COVER STORY • Exploring Future Relations in East Asia • 8

T

he Asian Barometer
Survey & the Challengeof Populism in Asia

By Min-hua Huang & Mark Weatherall

Introduction to the Asian Barometer Survey
The Asian Barometer Survey (ABS) began in 2001, and after four
survey waves has grown into a major cross-national survey projectfocused on democratization covering 14 countries and territories in
East and Southeast Asia and around a quarter of the world’s
population. The ABS is based at National Taiwan University, Taipei,
Taiwan, and works with local partners in each of the surveyedcountries and territories to implement national surveys under acommon research framework and methodology. Survey data fromeach of the countries and territories are cleaned and merged by staff
at the ABS headquarters, and are subsequently made freely available
to scholars, policy makers, practitioners, and other interested
members of the public. As of November 2018, the ABS has received
more than 5,000 applications to use its data from more than 40
countries. For applications for survey data by country andinformation on how to apply for survey data, please visit the ABS
website at http://www.asianbarometer.org.

History of the Asian Barometer Survey
The ABS traces its history back more than 30 years to a research
project established by Fu Hu, a renowned professor of politicalscience at National Taiwan University and academician of Academia
Sinica. In 1993, the research team under Professor Hu’s leadership
launched a research project on “Political Culture and Political
Participation in the Different Chinese Cultural Areas: A Comparative
Study of Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong” with the supportof the Henry Luce Foundation. In 2000, the East Asia Barometer(EAB) was established with the support of the Ministry of Education’s
Program for Promoting Academic Excellence in Universities. The
First Wave of the EAB was conducted between 2001 and 2003,
adding five further countries to the survey (Japan, South Korea,
Thailand, the Philippines, and Mongolia). For the Second Wave of thesurvey, conducted between 2005 and 2008, a further five countries
were added (Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, andSingapore), and the name of the project was changed to the Asian
Barometer Survey. The Third Wave of the survey was carried out
between 2010 and 2012 in the same 13 countries and territories as
the Second Wave. The Fourth Wave of the survey was carried out
between 2014 and 2016 in the same 13 countries and territories,
plus Myanmar. The Fifth Wave survey is currently in the field or
https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

Author Min-hua Huang

Author Mark Weatherall

under preparation, and will be conducted in all of the 14 countries
and territories in the Fourth Wave plus Australia, New Zealand, andEast Timor, expanding the reach of the survey to Oceania for the firsttime.
Further information on the survey waves and surveyed countries
can be found on the ABS website. The ABS is currently operated
under the auspices of the Program for East Asia Democratic Studies
under the leadership of Yun-han Chu, professor of political science at
National Taiwan University and academician of Academia Sinica. In
addition to the ABS, the Program for East Asia Democratic Studies
also serves as the headquarters of the Global Barometer Surveys(GBS), which brings together six regional barometer surveys(including the ABS) to produce comparative data on political
attitudes covering 70% of the world’s population.

Research Findings from the ABS
Over the years, the ABS team has gathered rich longitudinal dataon the attitudes of citizens in the region. Starting from the First
Wave, the ABS has covered a range of topics related todemocratization and political values, including trust in institutions,social capital, political participation, meaning of democracy, support
for democracy, satisfaction with democracy, and preference fordemocracy. Over the four waves of the survey, the ABS steadily
expanded the range of survey topics beyond the initial focus on
democratization and political values. For instance, starting from theThird Wave, the ABS included a battery on international relations. In
the context of the rise of China and its growing challenge to
American dominance in the region, the international relations battery
probes respondents’ views on the most influential power in theregion and in their own country (now and in the future), whichcountry offers the best model for their own country’s development,
and whether China’s influence is positive or negative. The findings
from the international relations battery provide us with valuable
empirical data on how ordinary people in the region view the rise of
China and how they assess great power competition between China
and the United States. More information on the key findings of the
ABS can be found on the ABS website.

