Parties and Parliaments in Southeast Asia

Non-Partisan Chambers in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand

Roland Rich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415629324
• eBook ISBN: 9781317605539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Political parties are an essential ingredient in a modern democracy. They are also seen as the least trusted and most problematic institution in most democratic systems. While there have been attempts to strengthen parties through institutional design and capacity building, a new strategy has been to quarantine them from parts of parliament. Within the space of a few years the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia implemented designs for parliamentary representation that proscribed the established political parties from a parliamentary chamber or part thereof.

Using these three countries as case studies, this book traces the historical context for institutional designs, the intentions behind them and their implementation through at least one full parliamentary term. It investigates the conceptual architecture of the non-partisan designs, identifying corporatism as one (discredited) alternative and "championship" as another. While there is a yearning for exemplary people as representatives, the designers have struggled to find a successful means of having these champions elected to office. The book concludes that non-partisan chambers, based on the evidence to date, are not viable.

This book is of interest to scholars of Southeast Asian Politics, Party Politics, Governance Institutions and Democracy.

1 A new institutional design option

Modern representative democracies are unimagineable without political parties. But parties are one of the weakest links in the democratic chain. Can there be aspects of a representative chamber’s work that might be better discharged without the involvement of political parties? Can non-partisan chambers successfully complement the work of party dominated chambers? These are the questions that three countries in Southeast Asia tried to answer in three heroic experiments that attempted to add a new institutional design option to the panoply currently available to institutional designers. The answers will not only resonate in the region but will have implications going well beyond.

The scale on which this experimentation is being conducted is daunting. The populations of the three countries in question, Indonesia (245 million people), the Philippines (100 million) and Thailand (66 million), magnifies both the significance and the difficulties of the design experiment. The originality of the designs speaks of both the daring of these transition democracies in the design of the institutions of democracy and their possible precedential value. The results of the experiment will be followed by wary political parties as well as by people weary of political parties.

The issue under consideration is one that is taxing all democratic polities – are political parties effectively discharging the critical roles assigned to them? A subsequent chapter contains a detailed discussion of a common perspective on political parties – that they are a “necessary evil”. Both the “necessary” and the “evil” aspects of this perception will be unpacked. The institutional design solution to the problem has generally been to find ways to strengthen political parties. But some designers have constructed schemes to keep certain activities or certain spaces free of political parties or at least the major political parties. The innovation under investigation, to quarantine parties from a part of the parliament, is thus attempting to deal with one of the major problems of democratic institutional practice.

Investigating a Southeast Asian innovation

Within the space of a few years, three neighbouring countries of Southeast Asia implemented a design for parliamentary representation that proscribed the established political parties from a parliamentary chamber or part thereof. Although the original design appeared in the 1986 Constitution of the Philippines, it was only with the passage of Republic Act 7941 in 1995 that the legislative basis for elections to the party-list was put in place and the first election for party-list representatives was held in 1998 and has been held every three years thereafter. In Thailand, the 1997 Constitutional provision for a non-partisan senate was put into effect relatively quickly and Thailand’s first ever elections for the Senate took place in 2000. The first elected Senate saw out its five-year term. While in Indonesia, the 2001 session of the Majelis Permusyaratan Rakyat (MPR) – People’s Consultative Assembly, enacted a raft of constitutional amendments including the establishment of the Dewan Perwakilan Daerah (DPD) – Regional Representative Council. The first election for the DPD took place in 2004, its members served their five year term and a new batch was elected in 2009.

As these are the leading democracies of Southeast Asia and the leading members of ASEAN, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand form a policy community whose political elites follow each other’s developments and innovations closely. While there is little evidence of conscious borrowing among the three sets of designers,¹ there are common problems and contexts in which these designs emerged, leading to a Southeast Asian institutional design innovation to quarantine part of the legislature from politics as usual. Chapter 3 will attempt to put this design innovation in the broader context of institutional design processes, with a particular focus on designs intended to impact on political parties and party systems including a brief discussion of the other options available to designers.

Chapter 2 will outline the theoretical and methodological considerations involved. In their famous review essay, March and Olsen encouraged a return to the study of institutions in a field they labelled the New Institutionalism.² Within the New Institutionalism approach, this work will adopt the scholarship of historical institutionalism which requires thick descriptions of the individual country contexts. These contexts will allow the research to attempt to discern the intention of the designers and assess the extent to which intentionality is a guide to outcomes.

This research focuses on nations practicing genuine political contestability and protecting freedoms of association and expression. Accordingly, the various systems that proscribe political parties completely or that allow them as window dressing to an otherwise authoritarian system are not the subject of this inquiry. While the Southeast Asian cases form a suitable critical mass for research purposes, there are two European cases that also fit within the parameters of this study because they also have constructed chambers fully or partially on a non-partisan basis. Pen portraits will be provided of the Irish Senate which drew its inspiration from Papal ideas, and the National Council (upper chamber) of the Republic of Slovenia which modelled itself on the now-defunct Bavarian Senate. The research conclusions concerning non-partisan chambers therefore can be based on an all “n” rather than a small “n” sample.

