bünte Index

Marco Bünte is Professor of Asian Politics at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. His work focuses on questions of democratisation and authoritarian resilience. His publications include the co-edited volumes Politics and Constitutions in Southeast Asia (with B. Dressel, 2017) and Democratization in Post-Suharto Indonesia (with A. Ufen, 2008), also published by Routledge. Mark R. Thompson is Professor of politics and Head of the Department of Asian and International Studies, as well as Director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre at the City University of Hong Kong. A specialist of East Asian politics, his most recent book publications by Routledge are China’s "Singapore Model" and Authoritarian Learning (co-edited with Stephan Ortmann, 2020), Governance and Democracy in the Asia-Pacific (co-edited with Stephen McCarthy, 2020), and the Routledge Handbook of the Contemporary Philippines (co-edited with Eric V. Batalla, 2019). He is co-editor of the Routledge/City University of Hong Kong Southeast Asia Series.