Achievements of the ABS
In the three decades since Fu Hu launched the predecessor to theJapan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 201937

COVER STORY 8

ABS, the research team can boast a number of significant
achievements. The 1994 mainland China survey carried out as partof the research project on “Political Culture and Political Participationin the Different Chinese Cultural Areas: A Comparative Study ofMainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong” was the first time anational randomized survey in mainland China had been carried out
by political scientists. The Fourth Wave survey in Myanmar
conducted in 2014 was also the first national survey of its type in
Myanmar. The ABS is the first cross-national survey project led by
East Asian scholars and the first survey project of its type in East
Asia. The ABS survey data provide a valuable resource for social
scientists and have been used in numerous academic publications.
In addition, the research project has done important work indeveloping social science research capacity in East Asia, for example
by offering training on survey methodologies and providing
opportunities for scholars from the region to collaborate withcolleagues from the US and other Western countries. Finally, the ABS
has also expanded the influence of the research project beyond thescholarly community by reaching out to practitioners and policy
experts through collaborative projects with organizations such as theHenry Luce Foundation, the United Nations Development
Programme, and the World Bank.

Democracy Under Challenge
When the ABS was first implemented in the first half of the 2000s,
the prospects for democracy in East Asia appeared to be relatively
bright. Although the region’s largest country, China, remained underauthoritarian one-party rule, democracy was on the rise elsewhere in
the region following successful transitions to democracy in South
Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The region’s
second-largest country by population, Indonesia, was also soon
added to the ranks of the region’s democracies following successfulpresidential and legislative elections in 2004. However, since theheady days of the turn of the millennium, the progress of democracyin the region has stalled and, in some cases, eroded. Thailand
remains under the rule of a military junta following a coup in 2014.
Democracy in the Philippines has failed to consolidate, and the ruleof law continues to be undermined by extra-judicial killings andthreats against civil society under the regime of Rodrigo Duterte.
Even in the established liberal democracies in the region, data fromthe Fourth Wave of the ABS show that significant numbers of
respondents do not agree with the statement that “democracy isalways the best form of government” — 24% of respondents inJapan, 35% of respondents in South Korea, and 53% of respondents
in Taiwan either believe that authoritarian government may be
preferable under certain circumstances or that it does not matter if aregime is democratic or not. At the same time as democracy is under
threat, a rising China offers a potential alternative model for national
development to Western liberal democracy.

38 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2019

The Rise of Populism in Asia & Elsewhere
In the West, the rise of populism, from the election of President
Donald Trump in the US, to the United Kingdom’s vote to leave theEuropean Union and the election of populist leaders across Europe,
has been frequently cited as a threat to democracy. A title of a recent
book by Yascha Mounk — The People vs. Democracy (Harvard
University Press, 2018) — expresses the fear that populism could
destroy democracy in striking terms. Populism is not only a problemof the developed world; it is also on the rise in democracies in thedeveloping world — the world’s third-largest democracy, Brazil,
recently elected a far-right populist, Jair Bolsonaro, as president. Of
the countries covered by the ABS, Duterte in the Philippines andThaksin Shinawatra in Thailand were both elected on platforms that
proposed to redistribute wealth but also involved a dangerous
disregard for the rule of law, including drug crackdowns thatinvolved extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers. However, incountries outside Southeast Asia, the tide toward populism does not
at first glance appear to be as dramatic. In Japan, South Korea, andTaiwan, politics remains dominated by establishment politicians fromthe main political parties. Yet even in these countries there are signsof growing unrest. In Japan, the former mayor of Osaka, Toru
Hashimoto, who first rose to fame as a television personality, has
attracted attention for his ultranationalist views and attacks against
liberal causes. In South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, mayor of Seongnam,a city near Seoul, has successfully tapped into popular anger against
the “establishment cartel” of politicians and big business. In Taiwan,“outsider” politicians such as current independent Taipei Mayor Ko
Wen-je and current Kuomintang (KMT) candidate for mayor of
Kaohsiung Han Kuo-yu have stood on populist, anti-establishment
platforms, attracting significant support.

