This is a collaborative research project by members of the Consortium for the Asian Democracy Index (CADI), headquartered at the Democracy and Social Movements Institute, Sungkonghoe University, South Korea. It has received funding from both the National Research Foundation of Korea and the Korea Democracy Foundation. The main aim of the project is the development of an Asian Democracy Index (ADI). The main obstacle to democratization identified by the ADI’s framers is the undue concentration of politico-socio-economic powers. The ADI project looks at democratization as a multi-layered demonopolization process, a continuing upheaval to achieve a “relational formation” wherein power and resources are fairly distributed. The results of the ADI project are intended to fill gaps unaddressed by other democracy indices, notably, the lack of focus on the majority of assessments on economic democratization. Moreover, the ADI is designed to understand the quality of democracy in Asian countries today; the ADI seeks only to present the current democratic status of Asian countries, not to propose an exemplary democratic model or to rank different democratic characteristics of the countries.