Renewed authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: undermining democracy through neoliberal reform (original) (raw)

The Political Economy of New Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia

2018

Over the past years, the deterioration of democracy and the rise of authoritarian forms of governance have been a growing global phenomenon. In the Global North, this became painfully clear not least since the establishment of right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland, or the election victory of Donald Trump in November 2016. Southeast Asia is certainly no exception to this trend (Chacko & Jayasuriya, 2018; Docena, 2018; Kurlantzick, 2014). With General Prayuth Chan-o-cha in Thailand (2014) and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines (2016), two more ‘strongmen’ joined the ranks of authoritarian leaders in a region that is departing fast from democratic pathways. They follow a law and order attitude reflected in statements such as that of General Prayuth who warned of “obsession with rights” which could “lead to anarchy” (“Obsession With rights”, 2017). Duterte's central message is that the Philippines suffer from elites who care too much about Western notions of human rights and ...

The Limits and Potential of Liberal Democratisation in Southeast Asia

Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 2014

This article argues that Southeast Asia is a region where uneven political development presents a theoretical challenge to the study of regime change and continuity in the academic field of comparative politics. Of the 11 political regimes, only Timor-Leste, the Philippines, and Indonesia can now be considered liberally democratic. However, these democracies are far from consolidated. The other eight regimes range from soft dictatorships to electoral authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies. This article seeks to explain why no single theory adequately explains regime change and continuity in this region. Impediments to democratisation are many – one of which is the fact that traditional and undemocratic institutions remain strong and that transitions to civilian rule remain vulnerable to other powerful state institutions, most notably the armed forces.

Pacific Asia after ‘Asian values’: authoritarianism, democracy, and ‘good governance’

Third World Quarterly, 2004

The 1997 Asian economic crisis discredited the international discussion about 'Asian values' in Pacific Asia, replacing it with a globalised 'good governance' discourse. The financial breakdown undermined claims by Asian autocrats that government should be based on authoritarian 'Asian values', not 'Western democracy'. Yet, seven years later, authoritarian regimes in the region are flourishing while the new democracies flounder. Why have dictatorships, not democracies, prospered politically since the Asian financial crisis? Pacific Asia began as an 'imagined community' of developmental dictatorships, making authoritarian development the 'original position' against which democratic governance is judged. While the demise of 'Asian values' contributed to the fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, it did less harm to authoritarian regimes in more economically developed Malaysia and Singapore. The US-led anti-terror coalition provided several authoritarian rulers in Pacific Asia with welcome support from the West, while allowing them to weaken internal opposition. The new democracies, by contrast, faced international pressures to combat terrorism, often arousing local protest. Finally, middle class-based reformist movements have risked destabilising the region's new democracies in the name of good governance. The 1997 Asian economic crisis discredited the international discussion about whether authoritarian 'Asian values' in Pacific Asia (East and Southeast Asia) explained the region's economic 'miracle'.' Tommy Koh, a senior Singaporean government official and long-time advocate of 'Asian values', was reduced to pleading that they were not to blame for the recent economic downturn.2 A globalised 'good governance' discourse forced developmental dictatorships in the region further onto the defensive. International financial institutions argued that corruption and cronyism had made these non-democratic regimes vulnerable to financial breakdown.3 The volte-face of the IMF and World Bank about the now wayward 'Asian way' was particularly striking. Having once endorsed the 'East Asian miracle', it now propagated reforms in governance which, in the largely authoritarian Pacific Asian context, were a thinly veiled critique of the region's autocrats.4

Capitalist development, regime transitions and new forms of authoritarianism in Asia

The Pacific Review, 2009

The possibility of viable alternatives to the historical combination of liberal democracy and capitalist development is now widely acknowledged in the analysis of late industrializing countries. For example, within the transitions literature notions of hybrid regimes and closer scrutiny of institutional functioning are being employed to capture complex variations in authoritarianism. Less acknowledged is the significance of capitalist dynamics and related geopolitics for the character and performance of political institutions. We argue that late industrialization in Asia has especially militated against middle-class/labor alliances and produced a general fragmentation of social forces restricting the scope for democratic coalitions. But as well as helping to explain the consolidation and refashioning of existing authoritarian regimes, analysis of these social foundations of political institutions also helps account for strands of authoritarianism within so-called post-authoritarian polities. The Pacific Review has long fostered debate about the durability or otherwise of authoritarian regimes and alternative models to Western capitalism in Asia.

Elite Capture and Elite Conflicts in Southeast Asian Neoliberalization Processes

Neoliberal globalization has ushered in a variety of capitalism in Southeast Asia’s uneven development landscape. Unpacking the complexity of contemporary capitalist development in the region entails an appreciation of how vested interests give shape to processes of neoliberalization. This article investigates how and why dominant elite classes and social forces mediate the interrelated neoliberalization processes of market reforms and state institutional restructuring in ways that are incoherent with the ideology of competitive capitalism. Empirically, by studying diverse socio economic structures of the Philippines and Malaysia, the article provides an exposition of recent infrastructure projects done through state dealings with capital as part of, or in relation to, neoliberal policies of privatization and liberalization which have been embroiled in controversies over graft and corruption practices involving sections of domestic elites and transnational capital. It shows the realpolitik of the elite-driven and conflict-ridden constitution of capital accumulation in emerging economies of Southeast Asia. Specifically, the empirical cases offer insights into the common pervasive themes of “elite capture” and “elite conflicts” that mutually constitute Southeast Asia’s evolving political economy of development.

Neoliberalism and Multilateral Development Organizations in Southeast Asia

This chapter focuses on the work of the most important multilateral development organisations (MDOs) – the World Bank Group (including the International Finance Corporation), the ADB, and the IMF – in extending neoliberal policy agendas, from the 1980s on, into Southeast Asia in the name of development. I present a political economy of development approach that – drawing upon a tradition of thought that prioritizes competing interests (and in particular class interests) and ideologies in understanding particular institutional agendas and their outcomes (see for example Rodan et al. 2001) – seeks to explain the form of different phases of MDO activities in the region.2 I argue that MDO activities in Southeast Asia over the last three and a half decades reflect a combination of the ideological shifts in development policy that have emanated from MDO headquarters in Washington and Manila – often in response to emergent contradictions and conflict over and around policy – and the relative leverage, interests and ideational dispositions of governments in the region within a consolidating and contradictory world market (Cammack 2016). This historical context has seen the increasing roll-out by MDOs of market-oriented policy as a default ‘fix-it’ while also demanding ongoing modifications to the precise policy suites endorsed by MDOs as legitimacy and other challenges have emerged. Early draft version of chapter to be published in the Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Development, Andrew McGregor, Lisa Law, Fiona Miller and Claire Colyer (eds) (forthcoming 2017).