Who Governs Asia’s Democracies and Hybrid Regimes? Governance, Legitimacy, and the New Mandate of Performance in Asian Politics

Across Asia’s democracies and hybrid regimes, legitimacy increasingly derives from the capacity to deliver—to produce growth, welfare, and order—rather than from procedural or ideological foundations. This article examines the rise of performance-based governance as a new source of political legitimacy across diverse Asian contexts. Drawing the examples of India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Korea, I argue that the “mandate of performance” has redefined the relationship between state capacity and democratic accountability. Executives now seek validation through visible delivery rather than institutional reform, fusing populist charisma with technocratic control. While such performance politics enhances state responsiveness, it also normalizes centralization and weakens checks and balances. The result is a distinctive Asian pattern of governance—simultaneously pragmatic, popular, and post-liberal—revealing how democracy is being reconstituted through the politics of delivery.