his paper presents a series of arguments against the charge, common in most Asian countries, that Western liberal democracy is not suitable for countries of the East since it is perceived to be an integral element of a cultural tradition alien to the traditions of Eastern cultures. Arguments are frequently heard from leaders of some Asian countries that democracy as it is currently practised in the West cannot be fully implemented in Eastern countries. The reasons are that the cultural traditions of the East presuppose values which are contradictory to Western democratic values, or that the calls for Western democracy in Asian countries are a veil hiding imperialistic intent behind, or that liberal democracy will hinder national development and will result in the country adopting it lagging behind in the international race of commerce and business.
I will examine the presuppositions behind such arguments, and try to show that, contrary to the arguments of such leaders, democracy is not necessarily bound to a particular cultural tradition, including Western, liberal one. Thus the reaction against the call for democracy should be seen in clearer light as a reaction against perceived threats to the legitimacy of those leaders themselves. These topics will be the matter of the first section of the essay.
However, though democracy is not necessarily based on a particular cultural tradition, it is not essentially tied to a fixed ontological foundation or universal rational principles either. The second section then presents an argument for the conclusion just stated, based on John Rawls' recent proposal that democracy and justice are political conceptions. Democracy is a system of government best suited to a form of socio-economic life and a particular vision of the good. This form is not the only one possible and is not the best regardless of historical, social, or cultural contexts, but as forms of socio-economic life of nations in the world turn out to be more substantially the same--the form which, I argue, requires democracy--democracy is then justified.
In the third and last section, a brief suggestion for the continuing struggle for greater democracy in Thailand will be offered based on the arguments presented before. A country like Thailand has to find its own way, according to which, as Thailand is becoming more and more involved in interactions among nations, the resulting form of government, while clearly retains much that is peculiar to the historical development and other circumstances of the country, cannot diverge too much from what the world community finds acceptable.