Economic modernity and authoritarian rule are often seen as incompatible. Indeed, most economically advanced countries have developed pluralist political systems with competitive elections and safeguards for civil liberties despite the onset of a major “democratic recession,” particularly due to the rise of illiberal populism (Boix and Stokes 2003; Diamond 2015; Wodak 2015; Müller 2016; Inglehart 2018). In terms of poorer and authoritarian countries, still influential modernization theory is based on optimism about the democratic impact of economic growth and societal change. Writing about China, Henry S. Rowen (1996) argued that “either China will remain relatively poor and authoritarian or it will become rich and pluralistic—and it seems to have chosen the latter path.” Rowen was even willing to predict when China would become democratic (in 1996 he set the date at 2015, but by 2007 he had pushed it back to 2025). Bruce Gilley (2008, 17–18) argued that despite there being no sign of political change, China still fits “the broad contours” of modernization theory “more than is widely assumed,” and even if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP ) continues to resist democracy, “modernization pressures” will eventually take their toll, leading to democratic transition. James Mann (2007) has termed this the “soothing scenario,” the belief that “China’s economic development will lead inexorably to an opening of China’s political system.”1
In East Asia (Northeast and Southeast Asia), the examples of South Korea and Taiwan democratizing after several decades of successful economic development are often cited as vindication of modernization theory’s claim that democratic transition is “driven by growth” (Morley 1993/1998). Wolfgang Knöbl (2003) suggests that the rise of the “tiger states” of East Asia in the 1980s was a major reason for the revival of modernization theory, which by the late 1970s “no longer [seemed] convincing and it seemed difficult to imagine a future in which modernization theory would again play a dominant role within macro-sociological theorizing.” But by the late 1990s Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi (1997) had again raised serious doubts about its continued relevance with their critique of the strong or “endogenous” version of modernization theory that claims that economic growth which leads to an advanced economy and extensive social transformation is likely to create conditions conducive to a democratic transition from authoritarianism.2 Viewed in this light, rather than a vindication of theory, East Asia can be seen as the “last redoubt” of the thesis that economic growth, social differentiation, and political mobilization will ultimately lead to a transition to democracy (Thompson 2010a).
Yet East Asia has also been home to the most significant examples of “authoritarian modernism” since Imperial Germany industrialized without democratizing in the late nineteenth century. Barrington Moore Jr. (1966) compared Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan as conservative3 authoritarian modernizers in his famous study of different “routes to the modern world,” key cases that have often been downplayed. Instead, the historical frame of reference of modernization theorists has been strongly influenced by the examples of Great Britain and the USA, which both industrialized and democratized, with the former clearly influencing the political trajectory of its former colony. A classic case of holding to modernization theory despite historical counterexamples is Seymour Martin Lipset’s Political Man (1960). In the early part of the book, Lipset stresses that the chances of consolidating democracy improve with higher rates of economic development. Later in the book, however, he explores why the middle class that arises in the course of modernization can come to favor fascism. But he does not explore what implications the attraction of fascism for the middle class in Germany and elsewhere might have for the validity of modernization theory. Lipset remained a “high priest” of modernization theory despite the fact that some of his own findings appeared to contradict it.
The similarities Moore identified between Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan were not coincidental. The “Prussian path” was consciously imitated by the Meiji reformers and this model was later diffused throughout East Asia (Martin 1995; Thompson 2017). Led by Deng Xiaoping, who claimed China had lost several decades of potential development, the post-Mao CCP pushed through economic reforms while suppressing opposition political movements. After South Korea and Taiwan had begun democratizing in the second half of the 1980s, it is not surprising that China looked to the most advanced “soft” authoritarian political system (Roy 1994) in the region that has successfully combined economic growth with one-party rule and limits on civil liberties as a political model: the tiny city-state of Singapore (Ortmann and Thompson 2016). Although China faces obstacles due to the still officially Marxist-Maoist state ideology, there have been efforts to revive a political variant of the traditional Confucianism, with its advocates utilizing it to elaborate a “reactionary culturalist” argument that aims to legitimate non-democratic rule in the Middle Kingdom in a manner similar to the Singapore schools’ propagation of “Asian values” in the 1980s and 1990s (Moody 2007, chp. 5; Bell 2010; Page 2015). This can be understood as an updated version of the Imperial German critique of “Western” civilization, suggesting that the debate is less about “Asia” versus the “West” than authoritarian as opposed to liberal-democratic modernity (Thompson 2001b).
Singapore’s successful combination of non-democratic rule with advanced capitalism has been dismissed as a (literally) small exception to the general democratizing rule, with giant autocratic China expected by scholars influenced by modernization theory to democratize soon given its rapid economic growth (Pei 1995; Rowen 1996, 2007; Gilley 2004, 2008; Diamond 2008, 2012; Liu and Chen 2012—for contrary views, see Gallagher 2002; Nathan 2003, 2015a; Lynch 2006; Mann 2007; Tsai 2007; Chin 2018). Singapore is the proverbial “red dot” on the map (Ho 2015), allowing modernization theorists to use its small size as an ad hoc explanation of its continued non-democratic rule.4 Singapore’s prime minister is little more than “a lord ...