East Asia lacks Western Europe’s political and economic homogeneity

Evidence

The multipower, multicivilizational nature of East Asia distinguishes it from Western Europe, and economic and political differences reinforce this contrast. All the countries of Western Europe are stable democracies, have market economies, and are at high levels of economic development. In the mid-1990s East Asia includes one stable democracy, several new and unstable democracies, four of the five communist dictatorships remaining in the world, plus military governments, personal dictatorships, and one-party-dominant authoritarian systems. Levels of economic development varied from those of Japan and Singapore to those of Vietnam and North Korea. A general trend exists toward marketization and economic opening, but economic systems still run the gamut from the command economy of North Korea through various mixes of state control and private enterprise to the laissez-faire economy of Hong Kong. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 590

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Huntington thesis about civilization formation requiring core states; also to contemporary debates about Asian regionalism vs European institutional density.