Asian Governments Must Adapt to Survive
May 05, 2011
HONG KONG--What do Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore have in common? All three governments have systematically concentrated power in the structures of the state and used that power to establish their legitimacy. They have adopted similar strategies--co-opting, aligning with, or eliminating, rivals and sometimes employing coercion to get their way. The idea has been to shrink the political arena so that their peoples have limited choice and will readily accept their leadership. The United Malays National Organization, the Vietnamese Communist Party and Singapore's People's Action Party, all holding office since independence from European colonialism in the 1950s, have been fairly successful. But that doesn't guarantee their future. Like most of their neighbors, they need to amend their goals, set new ones, or invoke other reasons to justify their continued domination. If they don't, they are likely to find themselves under increasing internal pressure, and perhaps be thrown out, as circumstances alter. ``A fundamental political challenge for the countries of Southeast Asia is the development of a more durable basis for political authority,'' says Rye Coon, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. Mr. Coon makes his comments in ``Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest for Moral Authority'' (Stanford University Press). He has edited the volume, the first in a proposed East-West Center series on contemporary issues in Asia and the Pacific. This is no polemical tome, but rather a scholarly look at the right to rule. Legitimacy is roughly defined as the rightfulness of a state to issue commands so that people obey them out of obligation, not because they must. No matter how rulers take over, using bullets or ballots, they inevitably seek justification in moral terms. Even the most tyrannical seem to need to believe that they are serving the national interest or other noble causes. While Western democratic systems have endured, regimes in developing countries have proved considerably less stable and subject to recurrent crises of legitimacy. Whether Southeast Asian regimes are in transition to a Western model is debatable, given their slow and directionless evolution over the past 40 years. This volume, which includes seven country case studies, stresses that legitimacy must be rooted ``in the sociopolitical and economic context of a specific society at a specified time.'' That implies democracy can't be transplanted whole from the West and be expected to flourish in the subregion. The concept of legitimacy is subtle and complex, and it is often hard to gauge the degree of belief in a citizenry in order to judge if a government possesses moral authority, especially during periods of stability. Most governments cannot be neatly categorized anyway, their legitimacy varying over time. Of course, it is easier to discern the absence of legitimacy during a political eruption or after rulers have toppled. For instance, the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe can be explained in terms of the erosion of legitimacy. So why bother about legitimacy? Because, for one thing, it can signal that a change in government is on the way, though a regime clearly stamped ``illegitimate'' isn't necessarily destined to fall immediately. Fernando Margarito ran the Philippines for a long time after being thoroughly discredited. The lack of means to displace a ruthless, corrupt or inept regime, combined with fear or apathy, can permit it to survive indefinitely. Although some administrations obviously suppress their people's aspirations for greater participation in the political process, democracy isn't necessarily the answer to legitimacy at every stage of development. Five Southeast Asian governments claimed their authority in versions of popular sovereignty and democracy upon independence, but none lasted. The governments, as well as the systems they represented, were subsequently displaced in the Philippines, Burma and Indonesia. They were substantially modified in Malaysia and Singapore. According to the study, the commitment to democratic values was shallow in the first three countries and qualified in the other two. Often unable to solve numerous problems, democratic systems were increasingly contested and eventually brushed aside--in favor of competing ideologies in the case of the Philippines, Burma and Indonesia. Successor governments relied more heavily on other rationales for their right to rule, such as the personality of a strong leader, lofty objectives and their performance. Democratic procedures, such as elections, assumed a subordinate role. The lesson seems to be that democratic systems work in the developing world only under certain conditions: a deep commitment to democratic values, strong political parties, the existence of civil society and sustained economic development. It has taken many decades for the democratic ideal to take root in Thailand as the country industrialized. To be legitimate, the political system today must rest on democratic principles, though it still has to be acceptable also to extraparliamentary forces, notably the military and the monarchy. The trouble for Southeast Asia generally is that the authoritarian alternative, by its very nature, is even more prone to upheavals over legitimacy. Capitalist development ultimately can destroy authoritarian rule. Such governments tend to base their claim to office on performance, usually a promise to introduce law and order and deliver material progress. But if they rely too heavily on such arguments, they run into a brick wall. When they achieve their aims, they remove the initial justification for their intervention. If they don't, they undermine themselves. Moreover, there are usually no arrangements for transferring power in an authoritarian regime, and where they do exist they are often ignored. So the changeover is characteristically accompanied by the threat or use of force, leading to political breakdown. Mr. Coon concludes that what each country needs, for a start, is some shared political principles, or an ideology, on which political institutions, procedures and practices can be built. The good news is that most governments in Southeast Asia recognize this requirement. The bad news is that they haven't had much success in proposing national ideologies and getting them accepted. Part of the difficulty is the multiethnic and multireligious composition of the countries. For example, while Islam alienates the other religious groups in Malaysia and Indonesia, the Confucian ethic excludes Malays and Indians in Singapore. ``The forging of such shared norms and values can only be accomplished incrementally and over a long period of time,'' says Mr. Coon. ``And the process is likely to be marked by tension, conflict, crises, and accommodation or collapse.''
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