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While several East Asian countries have been part of the "third wave" of democratization over the past generation, it is no secret that many of them have also been experiencing significant growing pains. In just the last five years, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and most recently South Korea have all suffered serious-albeit not regime-threateningpolitical crises that featured at least the beginning of impeachment proceedings against an elected chief executive. Presidents Joseph Estrada of the Philippines and Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia (the one indirectly elected member of the group) actually lost their offices-in Estrada's case through means that many deemed illegal. Presidents Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan and Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea survived the campaigns against them, the former because impeachment never went much beyond a preliminary motion in the legislature, and the latter because his country's Constitutional Court decided that he should keep his job despite what the Court found were legal and constitutional derelictions.
In each of these cases a president found himself facing a crisis of legitimacy, bereft of a legislative majority, and often without power to enact his agenda into law. The turmoil created by these crises has led to calls for constitutional reform in all four countries. In the Philippines, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Estrada's successor, has even agreed to open formal deliberations on whether the country should amend its constitution and adopt a parliamentary form of government.
Is there a crisis in East Asian presidentialism comparable to the problems that presidential polities have experienced in Latin America and other parts of the world? Does what happened in Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan reveal defects inherent in presidentialism, or are the causes more particular, relating to poorly designed institutions in one country or another? If the latter, are such institutions readily fixable, or do they reflect deep-seated dynamics in each society that are likely to resist change?
It is true that presidential systems have created crisis and instability in all four of these East Asian lands, though none of the four crises was regime-threatening or led to democratic breakdown. In each country, presidentialism allowed a relative outsider to rise to power far more rapidly than would have been possible under parliamentarism. In Taiwan and South Korea, these outsiders succeeded...