(Bagong Lipunan). And yet, they have been the important core of pro-democracy movements in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The middle class has mobilized against leaders perceived as incompetent and corrupt such as Estrada and Wahid, and also against competent leaders accused of corruption, such as Arroyo and Thaksin. Ultimately, “middle class activists opposed authoritarian regimes less out of democratic conviction, than guardians of good governance. Weak reformist governments, the prevalence of money politics, and the rise of populist leaders led them to turn the good governance discourse against democratically elected leaders, raising serious questions about the future stability of democracy in the region” (Thompson 2007). However, the counter democratic middle class in these countries did not only embrace the “good governance” discourse. Non-democratic countries that were formerly the paragons of the “Asian values” discourse have also articulated it.
Reinventing the Developmental State
This section will argue that there is a current trend towards reinvention of the developmental state and a reformulation of the Asian value discourse. This is manifested through efforts to co-opt the “good governance” discourse as a legitimating concept by non-democratic regimes. The trajectory of this trend will be plotted through a discussion of the roots of the developmental state; the emergence of the Asian values discourse; and, adoption of the “good governance” discourse in non-democratic regimes.
The term “newly-industrialising” became the signature label for most East and Southeast Asian countries. The Asian Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs) became a global example for the rest of the developing world (Gonzalez 1999). The Asian NICs involved middle- income countries that successfully pursued export-oriented growth strategies that were propelled by high levels of investment in both physical and human capital (Woo-Cummings 1999; Haggard 2000). The template for this growth strategy was the developmental states of Northeast Asia.12 Following the lead of Japan, both South Korea and Taiwan, Southeast Asian countries pursued a neo-mercantilist and nationalist development trajectory that