Rising Inequality & Populism
The global rise of populism has been blamed on the failure ofmainstream politicians to provide solutions to worsening inequality
and the “hollowing out” of the middle class. In 2016, the vote for
Brexit and the election of Donald Trump were attributed by somecommentators to middle-class anxiety in the face of growing
inequality and cultural change under the influence of globalization.
Although East Asia has benefited from the outsourcing of production
from the West under globalization, as the region has become
increasingly integrated within the global economic system, it has
also suffered from worsening income inequality. In Chart 1, we
present the changes in the ratio of incomes of the top 10%
compared to the remaining 90% of citizens. We choose the measureof the top 10% compared to the remaining 90% instead of the
traditional measure which compares the top 20% to the remaining
80% because we are interested in the so-called “hollowing out” ofthe middle class, where the only winners of globalization are the veryrichest in society. The data cover a four-decade period from the startof the modern era of globalization and the integration of the region in
the global economy in the 1980s.

COVER STORY 8
CHART 1

Ratio of average income in East Asia & South East Asia, top 10% vs bottom 90%
East Asia

8
7

7

6

6

5

5

4

4

3

3

2

2

1

1

0

1980-1984 1985-1989 1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014

Mongolia

South Korea

China

TaiwanSoutheast Asia

8

Japan

0

1980-1984 1985-1989 1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014

Cambodia

Singapore

Malaysia
ThailandPhilippines
Vietnam

Source: Adapted from Mark Weatherall, Min-hua Huang, and Taehee Whang, “The Malaise of Globalization in East Asia: Income Inequality, Perceived State Capacity, and Anti-Establishment
Attitudes”, Korean Journal of International Studies Vol. 16, No. 1 (April 2017: 1-27). Data from the World Wealth and Income Database and World Bank World Development Indicators

Comparing the East Asian countries on the left-hand side with theSoutheast Asia countries on the right-hand side, we can see
contrasting patterns. At the start of the 1980s, levels of inequality inEast Asia were relatively low. The lowest ratio of income between the
top 10% and the bottom 90% at the start of the 1980s was found in
China as the country was entering the period of reform and opening
up and had not yet produced clear “winners” and “losers” from theprocess. Even South Korea and Taiwan, which achieved rapid
economic growth after the 1960s, managed this achievement at thesame time as keeping levels of income inequality relatively low. The
most unequal country in the region at the start of the 1980s
according to our measure, Japan, was also its most economicallyadvanced. However, with the exception of Mongolia, all of thecountries in the East Asia region have witnessed large increases ininequality since the start of the 1980s, with the most rapid increases
in inequality occurring in the 1990s as the pace of globalization andintegration of the region into the global economy accelerated.
In contrast to East Asia, where levels of inequality started off
relatively low in the 1980s, and subsequently grew rapidly, someSoutheast Asian countries have actually seen modest declines ininequality, albeit from a much higher starting point. At the start of theperiod, the emerging economies of Thailand and Malaysia had theregion’s highest levels of income inequality. However, levels of
income inequality in both countries have actually declined over the
past three decades as the benefits of economic development havespread more widely. In contrast, the Philippines and Vietnam hadlower levels of inequality than both Thailand and Malaysia at the startof the period. However, following small increases in inequality overthe four decades since the 1980s, the Philippines and Vietnam are
now more unequal societies than Thailand and Malaysia. Finally,
Singapore, which followed a similar growth trajectory to Taiwan andSouth Korea, has also seen a large increase in inequality since the1980s, with the largest jump in inequality occurring in the 1990s.

Is Inequality Driving Populism in Asia?
What are the implications of inequality for populism in East Asia?
There is no single definition of the term “populism”; however, at theroot of populism is a juxtaposition between the morally good “purepeople” and corrupt and self-serving “elites”. To capture the antiestablishment sentiment that is central to populism, we use aquestion from the Fourth Wave of the ABS that asks respondents
about the proposition: “You can generally trust the people who run
our government to do what is right.” We chose this statement
because it does not specify a particular regime and can therefore
hopefully capture general dissatisfaction with the political systemand political elites rather than individual leaders or parties. Next, toassess whether anti-establishment sentiment is associated withpopular anger about growing inequality, we use a composite
measure produced from two questions from the ABS. The firstquestion asks whether respondents think the income distribution in
their country is fair. The second question asks respondents whether
they agree that it is the responsibility of the government to reducethe differences between people with high income and those with low
incomes. This combined measure is designed to capture a sentimentthat the government has failed to resolve the problem of inequality.
Chart 2 shows a strong association between the view thatgovernments have failed to resolve the problem of inequality andanti-establishment sentiment. The correlation between politicians’
failure to resolve inequality and populist sentiment is 0.158,
significant at the p<=0.001 level. Consistent with our finding that
inequality has risen sharply in most East Asian countries and fallen
or risen only slightly in most Southeast Asian countries, we find thatcitizens in East Asia are generally less satisfied with their
Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 201939

