Political Party Systems in East and Southeast Asia

This article reviews academic work on party systems—defined as the patterns of interactions between political parties—in East and Southeast Asia (hereafter “East Asia”). Before drawing a “map” of the relevant literature, it is important to acknowledge the political and cultural diversity of the region. Not only is East Asia characterized by a multiplicity of political systems, ranging from totalitarian regimes to consolidated democracies, but scholars are, in addition, faced with linguistic heterogeneity, which creates incentives to specialize in individual countries rather than theoretical themes. This diversity is clearly reflected in the study of party systems. First, party systems differ significantly between democratic and nondemocratic political systems. What is particularly striking is that parties in the democracies of East Asia are generally only weakly institutionalized. In contrast, regime parties in the region’s autocratic political systems tend to command effective and extensive organizations—a diagnosis that does not just apply to the surviving communist regimes, but also to the region’s “electoral authoritarian” regimes. Second, much of the scholarship on party systems in East Asia takes the form of single-country case studies. While rich in empirical detail, these studies rarely engage in theoretical debates on party systems and thus they do not attract much of a readership beyond regional studies experts. This annotated bibliography aims to address this issue. By organizing academic work on East Asian party systems into a theory-guided framework, the bibliography gives readers an overview of how existing studies may contribute to the general literature on party politics—even though these studies themselves may not make their contribution explicit. Specifically, the bibliography is structured along four key theoretical questions: (1) How can we account for differences in the development of party systems? (2) How do party systems affect the consolidation of (democratic and autocratic) political regimes? (3) How do party systems relate to the state? (4) What is the effect of party systems on the quality of governance? The bibliography covers different conceptual dimensions of party system development, including fragmentation (how many relevant parties are there?), party-voter linkages (how are political parties rooted in the electorate?), party system institutionalization (how stable are patterns of interparty competition?), and party institutionalization (how routinized are party internal processes?).