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1. Introduction
What is the dominant approach to the study of comparative Asian politics? Academics often employ historical–cultural factors in their analysis. Drawing on a combination of historical narratives and cultural threads, which are broad enough to include political culture, this school of investigation focuses on culturally shaped societal norms, rules, and institutions as the key determinants in shaping power and politics. Western bias often influences the design and analysis of research, ultimately impacting the outcome of such research.
The Western classical works of Hegel (Reference Hegel2004) (one man's freedom), Marx (Reference Marx1875) (Asiatic mode of production), Weber (Reference Weber2002) (Protestant work ethic), and Karl Wittfogel (Reference Wittfogel1981) (oriental despotism) form the foundation and provide the underlying tenets into scholarship on political culture. One such tenet found in these works and other similar works is Asia's supposed absence of modernity. It is a theme that underlies research and builds on such classics. As modernization theory swept the academic landscape in the third quarter of the twentieth century, this school used the above noted classics in Western political thought to create the next generation of research, centered on political culture.
In 1963, Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba published their research on comparative political culture, titled Civic Culture: Attitudes and Beliefs of Five Nations (Almond and Verba, Reference Almond and Verba1963). Notable as the first study of its kind based on a social survey, the analyses and conclusions reflect the mindset of the time. Almond and Verba's research on citizens’ attitudes and beliefs in the United States, Britain, Mexico, Germany, and Italy confirmed and strengthened the then dominant world view of Western Europe and North America, that is, democracy as a political system is only truly achievable for northwestern European Protestants. Two decades later, in 1985, Lucian W. Pye published his work on Asian political culture, titled Asian Power and Politics (Pye, Reference Pye1985). Pye's study is not dependent on a social survey and his view of Asian politics reflects a more nuanced understanding of Asian political culture and Asian diversity, which he absorbed from Asian academics with immense knowledge of, and insights into, the diverse and complex history and culture of Asia. Just as Almond and Verba represented the fixed views of their generation toward Asian politics, Pye, perhaps due to the passage of time, represents a new wave of understanding that distinguishes itself from works cited in the past, including the classics. Yet both the 1963 and the 1985 publications belong to the school of modernization theory. They both endorse the thesis that to achieve democratic politics, premodern societies must develop and grow a middle class as they pass through the stages of industrialization, urbanization, and democratization.
More recently, Bruce Gilley's book, The Nature of Asian Politics, is fresh and well-informed about Asian politics, and employs basic political science concepts that include state and society, development, democracy, governance, and public policy (2015). Gilley's study of comparative Asian politics is exceptional because it steps outside the confines that have dominated his field of scholarship, that is, Western-biased modernization theory and rigid political culture narratives or area specialists who adhere to a description of society and politics that reflects their area of specialization.
My overall assessment of Gilley's book is that it represents a more open and insightful academic endeavor of comparative Asian politics that can be used as a genuine reference for building further research. Yet I struggle with the author's use of a grand theory to explain the nature of Asian politics, a notion that can be traced back to the classical works of Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Wittfogel, arguing that the nature of Asian politics is essentially power-centered. My question is: Is politics power-centered as the economy is market-centered? Politics cannot be defined without significant, if latent, elements of power, irrespective of whether it is Asian or non-Asian.
Gilley may respond that the book is the product of a careful and diligent scholarly investigation that followed rigorous empirical and comparative analysis. In turn, I would ask him to add to his state-centric conceptualization, a society-centered conceptualization that would provide a way forward to a new Asian comparative politics that is much less reliant and burdened by the still strong Western bias that permeates other writings. As an example of such research, I refer to the social surveys conducted throughout Asia in the 2000s on the quality of life, culminating in a jointly authored volume by Inoguchi and Fujii (Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013). From the 29 societies surveyed in East, Southeast, South, and Central Asia, Inoguchi and Fujii construct a citizen-centered society typology. Factor analyses of the survey results yield five society types. The ordering of three key dimensions determines society types. Ordered according to survival, social relations, and state dominance, five society types emerge: (1) survival followed by social relations; (2) survival followed by state dominance; (3) social relations followed by survival; (4) social relations followed by state dominance; and (5) state dominance followed by survival. The impetus of this citizen-centered exercise is to demonstrate that Asian politics viewed from below looks very different from Asian politics viewed from above. In pursuing this approach to Asian comparative politics, the yolk of Western bias may loosen, and in doing so reveal a more genuine understanding of Asian comparative politics.
