THE CADI ASIAN DEMOCRACY INDEX 2013 SURVEY

The Consortium for the Asian Democracy Index (CADI) is currently conducting a survey on democratization in South Korea, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The survey is being conducted by the members of CADI, which include researchers from the Democracy and Social Movements Institute of Sungkonghoe University, South Korea; Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi; Chulalongkorn University; the Center for Democracy and Human Rights Studies in Indonesia; the Center for Political Studies of the University of Indonesia; the Politics and Government Programme, Faculty of Social Science, University of Malaysia Sarawak; and the Third World Studies Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman. Each organization will be conducting the survey in their respective countries, targeting a sample of local experts in three areas: politics, economy, and civil society. The CADI Asian Democracy Index (ADI) shares some of the strengths of other democracy metrics: 1. The great weight given by the Freedom in the World analyses and the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index to political and civil liberties; The identification of human development as an index of democratization by the Democracy Ranking of the Quality of Democracy; The highlighting of the rejection of authoritarianism as a means of assessing democratic consolidation by the East Asia Barometer surveys; The emphasis given on the within-the-country perspective by the Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asias Asia Democracy Index

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The survey results of the CADI ADI project is intended to fill gaps unaddressed by the assessments mentioned, notably the lack of focus on the majority of assessments on economic democratization. Moreover, the Asian Democracy Index is designed to understand the quality of democracy in Asian countries today; the ADI seeks only to present the current democratic status of Asian countries, not to propose an exemplary democratic model or to rank different democratic characteristics of the countries. The main obstacle to democratization identified by the ADIs framers is the undue concentration of politico-socio-economic powers. The ADI project looks at democratization as a multi-layered de-monopolization process, whereby a dic tatorial monopoly complex is dismantled, often starting with a dictatorial regime overthrow; typically, during democratization, authoritarian residuals or oligarchic politico-socioeconomic power holders reintegrate themselves into democratic society. Thus, CADI looks at democratization as a continuing upheaval to achieve a relational formation wherein power and resources are fairly distributed. CADI believes that there are two primary principles of democracy: liberalization, which refers to how a monopoly of resources is de-integrated in the procedural level, or the level of autonomy achieved from the monopoly complex; and equalization, the principle that concerns the evaluation of how well agents are moving towards achieving socially just resource distribution. Liberalization is broken down into the subprinciples autonomy (independence of sectors of society from the government) and competition (state of the self-reference [i.e., transparency and accountability]

system), while equalization is broken down into the subprinciples pluralization (level of socially just resource allocation) and solidarity (degree of mitigation of income and asset disparity). Results of ADI Pilot Test in the Philippines (2012): The table below summarizes the estimates of democracy indices derived from the results of the 2012 CADI ADI survey in the Philippines. On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the most desirable score,
ADI PHILIPPINES 2012 - SUMMARY FIELDS POLITICS 6.00 4.68 4.65 5.85 POL LIB 5.34 POL EQ 5.25 POLITICS 5.30 ECONOMY 4.48 4.30 2.28 4.31 ECON LIB 4.39 ECON EQ 3.3 ECONOMY 3.85 CIVIL SOCIETY 4.84 6.43 4.70 5.50 CIVSOC LIB 5.64 CIVSOC EQ 5.1 CIVIL SOCIETY 5.37 SUB INDICES 5.11 5.14 3.88 5.22 4.55 CORE INDICES 5.12 PH ADI 4.84

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AUTONOMY

LIB EQ

COMPETITION PLURALIZATION SOLIDARITY

DEMOCRACY INDICES

AVERAGE

Overall, what we said of Philippine democratization based on the 2011 survey results wherein the Philippines obtained an overall ADI score of 5.2still rings true based on the 2012 survey results. As we stated before, 1)while measureslegal or otherwiseto assure the continuation of democratization in the political, economic, and civil society fields exist, the implementation of these measures is poor or negligible; 2) government corruption and other abuses of power are checked in principle both by governmental and nongovernmental bodies, but such abuses persist because these monitoring mechanisms are poorly implemented, especially at the local government level;3) there is also a dearth of legislation and other means to ensure transparency and accountability among nongovernmental power holders; 4)coordination among the means and agents to address inequality in power and resource distribution in all the aforementioned areas of society is lacking. [O]ne can validly conclude that there is a lack of significant united opposition to multi-field monopolization in the country, even if monopolies are anathema according to the law and popular belief. The doors to successful sustainable de-monopolization are openbut the few who struggle to keep them open are barely able, if at all, to combat those who would rather keep the status quo. Thus, we are able to state that there remains a need for those who push for the protection of everyones political and social rights should also strive to protect the economic rights of all.

Please visit our website, http://twsc.upd.edu.ph/html, for more information about the project. The results of every survey will be published in our journal, Asian Democracy Review.