ABSTRACT
Constitutional structure in East Asian countries varies widely. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan opt for three distinctively different constitutional designs that are the most popular in the world: parliamentarism, presidentialism, and semi-presidentialism. There are amazing similarities among the three East Asian countries, such as a long record of high economic growth, the leading role of the state in sustaining rapid development, the duration of conservative political force, a relatively equitable distribution, robust democratic politics, an SNTV-turned-MMM electoral regime, and a lack of left-right divide that characterizes most other democracies in the world. One major difference among the three is the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and lack of political turnovers in Japan (despite two short periods of non-LDP rule in 1993–1994 and 2009–2012) and the emergence of a two-party system and alternation of political power in Taiwan and South Korea. This difference in turn has significant implications for political development in the three countries. As will be shown in the following discussion, the divergence of constitutional system among the three countries is a key factor in bringing about the difference, hence the need to take a careful look at the basic political structure of the East Asian Trio.
