A few weeks ago I was privileged to go to the Asia Foundation’s event “The Future of Democracy in Southeast Asia.” I was mainly there to meet up with other IR/PS alumni as I’m more interested in East Asia and China in particular, but surprisingly the event turned more towards the relationship between economics and democracy which was quite fascinating.

The overall subject was how democracy was faring in the region and how that related (or not) to the lack of democracy. Larry Diamond from the Hoover Institution favored the more Modernization Theory approach and Big Bang aspect of turning around a country’s economy by quickly embracing democracy whereas Kishore Mahbubani noted that in fact what matters more is the role of good governance.

Listening intently to the arguments laid out by both sides, I actually could not help but envision the two of them as two differing viewpoints of mine where I truly believe that on the one hand democracy is the best form of government possible for economics in the long-term and for the well-being of the countries’ citizens. Yet, at the same time, democracy and elections are not everything if the democracy is so corrupt and governance so poor that the people begin to clamor for an autocracy that could benefit them instead.

In the same way, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea all developed economically with a system of government that was either not democratic, or at best a minor democracy. China even sees Singapore’s style of government as the best outcome for development rather than a quick change that Russia went through.

Nonetheless, I am an eternal optimist that all countries that want to develop into a first world (aka developed) nation status will have to develop a style of democracy suiting to the country’s citizens in order to consistently root out endemic corruption that grows over time under one system of rule (endemic in this case being longer than eight years). Interestingly, the development of democracy has occured when the average citizen earns around $5000 a year or can afford a car.