Before turning to the conceptual work of proposing a typology of Asian societies as people see it from experiences of daily life, I need to briefly describe how I have come to think that way as my views on the varieties of Asian societies deepended and sharpened.
Since 2003, I have executed a large-scale Asia-wide survey on quality of life called the AsiaBarometer. Here quality of life is defined as the contents and conditions of life as seen by each individual and more broadly by society as a whole (Inoguchi and Fujii, Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013). The aim is to register how people live their lives in Asian societies in the early twenty-first century, focusing on their daily activities in a systematic and comparative manner. Geographically, I have defined Asia as covering 29 societies in East, Southeast, South and Central Asia. In addition, Russia, Australia, and the United States are included in the AsiaBarometer Survey for comparative purpose (Inoguchi and Fujii, Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013).Footnote 1
In analyzing (1) quality of life, (2) trust, and (3) exit, voice, and loyalty, my consistent line of inquiry has been three fold: (1) how people perceive their daily lives and beyond; (2) how people relate to other people and to social institutions with trust or distrust; and (3) how people act when organizations or societies they belong to deteriorate in quality. The questionnaire has been designed to cover some other subjects so that the three subjects could be understood more broadly and comprehensively in the analysis and synthesis.
This paper is along the same line of inquiry: how people perceive their society's characteristics on the basis of their daily life experiences, and, more significantly, on the basis of their daily life satisfaction. The angle is from the bottom up. In other words, how people portray their own society by registering the degree of satisfaction with life cicumstances and aspects (Inoguchi, 2015a). Hence, the title of this paper:
What Do Asian Societies Look like from the Bottom Up instead of Top Down?
2. Metaphors for five types of Asian societies
2.1 Literature review of Asian societies
Types of societies are often deductively derived from semi-frozen concepts of earlier thinkers in the field. Thus, types of societies have been discussed by reference to political regimes. Aristotle uses monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy as the characteristics by which societies are more or less determined. Hegel uses freedom to say that freedom for one person is called despotism. Marx uses modes of production to characterize Asiatic feudalism.
Even when types of societies are discussed by reference to some sociological concepts such as family and trust, they do so often in isolation from other components of societies. Types of family units have been discussed by reference to such concepts as the matrilineal system, kinship, marriage, residence, and inheritance (Nakane, Reference Nakane1967a, Reference Nakane1967b; Todd, Reference Todd2011). Types of business sectors have been discussed by reference to how trust can be extended to extra-kinship relationships (Fukuyama, Reference Fukuyama1995).
Types of society have also been discussed by reference to climatic, geological, and environmental conditions: such as Karl Wittfogel (Reference Wittfogel1981) on the supply and need for large-scale infrastructure building; James Scott (Reference Scott2009) on hill tribes’ community formation to avoid tax, war, and administration; Takeshi Matsui (Reference Matsui2000) on Pushtuni and Baluchistani aggressively defensive isolated community formation; Shan Huipeng (Reference Shan2004) on Chinese and Hindus in terms of cultural traditions, and Takashi Kato (Reference Kato2012) on the nature and modes of religions binding and bonding in community formation.
To augment the power of such typologies, I propose new types of Asian societies. I propose types of Asian societies by inductively generalizing Asian societies in terms of daily life satisfaction. In other words, types of societies are drawn from the bottom up or from the angle of people. At the same time, instead of what may be called barefoot empiricism, I use the above ideal-types and metaphors to help imagine types of societies by aggregating individual respondent's satisfaction about daily life activities in various life domains. This approach I call the evidence-based inductive generalization approach.