The research will draw on the literature on institutional design, political parties and party system design as well as relevant country studies. Because significant new institutional designs tend to be adopted in the course of constitutional change, considerable attention will be paid to constitutional histories and constitutional drafting process. Published debates of the process, as well as the writings of, and interviews with, key actors, provide a rich source of material. Because constitutions are subject to judicial interpretation, significant judicial cases in each of the three countries of Southeast Asia provide another valuable primary source.

The party-list in the House of Representatives of the Philippines

According to the 1986 Constitution, 20 per cent of the seats in the House of Representatives are to be decided by means of a second ballot available to voters to elect sectoral groups or political parties in addition to their first ballot for a constituency representative. Based on a reading of the constitutional assembly debates, this design was initially an attempt to strengthen the political party system. A similar design attempted a decade later in Thailand had exactly that effect. In the Philippines the impact was ultimately the opposite.

The original intention of strengthening the party system was subject to a time-bound compromise whereby half the available party-list seats in the first three constituted Houses would be available only to certain disadvantaged groups. Through a tortuous process of presidential appointments, legislative implementation and judicial interpretation, the exception devoured the rule. Under the resulting redesigns, all major political parties are proscribed from competing for party-list seats. The original intention of the drafters is now long forgotten as the party-list system has morphed, in effect, into a pesky and marginalised sub-chamber of the House of Representatives where quirky mathematical formulae allow a limited array of groups, including small parties, consumer associations and regionally dominant political families, to have a voice, but little influence, in the House. The best-organised of these voices belongs to the communist side of politics, giving this irreconcilable political minority a legal public voice and, incidentally, making the system that has elected them the subject of deep criticism by the establishment and in particular the military establishment. While small groups calling themselves political parties compete for party-list seats, the exclusion of the major parties has the effect of a ban on political parties in that it only allows fringe actors from outside the political mainstream to compete for these seats.

The Philippine example does not at first appear to fit neatly under the sub-heading of “non-partisan chamber”. It seems odd to call it non-partisan when parties are permitted to run. But on closer examination one can see that as the system evolved, the only parties permitted to be registered to run were “political parties … that represent the interests of the marginalized and underrepresented”.³ This provision has excluded all the major or traditional parties. Candidate groups in the vast majority of cases are interest groups representing narrow economic, religious or regional cleavages. The only group participating that may be considered a significant national political party is the communists, who are not part of the party system but are better seen as outsiders participating in elections for strategic considerations.

Nor is the party-list segment of the House an entire chamber. But the fact that there is a separate vote for this segment, for which the parties fighting it out in the constituency election cannot participate, already marks it out as a distinctive part of the House. Different rules apply to this sub-chamber which, for many terms of parliament, was left with half its allotted seats vacant, a practice that was never applied to the constituency representatives. Further, the party-list members often behave fundamentally as a separate chamber and are at times discriminated against by the constituency part of the House. Initially the appointed sectoral representatives were treated as second-class citizens. Having subsequently gained their seats by election, the party-list members have greater status than previously but are still discriminated against in terms of slush funds and appointments to key committees. They are seen by the public and often behave as a sub-chamber of the House of Representatives. For purposes of comparison, this example fits within the major research theme of investigating means of representation other than through the party system.

Tracking the tortuous path taken by the Philippine designers allows for an examination of the problems encountered when attempting to put new institutional architecture into practice. Among the issues on which this case study can shed light is a better appreciation of the reliance to be placed on the intentions of the drafters and the factors at play that impact on those intentions. There is now some two decades of practice in the translation of the design of the Philippine party-list system into reality. Chapter 4 presents a case study of many twists and turns that serves as a cautionary tale for institutional designers.

The Senate under Thailand’s 1997 Constitution

Thailand’s 1997 Constitution was designed to change Thai politics. Innovatively designed, deliberatively debated and painstakingly implemented, the ideas in the document were a pointed challenge to the status quo. The drafters accepted the necessity for political parties to perform the major functions assigned to them and therefore concentrated government formation and most of the legislative and budgetary responsibilities in the National Assembly. As noted, the party-list design had its intended effect of strengthening political parties in the lower House in Thailand, though perhaps it worked even better than intended given the arrival of the Thaksin juggernaut just as the constitutional provisions were being implemented, leading to the magnification of his party’s victory.⁴

The Constitutional Drafting Assembly saw the problem of Thai politics in terms of the lack of probity in the system and decided to design a process to enhance and perhaps even guarantee probity. To that end it established a host of new oversight institutions consisting of courts and independent commissions to regulate the political process. To make this process effective the designers needed to take the appointment to and control of these oversight bodies out of the hands of the government, formed by political parties based on their majority in the lower House. The design of the appointment and dismissal processes for each of these new oversight bodies was elaborate, distinctive and intricately tailored but it had one factor in common – the pivotal involvement of the Senate.

