Mary Alice Haddad is an Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. Her publications include Politics and Volunteering in Japan: A Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2007) and articles in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, the Journal of Asian Studies and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. She has received numerous grants and fellowships from organizations such as the Institute of International Education (Fulbright), the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Japan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation and the East Asian Institute. She is currently working on a project about environmental politics in East Asia.

How is democracy made real? How does an undemocratic country create new institutions and transform its polity such that democratic values and practices become integral parts of its political culture? These are some of the most pressing questions of our times, and they are the central inquiry of Building Democracy in Japan. Using the Japanese experience as starting point, this book develops a new approach to the study of democratization that examines state-society interactions as a country adjusts its existing political culture to accommodate new democratic values, institutions and practices. With reference to the country's history, the book focuses on how democracy is experienced in contemporary Japan, highlighting the important role of generational change in facilitating both gradual adjustments as well as dramatic transformation in Japanese politics.