2.2 Use of metaphors in conceptualizing types of Asian societies
Apart from the above types of Asian societies with some strong generalizing impulses, there are many revealing and enlightening works examining non-Asian and/or particular Asian societies. Those metaphors I employ in conceptualizing types of Asian societies are selected to highlight the nature and modes of inclusiveness and legitimization. By inclusiveness is meant to accommodate differences of various kinds, and by legitimization is meant to bestow self-respect and provide semi-auto-immunity to minorities of various sorts. The following types of societies are highlighted for the purpose of hinting at some loose ideal-types in the Weberian sense.
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(a) Masao Maruyama is a political scientist who invented concepts of an octopus-cave society (takotsubo gata) and a bamboo-made mixing tool society (sasara gata) in his endeavor to best characterize Japanese society. The former is inward-looking, narrow in focus, and intensive in digging. The latter is outward-looking, broad-gauging, and extensive in diffusing. An octopus-cave society assembles together without much conversation with each other but in a competitive manner in the search for caves that can accommodate their growing body. This imagery captures Japanese society (Maruyama, Reference Maruyama1961).
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(b) Arundhati Roy is a novelist from southern India who wrote The God of Small Things (1997). Indian society is full of differences and cleavages in terms of religious castes, class distinctions, ethnic differences, linguistic diversities, eating habits, marriage styles, and child rearing methods, etc. The beauty of Indian society, if it is so called, is that because it exists to protect and respect the tradition of a certain position in caste, class, ethnicity, language, family practices, one can be the god of small things. Take one example. In national, state, city, village elections, each caste is often well represented in local party organizations of dominant or emergently dominant parties, locally or nationally. More directly, those low caste Jats in Hariyana Pradesh, that control the water supply to New Delhi, struck and stopped the water supply before Governor of Haryana Pradesh agreed to increase their wages.
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(c) Guillermo O'Donnell is a political sociologist in Argentina who invented the concept of bureaucratic authoritarianism (O'Donnell, Reference O'Donnell1973). By that he meant that in running societies a certain set of coalitions of sectors bundle together to colonize and control regimes in their entirety. Sometimes during the economic developmental take-offs involving technocracy, the military and business literally control those regimes.
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(d) Franz Fanon is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary, who writes about Africa. In his work, The Wretched of the Earth, he describes the fragmented, feeble, and helpless society of Africa, which lacks an ingenious solution to coping and competing with the ever-penetrating external market and other forces from abroad (Fanon, Reference Fanon2005). At the same time, he describes the inherent strength of Africa with equilibrating dynamics of societies and intense pride in Africa's independence and nationalism.
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(e) John Keane is a political philosopher in Australia. The Life and Death of Democracy is a tour de force of the theory and practice of democracy 2000 years before Christ and after Christ (Keane, Reference Keane2009). When ancient Greek direct democracy ceased to work and when classical English representative democracy revealed the malfunctions, it created a void of both direct and representative democracy (Mair, Reference Mair2013; Levin, Reference Levin2016). What has emerged is monitory democracy in tandem with the rise of globalization and digitalization.
2.3 Corroborative narratives of five metaphors
As the above loose ideal-types are highlighted to reveal certain natures and modes of accommodation of differences and of legitimizing semi-auto-immunity of minorities of various kinds, I need to provide more contextual narratives that corroborate ideal-types in context.
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Japan: Robert Putnam (Reference Putnam and Hadenius1997), in discussing the visible difference between American and Japanese subjects' behavior in the prisoner's dilemma game, notes that the Japanese tend to express their trust more highly than Americans in face-to-face situations than when they face an anonymous other person. Whether it is in experiments or surveys as well as in normal human interactions, Putnam's observation points to the Japanese particularistic trait in expressing trust. Maruyama's octopus-cave society points to the Japanese bias in treating far more intimately or far more politely those who share the same school, same village, same company than those who do not have a shared common association. Once you are out of your octopus-cave, patterns of expression and behavior change. The relations among those caves are not particularly close or actively interactive.