This was Thailand’s first elected Senate which had previously been an appointed body employed to guarantee the interests of the dominant power holders. It was traditionally a chamber in which to park retired generals and reward faithful civil servants who in turn safeguarded the interests of those appointing them. The designers kept the name of the chamber, but little else, and transformed it into a popularly elected guardian of the guardians. To keep the chamber above party politics, the constitution took the radical step of proscribing political parties from the Senate, backed by elaborate rules concerning Senate elections. The Senate served a full term under its 1997 design and in that five-year period there were many tests of its guardian function. Chapter 5 describes the historical and political path to the Senate design and examines how the first elected Senate discharged its functions. The story has many aspects of interest to institutional designers including the degree to which a new design can be expected to trigger different political behaviour and outcomes; the hold of tradition and its impact on new institutions; and the efficacy of the strategy of reliance on wise individuals as opposed to interests aggregated by political parties.

The 2006 coup in Thailand abrogated the 1997 Constitution and with it went the elected non-partisan Senate. In the years since the coup, public contestation about Thailand’s political system has continued unabated. One of the critical issues is whether there should be a return to the 1997 Constitution.

The first Indonesian Regional Representative Council

The fall of Suharto in 1998, the vote of no confidence in Habibie the following year and the genuinely free and fair election that also took place in 1999 can plausibly be argued as constituting Indonesia’s process of democratic transition. Yet these events took place within the governance structure inherited from Suharto’s Orde Baru (New Order) when institutions were mere façades and decisions were discretionary. It was in the course of the 1999–2004 parliamentary term that the work of the institutional designers took place in the form of four batches of amendments to the 1945 Constitution, quadrupling its length.

Chapter 6 explains the situation Indonesia found itself in and describes the actors taking the key design decisions. Like watching the shadows cast by the famous wayang puppets, it is important at times to look beyond the public discourse to try to work out what is being decided in the back rooms. The Indonesian elite managed to iron out a deal by working their way through a particularly tricky set of circumstances. History is not replete with examples of parliamentary chambers that vote themselves out of existence, yet this was what was being asked of the appointed regional and sectoral representatives who joined the elected Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR) – People’s Representative Council representatives – to form the MPR which is the organ responsible for constitutional amendment. Institutional hierarchies had to be defended which gave the DPR the whip hand in the negotiations. But this power could only prevail if the major political parties within the DPR could find a workable compromise.

One decision was the creation of the DPD in which each province would have four elected representatives regardless of its population size and these representatives would be elected by popular vote, but with an important proviso – that only individuals may stand, thus disallowing political parties from participation in DPD elections. Unlike the Thai case, the articulation of the reasons behind this decision is not well elaborated. It seems to be a decision that emerged from a series of compromises based on requirements informed by the political positions of the key players. One of the main requirements was to retain the 1945 Constitution and to make the amendments fit within it as fully as possible. Another was to rid the nation of the system of patronage appointments to the MPR. The story of the creation of the DPD will therefore have something to say about the negotiability of path dependence and the trade-off between political compromises and their reform impact.

The questions posed by this research

This new design innovation generates important research questions. The most basic question concerns the dichotomy between the necessity for political parties in a democracy and the attempt to design them out of parts of parliament. The general issue therefore relates to the indispensability of political parties in a democracy. The specific research question asks – can successful parliamentary systems in democratic polities be designed to exclude political parties from certain chambers or parts thereof?

This question, or variations of it, has been posed over the years by practitioners and theorists alike in one form or another. Carothers poses it directly:

Perhaps, it can be asked, the widespread weakness of and unhappiness with parties is a sign of some deeper evolution in global politics away from parties altogether, one that should be embraced rather than resisted. The idea of moving beyond political parties – simply jettisoning them with all their accumulated deficiencies – certainly holds appeal to people all around the world exasperated to the point of despair with the parties they have.⁵

Goodin poses a similar question:

The thought experiment I propose is this: let us try to imagine what it would be like to have a No-Party Democracy. We know what it is like to live in a “multi-party democracy” or in “two-party democracy” or indeed in a “One-Party Democracy”. But what would it be like to have a No-Party Democracy?⁶

Carothers poses the question as a rhetorical device and Goodin asks it as a philosophical counterfactual. They both come to the conclusion that political parties are an essential component of democracy.

The design innovation emerging from Southeast Asia does not pose the question in rhetorical or counterfactual terms but experiments in its application. Working on the premise of the necessity for parties despite their dysfunctionality, this design feature tries to exclude them from a part of the parliamentary system. Thus, the same parties that are expected to form governments and constitute the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A new institutional design option
• 2 Theoretical and methodological considerations
• 3 Institutional design in context
• 4 The Philippines: a legislative voice for the marginalised
• 5 Thailand: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The Senate!
• 6 Indonesia: political representation in a disparate archipelago
• 7 Comparative perspectives: yearning for exemplary representatives
• 8 Conclusion: the limits of institutional design
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Interviewees and correspondents cited in research
• Index