This paper presents an overview of electoral governance across the East Asian region, and highlights the growing importance of regional models and clusters in understanding political reform in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. If identifies three distinctive sub-regional trends: the combination of (semi) presidential government, mixed-member majoritarian electoral systems and nascent two-party politics in the new Northeast Asian democracies of Korea, Taiwan and Mongolia; the prevalence of one-party dominant parliamentarism in the Southeast Asian ''semi-democracies'' of Malaysia and Singapore (and the ongoing evolution of Cambodia and Burma along similar lines); and the shift towards more complex elections and more fragmented party systems in the Southeast Asian democracies of Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor, as well as Thailand. This process is diluting the earlier pan-Asian convergence in democratic models, highlighting instead the distinctive democratic trajectories of Northeast Asia, mainland Southeast Asia, and maritime Southeast Asia.