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India: Genron–NPO (2016), a think-tank in Japan, carried out a survey in 2016 on democracy in the three largest democracies in Asia: India, Indonesia, and Japan. Of the survey questions, three are of particular interest: (1) How do you see your country's future prospects? (2) Do you think that your country's democracy is well functioning? (3) Thinking about political parties in your democracy, do you expect political parties to play a positive role? The response of Indian respondents is very positive to all three questions. In particular, on the third question, Indian respondents registered 85.9% positive responses (accessed on August 20, 2016). This cannot be well understood until one considers that in Indian society there are gods in small things. This mindset not only accommodates societal differences and cleavages, but also creates respect and protection with honor, thereby making Indian society more positive than other societies.
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Thailand: Extreme inequality exists in the five regions of Thailand – Bangkok, Central, Northeast, North, and Southern Thailand. When comparing them in terms of population size, GDP, and general public expenditure, Bangkok almost monopolizes general public expenditure, capturing 75% of it, although it produces only 26% of GDP and sustains 17% of the population. The Bangkok trinity of royalty, military, and bureaucracy colonizes the other four regions from within (The Economist, 2016). An entrepreneurial politician, Thaksin Shinawatra, took became prime minister by mobilizing the poor in the Northeast and North regions for a good part of the 2000s. He was overthrown and forbidden from visiting Thailand after a 2006 military coup d'état. Although his sister later became prime minister, another military coup d'état in 2014 wiped Yingluck Shinawatra and her peasant troops from Bangkok. Furthermore, the southern region is made up of ethnic Malays who are extremely poor but strongly Islamic and have often been defiant and violent. The military held a national referendum in 2016 that secured a state of military emergency for many years to come (Phongpaichit and Baker, Reference Phongpaichit and Baker2015).
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Pakistan: Similar to Algeria and Africa (see Franz Fanon, Reference Fanon2005), Pakistan keeps its resilience despite seeming fragility, fragmentation, and vulnerability. Keeping Islam as the only unifying flag, Pakistan connects an enormous array of diversities into strength: the army, nuclear weapons, a population of 200 million, agriculture, sense of honor and pride, excellent scientists, and oratorical capacity (Lieven, Reference Lieven2012).
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Singapore: A tiny island with a small population emerged from the mud in the last quarter of the twentieth century to become an advanced country over less than three decades (Lee, Reference Lee2000). What's the secret? Outstanding among many factors is building infrastructure of a knowledge society on an island with astuteness, adroitness, and aggressiveness. Not to be underestimated is the ability of micro-management of governance in a small and yet already densely populated country. Micro-monitoring of the population is said to be far more advanced in Singapore than in a hugely populated big space like China.
3. Five types of Asian societies on the basis of daily life satisfaction
Most of these revealing and enlightening works on types of societies have been undertaken in the form of qualitative comparisons or case studies or intense narratives of particular societies. Types of societies should also be examined systematically, comparatively, and quantitatively. Hence, the questionnaire included the following: ‘Please tell me how satisfied or dissatisfied you are with the following aspects of your life.’ Respondents answered on a five-point verbal scale of ‘very satisfied’, ‘somewhat satisfied’, ‘neither satisfied nor dissatisfied’, ‘somewhat dissatisfied’, and ‘very satisfied’, with a ‘don't know’ category. The 16 specific life aspects included the following:
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housing
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friendship
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marriage
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standard of living
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household income
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health
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education
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job
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neighbors
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public safety
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condition of the environment
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social welfare system
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democratic system
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family life
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spiritual life
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leisure
Each respondent's level of satisfaction was measured through a corresponding ordinal scale, that is, 5,4,3,2, or 1. Factor analysis was carried out with varimax rotation for the matrix of the 16 daily lifestyle aspects of all the respondents, country by country. The number of societies examined were 29. Some may suspect that ecological fallacy might exist in factor analysis of individual responses. Since the scale used for responses is of ordinary scale, factor analyzing individual responses yields correlation coefficients which are considered as ‘normal figures’. Hence, no concerns are necessary on ecological fallacy. Also such labels as materialism, post-materialism, and public sector dominance are applicable both to societal and individual characterization, and the five societal types may as well be called the five types of individual's attitudinal and behavioral inclinations in Asian societies.
