Social Cohesion in Asia

Historical Origins, Contemporary Shapes and Future Dynamics

Aurel Croissant, Peter Walkenhorst, Aurel Croissant, Peter Walkenhorst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000752137
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the historical origins, contemporary dynamics and future challenges of social cohesion in South, Southeast and East Asia—one of the most dynamic and at the same time heterogeneous regions in the world, in terms of economic, political and human development.

The comparative case studies in this volume develop a better understanding of social cohesion in Asia by exploring how social cohesion is understood, analyzed and sometimes politically instrumentalised. Examining different dimensions and qualities of social cohesion and how they are linked together, it also discusses the challenges of social cohesion in individual societies. The case studies include examples from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, South Korea and Mainland China and building on the conceptual work and empirical findings of the Asian Social Cohesion Radar, this book provides detailed cross-country analyses over the past 15 years.

Combining rigorous conceptual and theoretical reasoning with a systematic empirical analysis of trends across the region, Social Cohesion in Asia will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations, political sociology, comparative politics and Democratization Studies.

1
Social cohesion in Asia: an introduction

Aurel Croissant and Peter Walkenhorst

Introduction

This volume explores the historical origins, contemporary dynamics and future challenges of social cohesion in South, Southeast and East Asia (henceforth: SSEA) – one of the most dynamic, and at the same time, heterogeneous regions in the world in terms of economic, political and human development. Over the past few decades, the region went through rapid, often dramatic socio-economic, cultural and political transformations. Therefore, many countries face multiple challenges in preserving social stability and concerns about a possible “dissolution of shared entities” (Castells 1997: 355). Yet, the concept of social cohesion has rarely been applied systematically to the region. Rather, politicians, social activists and scholars have used other concepts to describe similar phenomena or concerns, such as “social harmony” (cf. Mok and Kang in this volume), “social integration” (Prakash in this volume), “unity” (cf. the chapters by Trinn and Mitra in this volume), or “social inclusion” (see Croissant and Kim in this volume). In few countries, the term is well established in academic jargon (for example, “kohesi sosial” in Indonesia, see Ziegenhain in this volume). In others, however, there are only ambiguous translations into local languages, for example “Sahoetonghab” in Korean (Croissant and Kim in this volume).

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of social cohesion in Asia by exploring how social cohesion is understood, analysed and, sometimes, politically instrumentalised; by examining different dimensions and qualities of social cohesion and how they are linked together; and by discussing current and future challenges of social cohesion in individual societies. The country case studies presented in this volume build on the concepts and empirical findings of the Asian Social Cohesion Radar (henceforth: Asian Radar), a collaborative research endeavour that provided detailed cross-country empirical analyses of social cohesion in 22 societies in Asia for the period 2004 to 2015 (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2018). It complements a study conducted by Dragolov et al. (2016) in 34 Western and post-communist countries. The book at hand builds on the conceptual work, measurements and empirical findings of the Asian Radar but also aims to examine aspects of social cohesion in eight carefully selected country cases that the previous study was not able to investigate or identify.

Multiple transformations in Asia

As mentioned earlier, Asian societies experienced multiple transformations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, which continue to have a deep impact on the social fabric. In terms of economic transformation, SSEA has been home of some of the most impressive success stories of economic growth and human development in the post–World War II period. In Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, real per capita GDP rose twice as fast as in any other regional grouping between 1965 and 1995 (Maddison 1991; see also Bolt et al. 2018). In the 1980s and 1990s, China and India also emerged as major forces in the global economy and GDP per capita has increased a remarkable sevenfold in China and has more than doubled in India (Bosworth and Collins 2008).

