Government and Political Regimes in Southeast Asia: An Introduction

Abstract

Southeast Asia as a region varies widely in its cultures, history, and political institutions. Due to this variety of regime types and the large variance of theoretically relevant explanatory factors, Southeast Asia presents political scientists with a “natural laboratory.” Levels of socioeconomic modernization, paths to state and nation-building, ethnic heterogeneity, colonial heritage, the structure of governing coalitions and elite formations, the shape and extent of interest and civil society organizations, as well as institutional factors like type of government or electoral system all differ widely. This chapter provides an overview of Southeast Asia’s demographic, cultural, and religious characteristics; outlines its precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial political development; and argues that the region’s eleven countries fall into three broad regime categories: Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and—most recently—Myanmar are examples of “electoral authoritarianism.” Brunei Darussalam, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand after 2014 are closed autocracies that lack multiparty elections. Finally, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste make up the region’s defective democracies, all stable but suffering from different constellations of problems, including intermittent mass mobilization, corruption, and incomplete stateness.

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1.1 Countries and Cultures of Southeast Asia

The term “Southeast Asia”¹ is a neologism. It was used occasionally in academic texts in the 1920s but only entered more general use after the Allied Forces established the “South East Asia Command” (SEAC) in December 1943 to coordinate their campaign against the Japanese Imperial Army in the region north of Australia, south of China, and east of India. Southeast Asia as a region is an extraordinarily diverse collection of states, which vary widely in history, demographics, culture, economy, political systems, and the political challenges they face. From precolonial through colonial times and to the present day, the region has been marked more by contrasts and differences than by commonalities. Geographically, Southeast Asia is divided into an insular or maritime region, comprising Brunei, Indonesia, parts of Malaysia,² the Philippines, and Timor-Leste,³ and a mainland or continental part, including Burma,⁴ Cambodia, Laos, the Malay Peninsula, and Vietnam. Malay-Polynesian cultural and linguistic influences have shaped Maritime Southeast Asia, and with the exception of the predominantly Catholic Philippines, Islam is the dominant religion of this part of the region. Chinese-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman, Shan, Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese) and Mon-Khmer languages as well as the religious influence of Buddhism historically shaped mainland Southeast Asia. Cultural differences further subdivide both maritime and continental Southeast Asia into highland and lowland regions. While the lowlands have historically been the economic, political, and cultural centers, the highlands have been home to most ethnic minorities. Until now, most highland areas are sparsely populated and economically less developed than the central lowlands. Highland areas have also been more resistant to state penetration than the lowlands (Scott 2009).

The precolonial kingdoms and empires of Southeast Asia were not “modern” territorial states in the Western, Weberian sense, with unitary and centralized administrations, and the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a clearly demarcated territory. Instead, local rulers were in tributary relationships with more powerful overlords within loosely defined and constantly shifting political geographical spaces. Relationship networks between more and less powerful rulers rather than territories were the constituent parts of these “mandala states.” The extent to which the supreme ruler could control his subordinates waxed and waned over time, yet it was always greater closer to the center and would peter out towards the periphery (Wolters 1999, p. 17). Beginning in the sixteenth century, Western imperial interest in the region grew steadily and the colonial experience—initially under Iberian, later under northwestern European powers, and from the late nineteenth century on including the United States—became a dominant influence on the political order and living conditions for most of the region’s inhabitants. Today, colonial legacies remain essential to understanding national politics in Southeast Asian countries.

1.2 Southeast Asia in Colonial Times

With the exception of Siam, the whole region came under Western colonial rule at some point between 1511, when the Portuguese conquered the Sultanate of Malacca, and the 1920s. Pinpointing the onset of colonial rule is often impossible, as authority was imposed sequentially. In the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia, the establishment of the colonial capital Batavia (Jakarta) in 1619 to the subjection of Aceh in 1912 took almost three centuries (Andaya 1999; Tarling 1999). In the Philippines, Spanish colonial rule began in 1565, but the Spanish crown failed to conquer much of the south, including Muslim Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago. After taking over the colony from the Spanish, it took the United States almost two decades to consolidate control over its new dominion. Even after that, Muslim Mindanao was administered separately (Abinales and Amoroso 2005). For the sake of clarity, Table 1.1 provides the year of the onset of colonial rule based on a significant early event.

