Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:22:11.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Southeast Asia's Hybrid Regimes: When Do Voters Change Them?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

William Case
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Today many governments that seek to perpetuate their power operate hybrid regimes, manipulating institutions yet holding regular elections. In this way, governments gain some legitimacy for their extended incumbency through the residual competitiveness that this regime type allows. However, recent studies show that voters may sometimes grow so activated that they make new use of this competitiveness, however limited, and turn elections into the means by which they can finally change the regime and the government that operates it. This article examines this thesis in Southeast Asia, a region in which hybrid politics have long been practiced. Its main finding is that while change has sometimes taken place, voters—participating only as voters—have never been central.

Keywords

political regimesauthoritarianismdemocracyhybrid politicselitesmass publicscivil libertieselectionsvoterstransitionsSoutheast Asia
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , August 2005 , pp. 215 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. O'Donnell, Guillermo and Schmitter, Philippe C., “Defining Some Concepts (and Exposing Some Assumptions).” In O'Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Philippe C., and Whitehead, Laurence, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 6–14.Google Scholar

2. See, for example, Ottaway, Marina, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2003); Levitsky, Steven and Way, Lucan A., “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 51–65; Case, William, “Can the ‘Halfway House’ Stand? Semidemocracy and Elite Theory in Three Southeast Asian Countries,” Comparative Politics 28, no. 4 (1996): 37–64; Bell, Daniel A., Brown, David, Jayasuriya, Kanishka, and Jones, David Martin, Towards Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan, 1995); and Karl, Terry Lynn, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 3 (1995): 72–86.Google Scholar

3. Ottaway, , Democracy Challenged, p. vi.Google Scholar

4. Levitsky, and Way, , “Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” p. 51.Google Scholar

5. Ottaway, , Democracy Challenged, p. 16.Google Scholar

6. Levitsky, and Way, , “Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

7. Trocki, Carl A., “Democracy and the State in Southeast Asia.” In Trocki, Carl A., ed., Gangsters, Democracy, and the State in Southeast Asia (Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1998), p. 8.Google Scholar

8. Schedler, Andreas, “The Menu of Manipulation,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 36–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Schedler, , “Menu of Manipulation,” pp. 43-44.Google Scholar

10. Seng, Ooi Can, “Singapore” In Sachsenroder, Wolfgang and Frings, Ulrike E., eds., Political Party Systems and Democratic Development in East and Southeast Asia, vol. 1: Southeast Asia (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1998), p. 392.Google Scholar

11. Case, William, “Singapore in 2003: Another Tough Year,” Asian Survey 44, no. 2 (2004): 116–117.Google Scholar

12. Wurfel, David, Filipino Politics: Development and Decay (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 123.Google Scholar

13. Schedler, , “Menu of Manipulation,” p. 42.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 43.Google Scholar

15. Gomez, Terence, “Malaysia.” In Sachsenroder, and Frings, , Political Party Systems, p. 267.Google Scholar

16. Jesudason, James V., “The Syncretic State and the Structuring of Oppositional Politics in Malaysia.” In Rodan, Garry, ed., Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 128–160.Google Scholar

17. Leones, Errol B. and Moraleda, Miel, “Philippines.” In Sachsenroder, and Frings, , Political Party Systems, p. 330.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 330.Google Scholar

19. Ooi, , “Singapore,” p. 384.Google Scholar

20. Win, Khin Maung and Smith, Alan, “Burma.” In Sachsenroder, and Frings, , Political Party Systems, p. 120.Google Scholar

21. Schedler, , “Menu of Manipulation,” p. 44.Google Scholar

22. Eklof, Stephan, Indonesian Politics in Crisis: The Long Fall of Suharto, 1996–98 (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1999), pp. 92–93.Google Scholar

23. Samuel Huntington writes, for example, that “the experience of the third wave strongly suggests that liberalized authoritarianism is not a stable equilibrium; the halfway house does not stand.” Huntington, Samuel, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), p. 137.Google Scholar

24. Harbeson, John W., “Hybrid Regimes and the Restoration of Civil Society: Toward a New Paradigm,” paper delivered at the workshop “Democratization by Elections? The Dynamics of Electoral Authoritarianism,” CIDE and International Forum for Democratic Studies, Mexico City, April 2–3, 2004.Google Scholar

25. Bratton, Michael and van de Walle, Nicholas, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitins in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 36.Google Scholar

26. According to Bratton and van de Walle, this progression in which “shrinking economic opportunities and exclusionary rewards [become] a volatile recipe for social unrest” occurs even more readily in sub-Saharan Africa, with the region's neopatrimonialist politics never producing any industrialization at all. Bratton, and van de Walle, , Democratic Experiments in Africa, p. 83.Google Scholar

27. Huntington, , The Third Wave, pp. 142–150. See also Bratton, and van de Walle, , Democratic Experiments in Africa, especially pp. 83–84; Bermeo, Nancy, “Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict During Democratic Transitions.” In Anderson, Lisa, ed., Transitions to Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 120–140; Case, William, “Democracy in Southeast Asia: What Does It Look Like and What Does It Matter?” In Beeson, Mark, ed., Contemporary Southeast Asia: Regional Dynamics, National Differences (London: Palgrave, 2004), pp. 75–96.Google Scholar

28. Mauzy, Diane K. and Milne, R. S., Singapore Politics Under the People's Action Party (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 152.Google Scholar

29. Case, William, “Semi-Democracy in Malaysia: Withstanding the Pressures for Regime Change,” Pacific Affairs 66, no. 1 (1993): 200.Google Scholar

30. Haggard, Stephan, The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 2003), pp. 167–171.Google Scholar

31. Case, William, “Malaysia's General Elections in 1999: A Consolidated and High-Quality Semi-Democracy,” Asian Studies Review 25, no. 1 (2001): 35–56.Google Scholar

32. Steinberg, David I., Burma: The State of Myanmar (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001), p. 24.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 3.Google Scholar

34. Taylor, R. H., “Elections in Burma/Myanmar: For Whom and Why?” In Taylor, R. H., ed., The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center/Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 178.Google Scholar

35. Khin, and Smith, , “Burma,” p. 134.Google Scholar

36. “Myanmar Announces Democracy Roadmap, ‘Free, Fair’ Polls,” Agence France-Presse, August 30, 2003, at http://www.inq7.net/brk/2003/aug/30/brkafp_4-1.htm.Google Scholar

37. Tria Kerkvliet, Benedict J., “Contested Meanings of Elections in the Philippines.” In Taylor, , Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia, p. 157.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., p. 158.Google Scholar

39. Wurfel, , Fililpino Politics, p. 292.Google Scholar

40. Quoted in ibid., p. 303.Google Scholar