Incomplete Democracies in the Asia-Pacific

Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand

G. Dore, J. H. Ku, K. Jackson, G. Dore, J. H. Ku, K. Jackson, Kenneth A. Loparo, Jae H. Ku, G. Dore, J. H. Ku, K. Jackson, Jae H. Ku

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781349484980
  9781137397492
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137397508
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This collection presents a varied picture of the state of democracy in Asia, revealing unique findings from a project entitled the 'Asia Democracy Initiative' which explored the role of ordinary people in democratization through the rise of expressive social values in Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand.

1

Introduction

Giovanna Maria Dora Dore and Karl D. Jackson

Nearly everyone votes in Asia. How can democracies be ‘incomplete?’ The simple answer is: elections alone do not consolidated democracies make. Creating a broadly accepted means of choosing and maintaining a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ can be a long, contentious, reversible, and sometimes violent process requiring the development of both civic norms (at the popular level) and an accepted division of power among elites.

Incomplete Democracies in the Asia-Pacific: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand is the first book emerging from the decade-long Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) project on the role played by the attitudes and behaviors of ordinary people in the democratization process.

Indonesia was a fragile parliamentary democracy in the 1950s before it was transformed into a dictatorial regime by President Sukarno and maintained as one by President Suharto before becoming an electoral democracy in 1999. The Republic of Korea (henceforth Korea) vacillated for decades between civilian and military rule until the army was finally forced out of politics in the late 1980s. The Philippines has had more than a century of experience with democratic elections, but it became a dictatorship, between 1972 – 1986, and remains periodically unstable, even though it is Asia’s oldest democracy. Thailand’s halting process toward finding a legitimate form of government is nearly without precedent in the annals of democratization (18 constitutions and 18 coups since 1932). Why has democratization been so difficult for these four countries?

There have been many elections in these countries, and yet most citizens express opinions and attitudes underlining how incomplete democratization remains at the popular level. In addition to elections, sustainable democracies require a moderate level of lawful participation between infrequent elections (everything from signing petitions, to attending election rallies to demonstrating) to avoid oligarchy, tyranny, or both. Too much of the wrong kind of participation, for example violent street mobs, can corrode the legitimacy of a democracy, leading to anarchy and possibly to military rule. Stable democracies require a moderate level of peaceful citizen participation between elections, otherwise governments become unaccountable, and presidents and national legislatures become autonomous rulers. When citizens remain silent, and few dare to hold the government accountable between elections, elites design governments as closed, elites-only clubs, and a few select families control the one who gets nominated at election time, thereby solidifying elite control while supplying the appearance of democracy. The continued presence of widespread corruption is characteristic of incomplete democracies because, in the absence of accountability between elections, legislatures and presidents harness governments to reward their families and extended families.

Narrow ruling oligarchies have repeatedly set the stage for crises of legitimacy during the middle stages of the democratization process in Asia and elsewhere. To them, elections need be worrisome only if ‘outsiders’ (not ‘of our own kind’) penetrate the system, especially populist political upstarts delivering benefits to the poor in return for imposing their own corrupt domination over the system. The appearance of such spoilers may fracture support for electoral democracy and result in a no-holds-barred contest between two groups of ‘reformers’. The first group consists of self-satisfied representatives of the status quo who style themselves as devotees of honest and lawful government, by which they mean maintaining control by keeping the riff-raff out of office. The second group of ‘reformers’ utilize means, both fair and foul, to mobilize broader social forces into the previously closed system while promoting rent seeking to establish their own form of oligarchy. No matter who wins, corruption continues until mass participation between elections requires the even-handed application of anti-corruption laws to all, rather than just to those who have lost the political competition.

Emerging democracies are periodically vulnerable to legitimacy crises occasioned by the expansion of popular participation. Each of the societies analyzed in Incomplete Democracy in the Asia-Pacific: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand has suffered from bouts of political instability, but this volume is not a description of these periodic crises. Instead, the authors explore what it is about the nature of public opinion and the process of day-to-day participation that has made these electoral democracies vulnerable to repeated crises. The authors analyze the relative absence of participation between elections, the continued influence of traditional social structure, the incomplete emergence of civil society organizations, citizens’ views of democracy and authoritarianism, and the chronic weakness of political parties to understand more fully what is going on beneath the surface and beyond the headlines. This book is chiefly concerned with mass attitudes and behaviors and the ways in which these popular attitudes enable continued elite control of Asian democracies. Even though there are substantial variations, the chronic problem of democracy in Asia has been the lack of mobilized demand for good governance from the electorate.

Our basic findings are as follows:

1. Even under stable political and economic conditions, the aspects of democracy involving all the people are limited almost exclusively to national elections. Citizens vote in every election but participate hardly at all in politics between elections. When the general elections are over, particular interests (especially those of elite families) dominate rather than the popular will.

2. Political activities existing between elections usually do not reflect visible and predictable social cleavages, neither class patterns nor consistent economic interest groups.