Table 1.1 Colonial rule over Southeast Asia

Even though the organization and practice of colonial rule differed widely, it has become standard practice to categorize colonial rule as either direct or indirect (Trocki 1999, pp. 90–97). First proposed by Furnivall (1960), this analytical differentiation is useful, but also misrepresents the reality in the individual colonies, where different institutional models often coexisted. All colonies underwent incremental change, caused more by ad hoc adjustments to local conditions than a sophisticated preexisting strategy of institutional design.

Direct rule, under which the administrative structure of the colonial power supplanted existing political structures, was the exception (Houben 2003, p. 149). Examples include French Cochin China, i.e., parts of southern Vietnam and eastern Cambodia as well as the British Straits Settlements on the Malayan Peninsula and “Ministerial Burma.” The more common indirect rule, marked by collaboration with and through traditional rulers, was practiced in large parts of British Malaya, Brunei, most of Cambodia, and Laos. Here, the imperial powers co-opted traditional rulers and indigenous elites into a dual administrative and government structure. A Western resident or district administrator at the regional level cooperated with traditional rulers who commanded power and legitimacy at the local level (Houben 2003, p. 149).

Dutch rule in Java is an example of indirect rule (Kuitenbrouwer 1991). In theory, Javanese rulers governed their territories autonomously and were merely influenced by the Dutch. In truth, however, the Dutch held ultimate control at the local level. In a similar vein, French protectorates in Tonking, Annam, Cambodia, and Laos remained under nominal authority of the Vietnamese Emperor or the Kings of Cambodia and Laos, respectively. However, it was the French Governor General who exercised actual control over these territories (cf. Woodside 1976).

Western colonialism reached its apex between 1870 and 1914 (Osborne 1990), when territorial demarcation was completed and had created clearly defined political and administrative units that aspired to emulate Western models of statehood. In practice, the clash of European aspirations and local conditions instead resulted in hybrid models that combined traditional and Western state institutions in both form and function (Schlichte 2005).

The process of economic, political, cultural, and demographic change that began in the nineteenth century was accelerated by the vertical and horizontal expansion of colonial rule at the beginning of the twentieth century. Military expansion, infrastructural development, economic dominance, and the imposition of new legal systems by the colonial powers supplanted traditional governing arrangements and weakened the authority of local rulers. Uncertain about the loyalty and authority structures among the general population, the colonial powers looked to politically loyal minorities for support. These included Chinese and Indians for the administration of British Malaya and Burma, Vietnamese in the French protectorates, Ambonese in the Dutch colonial army, and Karen, Chin, and Kachin in the British military in Burma (Hack and Rettig 2009).

Linking local markets to the international capitalist system of the colonial powers often resulted in segmented regional economic conditions, a trend aggravated by the immigration of Chinese and Indian labor to Southeast Asia, mostly to the Malayan Peninsula, Thailand, and Indonesia. Together, this influx of new populations and the expanding reach of political-economic centers into the colonial peripheries (Brown 1994) changed the ethnic composition in much of Southeast Asia and created new lines of conflict, many of which remain virulent until today. In reaction to the changes brought about by colonialism, reform movements emerged all over the region following the World War I (Kratoska and Batson 1999). Unlike previous rebellions or insurgencies, these movements were neither a reaction to acute social or economic crises nor attempts to return to precolonial conditions (Berger 2009). Instead, their goal was to create sovereign nation states based on Western notions of statehood.

The reasons for the emergence of these movements differed as widely as the background of their members. Still, some trends can be identified: First, improved education opportunities for the colonial population, the adoption of Western administrative models, and the expansion of travel opportunities and communication channels had created an indigenous middle class and intelligentsia. Second, tensions between the local population and Asiatic and European migrants had increased. Third, the collapse of European and world markets in the aftermath of World War I and the Great Depression had strained most colonial economies. Finally, many reformers were motivated by the spread of anti-colonial ideologies, communism foremost among these, and wanted to emulate the model of the Japanese Meiji reforms or the Chinese (1911) or Russian (1917) revolutions (Trocki 1999; Owen 2005).

