Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific

Issue Date January 2007
Volume 18
Issue 1
Page Numbers 58-72
file Print
arrow-down-thin Download from Project MUSE
external View Citation

Political reform across the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the years following the Asian economic crisis, has seen the emergence of a distinctive regional model of electoral democracy. This move has been facilitated by deliberate strategies of “political engineering” across a diverse array of Northeast Asian, Southeast Asian, and the Pacific Island electoral democracies. Political engineering focuses on the deliberate design of political institutions to achieve specified outcomes. This essay examines how regimes across the Asia-Pacific region have increasingly attempted to engineer their political systems to encourage more predictable elections, aggregative parties, and stable governments.

About the Author

Benjamin Reilly is dean of the Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs at Murdoch University, Australia.

View all work by Benjamin Reilly