e in western societies; however, they also typicaly also enjoy a much broader base of support than that found for most political decisions in western societies.
Because leadership methods differ between countries does not necessariy permit an assessment that one approach is super ior to another. Largely, the best approach to political leadership depends upon the conditions in a specific country, and the preferences of that country's population.
2N. Keyfitz, "The Asian Road to Democracy," Transaction Social Science and Modern Society, 26 (November December 1988): 71 76.
Nevertheless, political leaders, regardless of the condi tions within a specific country, and regardless of the prefer ences of the population of a specific country with respect to the approach to government, must find ways to unify a country's population, if government is to be effective, and if a country is to survive as a political entity in a particular form. Thus, a country such as Japan, with a highly ethnically homo geneous population, without any significant language or cul tural differences, poses political leadership problems which are distinctly different from those facing leaders in a country such as the Soviet Union, where multiple nationalities, langu ages, and cultural preferences are present, and where they often conflict with one another.
Brief descriptions of Japan and Malaysia are presented in this section. Each country is described in a separate discus sion.
Japan is an Asian island nation, whose 122 million inhabi tants occupy four major islands and a number of smaller islands.4 As a political entity, the country dates back to about 500 B.C.5
4J. Paxton, (Ed.), The Statesman's Year Book: 1989 1990, 126th ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), 758.
The Japanese population is remarkably homogeneous in an ethnic context. Ethnic Japanese account for 99.5 percent of the country's citizens, while most of the remaining one h...