While there is some regional divergence, the SSEA region has undergone remarkable structural transformation, including (Asian Development Bank 2013; see Table 1.1): (1) reallocation of the factors of production across sectors of different productivity (from agriculture to industries and services); (2) diversification and upgrading of products and exports; (3) adoption of new methods of production and new inputs; (4) deepening urbanisation; and (5) changes in the role of women and in family structures. Despite a significant increase in income inequality from an average Gini coefficient for Asia Pacific of 33.5 (1990–1994) to 38.4 (2010–2014), income inequality is still less pronounced than in any other region (UNESCAP 2018: 11). Even more impressive are a sharp reduction in absolute poverty, accelerating urbanisation and educational expansion, and a dramatic growth of the middle class in developing Asia, from 21% of the total population in 1990 to 56% in 2008 (Asian Development Bank 2010: 6).¹ Although it is home to nearly half of the world’s poorest people, of which women represent two-thirds, poverty declined at a much faster rate in Asia than worldwide. According to the World Bank, of the 783 million extremely poor who live below the extreme poverty line of US$1.9 a day, about 33% live in South Asia and 9% live in East Asia and the Pacific. Between 1990 and 2015, the world experienced a 25 percentage point drop in extreme poverty against a 35 percentage point drop in South Asia. For China, the extreme poverty rate fell from 88.3% in 1981 to less than 1% in 2018, implying that more than 850 million people escaped extreme poverty (World Bank 2019). The regional level of urbanisation (urban population as proportion of total population) increased from less than 20% in 1950 to 47.5% in 2010. While this is still significantly lower than urbanisation rates for Europe, the Americas and Oceania, Asia is now home to 53% of the world’s urban population (Europe: 14%) (UN, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2014). Meanwhile, international migration has become one of the key factors shaping the SSEA region. The United Nations estimated that there were 59.3 million international migrants in the countries and areas of Asia and the Pacific in 2015 (UNESCAP 2017: 2). International migration in the region is primarily from economies with low per capita income to richer countries. It primarily comprises (temporary) low-skilled labour migration, but also includes

Table 1.1 Selected indicators of structural transformation in 22 Asian societies

high-skilled workers, forced migration, migration of students and marriage migration (ibid.). Driven by economic, political, social and other forces, it affects sending and receiving countries. For example, in 2005, the Philippines had a total number of temporary (mostly overseas workers on temporary work permits or on “irregular”, likely illegal status) and permanent emigrants of 7.9 million, or about 9% of the population (Tan 2006). In Singapore, on the other hand, extensive recruitment of foreign oversees workers and an increase in the number of binational marriages led to an increase in the share of noncitizens from 14% to 38.2% of the total population. About a quarter of these foreigners are permanent residents, i.e., family members of Singaporean citizens born abroad or highly paid and skilled foreign employees and their families, mostly from Western countries, Japan, Taiwan or South Korea. The remaining 73.8% are non-residents, and about 80% of these are labour migrants from South and Southeast Asia employed in low-paying jobs. These workers have minimal personal rights and are excluded from public life (Piper 2006). The potential for conflict this development breeds became visible during a violent unrest in Little India in 2013, a quarter frequented by many migrants on their day off, which the government suppressed by draconic means (Croissant and Lorenz 2018: 283).

While growth and modernisation have improved the livelihood of hundreds of millions, or even billions of people, the “pursuit of rushed development” has resulted in a “compressed modernity” that has “strained the social fabric of the societies” and “neglected the democratic process” (Dragolov, Koch and Larsen 2018a: 100). Yet, in democratic terms, SSEA has also seen its share of transitions from authoritarian rule to democratic governance (Croissant 2004; Hellmann and Croissant forthcoming). The so-called third wave of democratisation (Huntington 1993) reached the shores of the region in the mid-1980s. Although consolidated democracy is still the exception, the number of democracies increased from three in 1980 to nine in 2005, and 11 in 2017 (see Figure 1.1).²