Further analysis results are reported in Inoguchi and Fujii (Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013) and Inoguchi (Reference Inoguchi and Glatzer2015a). They are robustly similar to those of Ronald Inglehart (Reference Inglehart1977) and many other works, including the World Values Survey, in terms of the key dimensions: materialism, post-materialism, and public sector dominance. The appearance of public sector dominance is because people's perception of society contains public institutions and activities by the state. Its weight differs from society to society. Thus, the order of the three dimensions differs from society to society. These statistical differences form the basis of the five societal types I propose for Asia. This is what I may humbly call one of the ingenious aspects of my typology of Asian societies. As you can see from the labels attached to key dimensions of factor analysis, this typology is universally applied to non-Asian societies as well.
Eigenvalues show how much variance each dimension explains. In this paper, only the first two key dimensions are presented here to make the typology of Asian societies simple and meaningful. Empirically, five types of Asian societies have emerged (see Table 1)
Five types of Asian societies
Distinguishing Life Sphere of Domain Assessments-Japan
Notes: The reported loadings were from a principal factors solution with orthogonal varimax rotation
Japan
Source: The Quality Of Life In Asia: A Comparison Of Quality Of Life In Asia, Coauthored by Takashi Inoguchi and Seiji Fujii, Springer, Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013
Distinguishing Life Sphere of Domain Assessments-India
Notes: The reported loadings were from a principal factors solution with orthogonal varimax rotation
India
Source: The Quality Of Life In Asia: A Comparison Of Quality Of Life In Asia, Coauthored by Takashi Inoguchi and Seiji Fujii, Springer, Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013
Distinguishing Life Sphere of Domain Assessments-Thailand
Notes: The reported loadings were from a principal factors solution with orthogonal varimax rotation
Thailand
Source: The Quality of Life In Asia: A Comparison Of Quality Of Life In Asia, Coauthored by Takashi Inoguchi and Seiji Fujii, Springer, Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013
Distinguishing Life Sphere of Domain Assessments-Pakistan
Notes: The reported loadings were from a principal factors solution with orthogonal varimax rotation
Pakistan
Source: The Quality Of Life In Asia: A Comparison Of Quality Of Life In Asia, Coauthored by Takashi Inoguchi and Seiji Fujii, Springer, Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013
Distinguishing Life Sphere of Domain Assessments-Singapore
Notes: The reported loadings were from a principal factors solution with orthogonal varimax rotation
Singapore
Source: The Quality Of Life In Asia: A Comparison Of Quality Of Life In Asia, Coauthored by Takashi Inoguchi and Seiji Fujii, Springer, 2013
Top five lifestyle priorities for each of 27 Asian countries
To explain what Table 1 means, in the Ab type of societies, the first dimension of materialism, that is, satisfaction with survival-related daily life aspects, weighs most. The second dimension of post-materialism, that is, satisfaction with social relations-related daily life aspects, weighs second. In the Ac type of societies, the first dimension of materialism, that is, satisfaction with survival-related daily life aspects, weighs most. The second dimension of public sector dominance, that is, state-related daily life aspects, weighs second.
In the Ba type of societies, the first dimension of post-materialism, that is, satisfaction with social relations-related daily life aspects, weighs most. The second dimension of materialism, that is, satisfaction with survival-related daily life aspects, weighs second. One may ask how social relations-related satisfaction with daily life aspects has more weight than survival-related satisfaction with daily life aspects. In Ba or Bc societies, how to handle social relations at high and community levels often makes crucial differences to survival and future well-being. In the Bc type of societies, the first dimension of post-materialism, that is, satisfaction with social relations-related daily life aspects, weighs most. The second dimension of public sector dominance, that is, satisfaction with state-related satisfaction with daily life aspects, weighs second. In the Bc type of societies, both social relations-related and state-related daily life aspects weigh more than survival-related satisfaction with daily life aspects.
In the Ca type of societies, the first dimension of public sector dominance, that is, satisfaction with state-related daily life aspects, weighs most. The second dimension of materialism, that is, satisfaction with survival-related daily life aspects, weighs second. In other words, social relations-related satisfaction with daily life aspects weighs least of the three dimensions. The Cb type of societies has not been identified in the 29 Asian societies. However, whether a Cb type society exists or not empirically remains my future task.