In countries like Burma or Indonesia, the struggle for independence pitted representatives of the cultural majority, striving for territorial nationalism based on recognition of the political and territorial unity created by colonizers, against members of ethnic minorities, who favored ethnic nationalism that would give them their own state (Kratoska and Batson 1999, pp. 253–255, 286–288). Other groups were neither interested in nationalism nor independence but demanded limited social and religious reforms (ibid.).

The political turmoil of the Great War and the economic downturn of the Great Depression ultimately ended Western predominance in the Asia Pacific region (Berger 2009). During the Second World War, Japanese military victories in Southeast Asia further energized national movements: After Japanese troops conquered Dutch, British, and American colonies in Southeast Asia in 1942, the occupation force fostered anti-Western sentiment by promoting nationalist groups and promising them independent statehood (Christie 2000, pp. 11–13). Even though the Japanese occupation continued, nationalist leaders in Burma and the Philippines declared independence in 1943 and the Indonesian nationalists Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed independence in August 1945, mere days after the Japanese surrender. While the Netherlands tried to restore its control over Indonesia militarily, the Dutch government ultimately recognized Indonesia’s independence in 1949.

The process of decolonization in the Philippines and British Malaya took a different course. The Philippine national movement had emerged during the latter years of Spanish colonial rule and during the 1880s, and many intellectuals demanded the colony should receive equal treatment as a Spanish province within the kingdom. When the demand was ignored, the secret society “Kapitunan” began a military resistance against Spanish troops in 1896, but the group proved politically and militarily unprepared to gain independence (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, pp. 102–105). Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, control over the Philippines passed to the United States. After breaking down the opposition of Philippine nationalists militarily, the new colonial administration managed to co-opt the indigenous elite by granting them a limited level of administrative autonomy (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, p. 134). With the creation of the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935, the United States promised to grant full independence after a 10-year interim period. Even though the Japanese occupation delayed the plan for an orderly transition of power, the Philippines finally became an independent republic in 1946.

British Malaya also gained independence through negotiations rather than national revolution. The British practice of integrating the traditional elite into the colonial administration meant that a Malayan national movement only emerged relatively late (Stockwell 1977). Moreover, the Chinese, Indians, and Malays of its segmented population were not easily unified into an anti-British position. Ultimately, the struggle against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), supported mainly by the Chinese population, brought the British colonizers and the Malay elite together when the party began a guerilla war in 1946 (Loh 2005, p. 22). In order to overcome segmentation and prepare the country for independence in 1957, the British mediated “the Bargain” in 1955, a social contract among the country’s three main ethnic groups that granted Chinese and Indians citizenship in exchange for accepting the constitutionally guaranteed political predominance of the Malay population.

1.3 Southeast Asia Since the End of Western Colonialism

Most Southeast Asian states achieved independence between 1946 and 1965. Brunei, however, only became independent in 1984, while Indonesian troops occupied Timor-Leste after the Portuguese left the island in 1975. While few states recognized the occupation, Timor-Leste only attained independence in 2002. Irrespective of the differing modes of decolonization—through violent struggle in Vietnam and Indonesia, bargaining in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Laos, and Cambodia, or through political pressure in Burma—colonial rule often segmented the subject population along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines (Table 1.2). The emerging states lacked a universally accepted vision of the nation, and national minorities in many countries made their own territorial or national claims against the nascent central governments.

Table 1.2 Population, territory, and social heterogeneity in Southeast Asia around 2015

In Southeast Asian postcolonial societies, nation-building was the project of political and intellectual elites in the almost complete absence of a common sense of nation and culture. The resulting “invention of traditions” (Hobsbawm 2005) was almost inevitably based on the historical experiences, political mythology, and cultural symbols of particular groups within the segmented societies. Such was the case for Thai, Malay, and Indonesian nationalism (Berger 2009, pp. 32–41). During this process, elites often made use of colonial constructs of identity: The concept of Malay-ness adopted by the new Malaysian state, for example, derived from the British “Malay Reservation Act” of 1913. It defined ethnic identity as the combination of a common descent or race, the use of the Malay language, and the practice of Islam.

