ABSTRACT
For more than a decade, democracy researchers have sought to assess the quality of political institutions, especially in new democracies around the globe (Berg-Schlosser 2004; O’Donnell et al. 2004; Diamond and Morlino 2005; Hutcheson and Korosteleva 2006; Roberts 2010; Morlino et al. 2011). This stream of scholarly research has been driven by a growing concern that many Third Wave democracies have failed to fully embody the principles and norms of liberal democracy and that prolonged performance failures could engender public discontent and ultimately threaten democratic legitimacy. Recognizing that Third Wave democracies in East Asia are no exceptions (Chang et al. 2011; Im 2011; Park and Chang 2013; Park and Chu 2014), in this chapter we examine systematically how citizens view the quality of political institutions and practices in Northeast Asian democracies that experienced different trajectories of regime evolution or transition (Chu et al. 2008; Diamond 2008).