The five patterns of two-dimensional orders are shown with five representative societies: Ab is represented by Japan; Ac is represented by India; Ba is represented by Thailand; Bc is represented by Pakistan; Ca is represented by Singapore. All the factor analysis results are shown in Appendix of Inoguchi and Fujii (Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013). Table 2 through 6 show factor analysis results of the five representive societies.
The five patterns of two-dimensional orders are taken as five types of Asian societies:
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Type Ab includes Japan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
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Type Ac includes China, South Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Mongolia.
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Type Ba includes Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Kyrgyzstan.
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Type Bc includes Brunei, the Philippines, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Kazakhstan.
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Type Ca includes Singapore and the Maldives.
Labels attached to each of the five types of Asian societies are as follows:
Ab – octopus-cave society, named after Masao Maruyama (Reference Maruyama1961)
An octopus-cave society is composed of a myriad of octopus-occupying caves, each keeping a distance from one another, within each of which different rules and norms prevail.
Ac – god-of-small-things society, named after Arundhati Roy (Reference Roy1997)
In a despotic society, freedom exists only for one person, so says Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel. In a god-of-small-things society, everyone is king and has freedom in their respective sphere. A god-of-small-things society coexists side by side with a domineering state.
Ba – society colonized from within, named after Guillermo O'Donnell (Reference O'Donnell1973)
In a society colonized from within, a leading sector and its coalition colonize the regime. There is no level playing field, with the rest of society not in a position for participation and recruitment.
Bc – fragmented and fractured society, named after Franz Fanon (Reference Fanon2005)
A society composed of those disconnected and dispossessed is a fragmented and fractured society. Unlike a society colonized from within, a fragmented and fractured society does not enjoy a high level of compliance. Because of affluence and poverty, because of coercion and defiance, because of oppressive environments, equilibrium of fragmentation and fluctuation is maintained robustly.
Ca – micro-monitory society, named after John Keane (Reference Keane2009)
A society small enough with sufficiently capable regime apparatus keeps the rest of the residents focused on pursuing comfort and compliance.
4. Five types of Asian societies and lifestyle priorities
Some may say that the results of factor-analysis of daily life satisfaction require at least one more piece of corroborative or reinforcing empirical evidence. To meet this request, here is the top five lifestyle priorities, country by country (Inoguchi and Fujii, Reference Inoguchi and Fujii2013: 96). The question asked is: ‘Of the following lifestyle aspects or life circumstances, please select five that are important to you’.
Type Ab materialism (lifestyle priorities are underlined), followed by postmaterialism.
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Afghanistan: diet, health, home, being devout, and job
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Indonesia: health, diet, home, being devout, and job
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Japan: health, family, job, and home
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Taiwan: standard of living, income, health, job, leisure, and housing
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Tajikistan: health, diet, home, job, and income
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Uzbekistan: health, home, income, job, and diet
Those societies with type Ab naturally register many materialist-oriented (or survival or quality-of-life sustaining) lifestyle priorities, followed by many postmaterialist-oriented (or social relations or quality-of-life enriching) lifestyle priorities.
Type Ac materialism (lifestyle priorities are underlined) followed by public sector dominance.
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China: health, home, job, medical care, and low crime rates
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South Korea: health, home, family life, job, and income
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Cambodia: diet, health, home, job, and income
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Laos: health, diet, home, job, and family
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Myanmar: health, diet, being devout, home, and and job
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Bangladesh: health, medical care, low crime rates, being devout, and home
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India: health, home. diet, job, and family life
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Nepal: health, diet, job, and low crime rates
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Mongolia: health, home, diet, job, and medical care
Again both materialist (survival or quality-of-life sustaining) and public sector dominance (or quality-of-life enabling) lifestyle priorities are most frequently registered.
Type Ba Postmaterialism (lifestyle priorities are underlined) followed by materialism.
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Hong Kong: friendships, marriage, health, education, family life, leisure, and spiritual life
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Malaysia: health, home, diet, family life, and job
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Thailand: health, diet, home, job, and family life
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Vietnam: health, job, diet, home, and success at work
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Kyrgyzstan: friendships, home, living standard, and spiritual life
Those postmaterialist lifestyles priorities are often registered as well as materialist lifestyle priorities.