The lack of integration within the emerging social order and the latent tensions between political units and national identities created the tinder for several violent conflicts that flared up after independence. Some of these secessionist conflicts, as in Burma, the Southern Philippines, Southern Thailand, and West Papua, persist until today. Whether social conflict could quickly be contained within institutional channels or resulted in military violence had profound effects on the process of state-building (Slater 2010; Vu 2010). The first decades following the Second World War have been characterized as an era of elite-driven and often violent nation-building in Southeast Asia: During these years, the region was plagued by an above-average incidence of armed conflict (Brown 1994, 2008). Ethno-nationalist and ideological lines of conflict often overlapped, as in Malaysia, Thailand, and Laos. The region only grew more peaceful after the Cold War era proxy conflicts in Laos (1960–1973), Vietnam (1958–1975), and Cambodia (1970–1991) had ended (Fig. 1.1). Even though the turn of the century engendered an upsurge of ethno-nationalist violence—partly caused by the political upheavals of the Indonesian transition in 1998/99—this has not reversed the underlying trend (Trinn and Croissant 2012).

Fig. 1.1

Number of violent conflicts in Southeast Asia, 1945–2005. Source: Data compiled from CONIS (Conflict Information System) based at Heidelberg University. The graphic includes all intra- and interstate violent conflicts and wars involving any of the 11 countries covered in this book, see also Croissant et al. (2009)

Several factors account for the ebb in violent conflict since the 1980s. First, the number of great power interventions in the region and tensions among ASEAN countries significantly decreased (Dosch 1997). Second, parts of Southeast Asia became centers of economic growth, which helped reduce internal socioeconomic tensions and strengthened intraregional ties. Especially Singapore, but also Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and more recently Vietnam, have sustained high growth rates (Table 1.3). Even the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997/98 could not reverse this trend. Economic growth has fueled more effective poverty reduction campaigns, increased per capita income, and expanded education opportunities, urbanization, the middle class, and cultural change.

Table 1.3 Indicators of modernization and human development in Southeast Asia

These socioeconomic changes were not without political consequences. While authoritarian regimes ruled the region in the mid-1980s, the following decade saw several regime transitions from dictatorship to democracy. Following the downfall of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, authoritarian regimes in Thailand (1992) and Indonesia (1998–1999) collapsed under popular demands for democratization. In Cambodia (1993) and Timor-Leste (2002), democracy was instituted under the aegis of the United Nations (Case 2002; Croissant 2004; Shin and Tusalem 2009).

Despite the optimism caused by these developments in the 1990s, democracy could not uphold its triumphant entry into the region. The failure of democracy in Cambodia in the late 1990s, the erosion of democratic standards in the Philippines, the collapse of civilian rule in Thailand in 2006 and 2014, and the absence of additional cases of democratization seem to indicate that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the state of democracy in Southeast Asia has stagnated. Additional democratic transitions seem unlikely, and the future of current processes of transformation such as in Myanmar is uncertain at best (Case 2015; Croissant 2015; Bünte 2015).

There are three groups of political regimes in the region.⁵ The first group of countries falling under “electoral authoritarianism” (Schedler 2006) includes Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and—following the election of 2012—Myanmar. Formal democratic institutions in these countries coexist with authoritarian political practices (Schedler 2006; Howard and Roessler 2006, p. 367). In these regimes, elections are “widely viewed as [the] primary route to power” (Levitsky and Way 2010, p. 13). However, governments systematically abuse their powers and insulate their position against political challengers by imposing disadvantages on opposition parties, curtailing the development of civil society and the media, and suppressing political dissent. While opposition parties in Malaysia are in a position to challenge the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) government, no opposition force in Singapore is able to threaten the hegemonic position of the People’s Action Party (PAP). The level of competition between government and opposition condoned by Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) places Cambodia somewhere between Singapore and Malaysia. While he has tolerated some competition, recent events suggest a more hegemonic turn (Case 2009; Karbaum 2008; Strangio 2014). Recent developments in Myanmar point in the opposite direction. Following the deeply flawed elections of 2010, the military junta seems to be transitioning the regime towards more competitive electoral authoritarianism. The National League for Democracy, the party of opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi, managed to win 43 out of 46 seats in the by-elections held in 2012 and secured a landslide victory with a two-thirds majority during the regular parliamentary elections of 2015 (Bünte 2016). Yet, the 25% reservation quota for members of the military in the legislature and the wide military prerogatives that limit the civilian government’s effective power to govern in very significant ways demonstrate the persistence of authoritarian structures in the country.

