Explain the prevalence of authoritarian forms of government in contemporary Southeast Asia

Geoffrey Schöning Tutorial: Wed 10-11am

of civil and political liberties by the government. ⁵ Given this admittedly rough picture of basic democratic principles, authoritarian rule appears wherever genuine citizen participation is restricted or, in the worst case, prohibited, and where civil liberties are curbed. ⁶ Such a distinction is naturally far from being clear-cut, and can only be made gradually. Thus, although the forms of government in the region differ as widely as from military rule in Myanmar to almost fully democratic conditions in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines respectively, even the latter show authoritarian hues. ⁷ Apart from overt violation of basic human rights, ranging from curtailed freedoms of assembly, expression and association to detention without trial, and, finally, to brutality by security forces, these countries, as well as the remaining parts of Southeast Asia, strike with heavy concentration of power in the hands of government. The public triad of executive, legislative and judiciary, meant to be equipoised in functioning democracies, is lop-sided towards strong executive organs, including the ruling party as well as the administration. ⁸ To put it in a nutshell: Southeast Asia is remarkably dominated by strong states and powerful officials - circumstances, all in all, that can be traced back far into pre-colonial times. ⁹ The cultural landscape of ancient Southeast Asia was divided in a dualism of ideas: northern Vietnam as the bridgehead of Sinic traditions faced a predominantly Indianised region to its south-west. ¹⁰ Not only was the source of ideology different - China for the former, the Indian Subcontinent for the latter - but these two zones of culture also differed fundamentally in their political outlook. While the Vietnamese state with its highlydeveloped bureaucracy and emphasis on hierarchical structures displayed a ‘pre-modern’ institutionalisation of (limited) royal power in the person, or rather office of the “son of heaven”, the Indianised mandalas lay more or

⁵ Kevin Hewison, Richard Robinson and Gary Rodan (eds.), Southeast Asia in the 1990s. Authoritarianism, Democracy & Capitalism, Sidney: Allen & Unwin, 1993, p. 6; Neher, Democracy and Development, p. 5.

⁶ Ibid., p. 7.

⁷ Funston, Government and Politics, p. 412.

⁸ Ibid., p. 412ff.

⁹ See Thomas R. Leinbach and Richard Ulack (eds.), Southeast Asia. Diversity and Development, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000, p. 244.

¹⁰ The following is mainly taken from Harry J. Benda, “Political Elites in Colonial Southeast Asia: an Historical Analysis”, in: Comparative Studies in Society and History 7/3 (1965), pp. 233-51, here pp. 236-40; for see also Colin Mackerras, Eastern Asia. An Intro-ductory History, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire,2000 (third edition), pp. 103-16..

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Geoffrey Schöning Tutorial: Wed 10-11am

less at the whim of an absolute god-king, the devaraja. As the term suggests, he drew his legitimation mostly from his divine status representing the Hindu goddess Shiva. Royalty was a “sacral force sui generis;” it depended on the possession of monarchic symbols - palace, throne, tiered umbrella, and lingam - rather than on institutions and dynasty. Consequently, power was, albeit only momentarily, personalised in the ruling king and radiated from the centre (i.e. the capital) into the peripheral areas of his realm, instead of being transmitted via bureaucratic networks. Social counter to the royal element only existed in the bulk of, obviously, non-royal peasants. Since all right to land was vested in the kingly office; feudal nobilities who could have filled the gap were lacking. However unstable and open to usurpation these structures were, they clearly show the significance of personal-style rule and literal centralisation in pre-colonial Southeast Asia. No wonder then that to this day monarchs like Bhumipol Adulyadej of Thailand, Sultan Sir Minda Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei and even heads of elected governments - the Malayan Premier, for instance - willingly allude to those traditions in order to legitimise their rule or, at least, revamp their reputation. ¹¹ Tempting as the idea might be, it is still daring to claim that direct relations exist between devaraja-kingship and authoritarian rule in contemporary Southeast Asia. Historical determinism should not be strained to such an extent, and, even more important, there is a solemn fact that virtually slips into the hypothetical junction between ancient and modern rule: the colonial period. On top of the already established division into Indianised and Sinisised cultures and their correlating political entities, colonialism in Southeast Asia superimposed a second pattern of distinction: direct versus indirect rule. ¹² These two forms of alien overlordship had a decisive impact on the region’s elite framework. Direct government, in most cases, was synonymous with the deconstruction of sacral, charismatic monarchy, as happened to the Kingdom of Burma and to the scattered polities of Java. ¹³ What

¹¹ Leinbach, Diversity and Development, p. 245f.

¹² Again, the following stems from Benda, Political Elites in Colonial Southeast Asia, p.

242ff.

¹³ Actually, traditional indigenous administrators were co-opted at the local level; only on an overall view did the island appear to be under fully Dutch authority; Clive J. Christie, A

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Geoffrey Schöning Tutorial: Wed 10-11am

was left behind was a “supra-village vacuum”, soon to be filled with new social elements. These western-trained elites were less dependent on social origin and ascription than on educational and functional criteria. “Just as the aristocracies in Indianized polities derived their status from royal appointment rather than from territorial control, so [did] […] the modern intelligentsias […] from the colonial order, without representing a vested corporate or personal interest rooted in economic or other power.” ¹⁴ Missing economic involvement should play a crucial rule in how the newly independent states approached their inherited economies after World War II. ¹⁵ It is needless to say that direct rule was often mixed with indirect forms of control. Peripheral, less Indianised areas, such as the mountainous regions of Burma and the outer Islands of the Netherlands Indies were left their status quo for the sake of internal stability and cohesion. ¹⁶ De facto under the auspices of colonial powers, elite political groups could maintain their pivotal position within society, since growth of countervailing formations was inhibited. Thus indirect rule was likely to induce a kind of “social and cultural involution,” ¹⁷ that is, stagnation in development. It should be made clear; however, that even the established social classes were tapped by western educative and political values, if to lesser degrees. Concerning the differences in outcome of direct versus indirect rule, Vietnam and the Philippines are both instructive examples, namely as exceptions to the above mentioned tendencies. While most parts of Vietnam were officially under indirect rule, ¹⁸ the indigenous elites experienced a constant erosion in power due to the co-existing European-administered scheme of résidents, thereby giving way to purely westernised, tendentiously more radical ( i.e. communist) elites. ¹⁹ Conversely, the directly ruled Philippines, under American hegemony in particular, saw the consoli-

ModernHistory of Southeast Asia: decolonization, nationalism and separatism, London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 1996, p. 9.

¹⁴ Benda, Political Elites in Colonial Southeast Asia, p. 244.

¹⁵ See passage about economics and authoritarianism, p. 8f.

¹⁶ Benda, Political Elites in Colonial Southeast Asia, p. 244ff..

¹⁷ Ibid. p. 246ff. - such phenomena might be found in the development of Cambodia, which, until independence, hardly knew ‘western’ radical ideologies like Communism, let alone modern market structures; see Osborne, Southeast Asia, p. 176ff..

¹⁸ Only Cochinchina stood under immediate French control.

¹⁹ Benda, Political elites in Colonial Southeast Asia, p. 248f; also Christie, A Modern His-tory of Southeast Asia, p. 9.

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