COVER STORY 8
CHART 2

Populist sentiment & dissatisfaction with income inequality
90%

85%

80%

71%

70%

79%

60%

60%

53%

50%

73%

71%
56%

58%

53%

48%

43%

40%

73%

40%

51%

48%
38%

42%
32%

30%

37%

27%

24%

20%

35%

32%
22%

35%
18%

15%

10%
0%

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Si

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la

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Not trust those who rule
Unfair income distribution & government responsibility to reduce inequality
Source: Mark Weatherall, Min-hua Huang, and Taehee Whang, “The Malaise of Globalization in East Asia: Income Inequality, Perceived State Capacity, and Anti-Establishment Attitudes”, Korean
Journal of International Studies Vol. 16, No. 1 (April 2017: 1-27). Survey data from ABS Wave 4.

government’s performance in reducing inequality and express higher
levels of anti-establishment sentiment. We find the highest levels of
dissatisfaction with the government’s performance in reducing
inequality as well as the highest levels of anti-establishment
sentiment in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, three economies
that have seen large increases in levels of inequality since the 1980s.
In contrast, in countries in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia,
Thailand, and Vietnam, which have seen falls or only modest
increases in income inequality over the same period, citizens are
more satisfied with their government’s performance in reducing
income inequality and express lower levels of anti-establishment
sentiment. The two clear outliers in our analysis are Myanmar andMongolia, where high levels of frustration at the failure of thegovernment to reduce inequality have not translated into antiestablishment sentiment.

Conclusions & Directions for Future Research
The findings from the Fourth Wave of the ABS show that antiestablishment sentiment (which is central to populist rhetoric) iswidespread in the region. Furthermore, our analysis shows a link
between a perceived failure of governments to reduce inequality andanti-establishment sentiment. It is also revealing that antiestablishment sentiment is highest in countries in East Asia such as
Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea that have seen sharp increases ininequality since the 1980s, whereas many Southeast Asian countries,
where inequality has fallen or risen only marginally, have lower levelsof anti-establishment sentiment. However, our findings also present
a puzzle: why have “outsider” populist leaders failed to emerge incountries with high levels of anti-establishment sentiment such as
Taiwan and South Korea, at least at the national level? One possible
explanation is that mainstream politicians have effectively co-opted
40 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2019

the policy space of populists. For example, in South Korea, the policy
pledges of President Moon Jae In, including sharp increases in
welfare spending that opponents claim are unaffordable, have been
widely labelled as “populist”. Another possible explanation is thatwhile the dam is yet to burst, East Asia may soon succumb to the
populist tide. Already, potential leaders of new populist movementsin the region have emerged, mostly through municipal governments— from Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike in Japan, Ko Wen-je and Han
Kuo-yu in Taiwan, and former Lee Jae Myung in South Korea. It isvery possible that this model will be repeated on the national stage in
the not too distant future.
When compared to the relentless focus on populism elsewhere in
the world, particularly in the US, Europe, and Latin America, there
has been less attention to the issue in Asia in both academic
research and media reports. However, data from the Fourth Wave of
the ABS suggest that anti-establishment sentiment in the region is
widespread, showing that the region has not avoided the populist
wave affecting other parts of the world. However, further research isneeded to further probe populist sentiment in the region. For
example, new items could be included in future surveys to measureother aspects of populism aside from anti-establishment attitudes,
such as a belief in the “pure” masses as opposed to “corrupt” elites
or a belief that political leaders should always follow the “will of thepeople”. On the supply-side of populism, researchers can apply
methods such as text analysis of the speeches of leaders or party
manifestos. Such research will help scholars and practitioners better
understand populist trends in the region and how they compare to
populism elsewhere in the world.
Min-hua Huang is professor of political science and director of the Center for
East Asia Democratic Studies at National Taiwan University.
Mark Weatherall is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Center for East Asia
Democratic Studies at National Taiwan University.