The second group of “closed autocracies” that lack multiparty elections includes Brunei, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand since the coup of May 2014. These regimes do not tolerate even limited political competition. Laos and Vietnam are among only five self-proclaimed communist single party states that survived the end of the Cold War in 1989/90 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.⁶ The authoritarian sultanate in Brunei is one of only five countries that hold no national parliamentary elections.⁷

The third group of “defective democracies” (Merkel 2004) includes the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste.⁸ The stability and quality of these defective democracies differ widely (Bünte and Croissant 2011, p. 4). In the Philippines, political violence is common, civilian control over the military is limited, civil liberties are not guaranteed, and the rule of law is weak (Abinales and Amoroso 2005). In Thailand, the political controversies surrounding Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra culminated in a military coup d’état in 2006. After the return to civilian democratic rule between 2008 and 2014, the military staged another coup against the pro-Thaksin government in May 2014 (Ferrara 2015), switching its regime type from a defective democracy to military rule. In Timor-Leste, the democratic process and the effectiveness of democratic institutions are fragile, but democratic elections and political rights have remained relatively robust and functional (Croissant and Abu Sharkh 2016). Even though clientelism, neo-patrimonialism, and untamed politicking are rampant in Timorese politics, democracy as an abstract ideal and democratic turnover of power are accepted among both the political elite as well as the wider population. In the region, Indonesia remains the only country that has somewhat stabilized its democratic system, even though it has not yet become a consolidated liberal democracy (Mietzner 2015).

Thanks to its variety of regime types and the large variance of theoretically relevant explanatory factors, Southeast Asia presents political scientists with a “natural laboratory” (Abrami and Doner 2008, p. 229) to test competing theories of political change. Levels of socioeconomic modernization, paths to state and nation-building, ethnic heterogeneity, colonial heritage, the structure of governing coalitions and elite formations, the shape and extent of interest and civil society organizations, as well as institutional factors like type of government or electoral system all differ widely. There are federal as well as unitary states, numerous different types of parties and party systems, vastly different levels of cohesion and professionalism in the national armed forces, and different levels of coercion employed by the governments to uphold their rule (Slater 2010). Finally, regimes vary in their claims to legitimacy, religious traditions span a wide spectrum, and national ideologies as well as individual value patterns are highly diverse (Slater 2010; Case 2009). Carving out these details and analyzing their causes and effects is among the goals of this textbook.

1.4 The Structure of This Book

The developments addressed above have raised interest in the region and the need for concise information about its political structures, processes, and actors in the past decades. Until now, however, the political economy of Southeast Asian developmental states has dominated the research agenda. The lack of concise current monographs that focus on the national political and social systems in the region from a comparative perspective stands in stark contrast to this. In order to fill this lacuna, this textbook provides a systematic introduction to the political systems of Brunei Darussalam (Brunei), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. It combines detailed studies of single cases with comparative accounts. It focuses on the structures, processes, and actors of the political system as well as the current political situation. Compiled by comparative political scientists, its intended audience includes students of political science without regional expertise and students of area studies. In addition, it is meant as a resource for other political and social scientists in research and teaching, as well as journalists and other professionals. We hope it will provide its readership with a well-founded introduction to Southeast Asia as an area of study.

The descriptions and analyses in this textbook are based on past and current research of both authors on democracy and democratization, autocratic regimes, political parties, civil society, civil–military relations, and the political institutions in the region based on their own field research as well as comprehensive surveys of international research literature. In most cases, the authors relegate primary sources to an auxiliary position and focus on relatively accessible secondary material. Most sources will, therefore, be accessible to the average reader looking for more in-depth information without command of one of the regional languages. Asian names from non-Latinized languages have been transcribed in their most commonly used Latin form.

Two considerations have influenced the structure of this textbook. On the one hand, each political system is presented and analyzed individually and in great depth in the form of country chapters to foster a deeper understanding of the whole system and the interaction of its components. On the other hand, this country-based approach is complemented by an explicit and systematic comparative perspective. All country chapters follow a similar structure, and while all chapters focus on current politics, they also discuss the historical origins and context of national politics and current challenges. The textbook concludes with a comparative summary and an outlook into possible future political developments in the region.