From Development to Democracy: The Transformation of Modern Asia.

• Date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Hirsch, Michael L.
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Hirsch, Michael L.

Slater, Dan and Joseph Wong From Development to Democracy: The Transformation of Modern Asia. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022. 348. Hardcover, $35.00.

In the mid-1980s, I was fortunate to study historical-comparative methods with Gideon Sjoberg at the University of Texas. The class explored the then contemporary works of Skocpol (1979), Starr (1982) and Tilley (1984) and more classical works including those of Polanyi (1944), Bloch (1953) and Sjoberg (1960). I have long appreciated well-executed comparativehistorical studies and the insights they provide (e.g., Madrid and Wayland, 2019). Because of this, I was very excited about reviewing this work by Slater and Wong.

In From Development to Democracy: The Transformation of Modern Asia Slater and Wong do an extensive analysis of twelve countries in "developmental Asia" which has transformed "One of the world's poorest regions (into)... one of its richest" (p. 1). While some countries in "development Asia" have democratized as they developed per the thesis of Modernization Theory, others have not. Slater and Wong turn to historical-comparative analysis to discern why.

Slater and Wong group their cases into four developmental clusters: Statist (Japan...