Type Bc post-materialism (lifestyle priorities are underlined) followed by public sector dominance.
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Brunei: health, home, diet, family, and job
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Philippines: diet, health, home, job, and family
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Bhutan: housing, education, spiritual life, and prayer
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Pakistan: health, diet, home, being devout, and income
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Sri Lanka: health, diet, home, family, and job
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Kazakhstan: health, job, home, medical care, and income
Postmaterialist lifestyle priorities are often registered as well as public sector dominance lifestyle priorities.
Type Ca public sector dominance (lifestyle priorities are underlined) followed by materialism.
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Singapore: health, home, job, family, and diet
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Maldives: diet, medical care, low crime rates, health, and job
Public sector dominance lifestyle priorities are often registered as well as materialist lifestyle priorities.
Looked at from lifestyle priorities as well, the five types of Asian societies, on the basis of everyday life satisfaction registered by people, are validated empirically.
5. Conclusion
Having been heavily influenced by classical authors on Asia such as Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Wittfogel, studies of Asian societies have tended to be viewed from the top down, not the bottom up. However, more recently the remarkable growth in solid empirical data collected about various aspects of Asian societies has enabled one to analyze Asian societies and individuals, broadly bereft of such classical Western biases (Inoguchi, Reference Inoguchi and Maggino2015b and Inoguchi and Estes, Reference Inoguchi, Estes, Estes and Sirgy2016). The method of looking at societies from bottom up is applicable both to Asian and non-Asian societies as well as to both societies and individuals. This article has attempted to look at Asian societies from the common person's perspective. Having made use of the AsiaBarometer quality-of-life focused Asia-wide survey carried out in the 2000s, I have factor analyzed people's daily life satisfaction based on 16 aspects, society by society, for 29 Asian societies. The results are strongly similar to the key findings of the World Values Survey, led by Ronald Inglehart (Reference Inglehart1977, Reference Inglehart1990, Reference Inglehart1997), Inglehart and Welzel (Reference Inglehart and Welzel2005), and many others: materialism, postmaterialism, and, since the state is part of people's everyday life, public sector dominance, have emerged as three key factors. The order of eigenvalues of these three dimensions differs society by society. In other words, Asian societies consist broadly of five types: Ab, Ac, Ba, Bc, Ca, depending on the order of the first two key dimensions.
Judging from the method, data, and results, most creative of this analysis is that it generates the types of Asian societies from the bottom up systematically and scientifically.
Having been liberated from classical Western bias in characterizing Asian comparative politics, this article conveys an important message. There is neither Western political science nor non-Western political science (Inoguchi, Reference Inoguchi2016, Chugrov, Reference Chugrov2016). When the hither fore to dominant Abrahamic orientation in social sciences loosens in terms of conceptualization and theorization and when the Dharmic orientation in social science enriches knowledge of and insights into Asian comparative politics, the prospect for Asian comparative politics to flourish is bright. By Abrahamic is meant the standardizing and unifying orientation in concept and theory formation, whereas by the Dharmic orientation is meant the orientation with to respect diversities and digging into further complexities.
About the author
Takashi Inoguchi is Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo and President of the University of Niigata Prefecture. He specializes in Japanese politics, comparative politics, and international relations. In the 2000s he carried out what is called the AsiaBarometer, covering all of Asia (East, Southeast, South and Central) focusing on quality of life. The Quality of Life in Asia (coauthored with Seiji Ishii, Springer, 2013), Trust with Asian Characteristics (coedited with Yasuharu Tokuda, Springer, 2017), and Exit, Voice and Loyalty in Asia (Springer, forthcoming in 2017) will be among his latest works. On the basis of these and other works, he has been working on modelling a global social contract. After the direct link established between global citizens' preferences and sovereign states' participation in multilateral treaties (Inoguchi and Le, Reference Inoguchi and Le2016, in this journal, 17: 3), he now works on those intervening variables in the link.