Studies in comparative democratisation and authoritarianism in Asia reveal four broad trends and patterns of political transformation in recent years (see Croissant and Kuehn 2017). First, single-party dictatorships governed by a ruling party adhering to some variation of Marxism-Leninism as its guiding ideology have been remarkably resilient in Asia compared to other regions in the world (e.g., Dimitrov 2013). Second, as in other world regions, the number of military regimes in SSEA has dwindled since the mid-1980s. Even if one takes Thailand’s military coups d’état of 2006 and 2014 into account, the prevalence of military rule in the region has been in steady decline (Croissant and Kuehn 2017). Third, there is considerable diversity in quality or levels of post-authoritarian democracy (Shin and Tusalem 2009). South Korea and Taiwan are often celebrated as regional success stories and models for democratic change (Hellmann forthcoming; Templeman forthcoming); many other democracies in the region are facing debilitating challenges, including political polarisation, the mobilisation of diverse social groups, a deinstitutionalising role of leaders, and the failure of political institutions to keep pace with growing demands. In places such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Thailand, the crisis of democracy culminated in coup d’états (Croissant et al. 2013), whereas in Sri Lanka it led to a worrying erosion of democratic quality. In contrast, democracy in Mongolia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Timor Leste is perhaps “illiberal, hollow [and] poorly institutionalized” but has shown to be remarkably resilient despite serious challenges (Chu et al. 2008). Fourth, the generally low support for liberal democratic values in the region raises questions about the sustainability of democratic change. In fact, data from various democracy barometers³ show that, in most new democracies in the region, a persistent gap exists between the electoral components of democracy on the one hand, and the “liberal” aspects of democracy, such as the enforcement of civil liberties, judicial independence and horizontal accountability on the other (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.1 Number of democracies and autocracies in SSEA, 1900–2017

Source: Adopted from Croissant and Pelke (forthcoming), based on data by Coppedge et al. (2018) and Lührmann et al. (2018).

Moreover, with the exception of Taiwan, the quality of (liberal) democracy seems to be eroding. In Figure 1.2, cases with an increase in the electoral or liberal democracy index between 2007 and 2017 are located above the diagonal, whereas political regimes with eroding (liberal) democracy are located below the diagonal. According to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, more than half of all Asian cases saw their liberal democracy score declining in the past ten years; the finding is less clear-cut in terms of electoral democracy. The extent of erosion varies from country to county but, overall, the data suggest that Asia has joined the global wave of democratic backsliding (Lührmann et al. 2018). This trend of democratic erosion still has momentum in Asia, despite the fact that, more recently, a number of autocratic regimes in the region, such as Malaysia and Myanmar, appear to have embarked on processes of political liberalisation.⁴

Figure 1.2 Electoral and liberal democracy in SSEA

Source: Adopted from Croissant and Pelke (forthcoming), based on data from Coppedge et al. 2018. V-Dem Dataset v8. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemcy18.

At the time of preparing this volume, it was too early to assess the direction and magnitude of democratic reforms and authoritarian backslash in South, Southeast and East Asia. Yet, given that the Asian Radar finds a negative relationship between civil liberties and political rights on the one hand and social cohesion in SSEA on the other, we will elaborate in more detail on the specific relationship of democracy and social cohesion in Asia in the final chapter of this volume.

Conceptualising social cohesion

Social cohesion research has been pursued from many different disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, psychology and behavioural science, health science, cultural anthropology and economics and public policy. It covers different scopes, from small social groups to larger communities or national societies, as well as different methodological approaches, including deductive theorising, experimental studies and empirical research (Fonseca, Lukosch and Brazier 2018: 3).

The origins of social cohesion research go back to the late 19th century, but scholarly interest in the concept has greatly expanded in recent years in particular. The number of publications increased mainly from 2007 onwards as shown in Figure 1.3. This trend reflects two developments: first, the deepening concerns of governments and policy groups in the West about social cohesion, fuelled by trends such as migration and increasing social diversity, globalisation and rising inequalities, as well as individualisation and deepening social segmentation. Second, it reflects the emerging consensus among scholars and policy makers that there is a causal relationship between social cohesion and a number of important social or economic phenomena such as economic growth and development, resilient institutions and levels of social violence and conflict.

Figure 1.3 Number of social cohesion entries in the Social Sciences Citation Index, 1998–2018

Source: Social Sciences Citation Index. Search terms: social AND cohesion (topic).

Although social cohesion has become a popular concept, definitions remain highly contested and overlap with other latent concepts (Chan, To and Chan 2006; Schiefer and van der Noll 2016).⁵ In reviewing various definitions of social cohesion, Vergolini (2011) distinguishes between two main perspectives: a dynamic understanding and a static approach. Similarly, Chan, To and Chan (2006) draw a distinction between a means-end approach and a pluralistic one...