3. Activities between elections are as likely to unite social opposites (rich with poor, educated with uneducated in networks, or entourages based on patron–client relationships). The civil society groups backboning non-electoral participation (NEP) are more likely to be fluid, personal, and hierarchical rather than stable, ideological, and egalitarian. Personal, political, and social connections prefigure, and are more important to individuals, than membership in any particular civil society or political party organization. Asian democracy is primarily an aggregation of groups rather than individuals, as much a tapestry of entourages as of individual participants.

4. Only small minorities admit to ever having taken part in any political party activity or to ‘feeling close’ to any political party. Civil society groupings are growing but they are largely autonomous from one another and from the political parties. This prevents civil society activities from reinforcing political organizations. Depending on the country, civil society may not be very civil. Particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines, members of civil society are as likely to be violent and corrupt as they are to be virtuous.

5. The political attitudes underpinning democracy in these societies remain inchoate with the majority of citizens simultaneously supporting both authoritarian and democratic systems. Citizens in Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, and Thailand may be favorably disposed to democracy but not necessarily fully committed to it. Democracy can be well understood and positively evaluated as an idea, but democratic governments still need to prove themselves through successful performance. In Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, and Thailand, concepts such as the middle class, NEP, participation in civil society organizations do not play as relevant a role as argued by democratic theory derived from the Western liberal democratic tradition.

6. Countries can shift rapidly from authoritarian to democratic, and back again to authoritarian rule. Thailand and Indonesia have changed places as internationally touted examples of consolidated democracies (Thailand, 1992–2006; and Indonesia, 2004–2014) and examples of chaos bordering on anarchy (Thailand, 2006–11, 2013–14; and Indonesia, 1998–2004). The classification of political systems can shift rapidly, whereas mass attitudes change gradually. How is it possible for political systems to change places so quickly? Chiefly elite-centric forces and individual leaders account for the rapid alteration of whole political systems, from semi-anarchic to democratic (Indonesia) or authoritarian (Thailand).

7. Clever political engineering by elites or the unpredictable advent of a transformational leader can override the inchoate forces typical of mass politics during the transition to democracy. The personal attractiveness of particular leaders can change the complexion, for good or for ill, of entire political systems almost overnight (Nonnoy Aquino in the Philippines or Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand).

8. A democracy’s strength (or weakness) can be the result of elite, rather than popular forces. Astute political engineering by elite forces (as in Indonesia (1999 to the present)) can successfully channel popular impulses into more functional and democratic outcomes in spite of the absence of any overwhelming democratic backing from the mass level. Incomplete democracies can move toward democratic consolidation because democracy becomes ‘the only game in town’ within the elite prior to the evolution of consensus at the mass level. Trust or distrust among elites may have more to do with the consolidation or disintegration than the views of the vast majority of citizens. Elite-centric aspects of democracy may be the most vital element sustaining (or destroying) this complicated and ever-fragile form of government.

Since 1974, when the current wave of democratization begun, the evolution toward democracy in Asia has been limited, with only six countries becoming democratic in the past 30 years out of more than 60 countries that have become democratic around the world. Many regimes have not moved decisively toward democracy, and authoritarianism remains a healthy and popular competitor to democracy. As a result, democratic countries in the region find themselves struggling with the challenges of democratic consolidation and governance, whereas authoritarian regimes seem to cope easily with any new challenges emerging from a more globalized regional outlook. Beliefs and perceptions about regime legitimacy have long been recognized as one of the most critical influences on regime change, with particular bearing on the maintenance or breakdown of democracy. Furthermore, normative commitment to democracy among the public at large is crucial for evaluating how far the political system has traveled toward democratic consolidation. Democracy can only consolidate if the bulk of the public believes that democracy is the only acceptable form of government for their country.

The book is informed by data collected in two original opinion surveys designed by the Asia Studies Program of the Johns Hopkins SAIS.¹ The SAIS 2000 Survey was designed to investigate the 1997 Asian financial crisis as a possible cause of broad social, economic, and political changes that might alter the development trajectory of Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. The survey focused only on the capital cities of Jakarta, Seoul, Manila, and Bangkok; had a sampling size of 300 individuals per capital city; and used a semi-original,² 12-module questionnaire, comprised of 135 questions, 10 percent of which were open-ended. The SAIS 2011 Survey is a national-level opinion survey, which targeted the same four countries as the SAIS 2000 Survey with a total sampling size of 4,000 individuals. To ensure consistency with the SAIS 2000 Survey, the 2011 Survey included a capital city sample of 300 individuals and used an updated version of the questionnaire used for the 2000 Survey.³ The methodological challenge of establishing comparability in any cross-national survey is formidable. We compared national responses to questions that are identically worded but must be translated into a number of different languages and administered in different cultural and institutional contexts. We remain aware that standardization does not solve the problem of cross-cultural validity, and the resulting analysis take this issue under consideration by striking a balance between generalizing cross-national comparisons and contextualizing the meaning and significance of our data in their political and cultural settings. The SAIS Surveys are part of a new generation of comparative public survey projects such as the regional Barometer Surveys and the World Value Survey (WVS). Increasingly, these large surveys have cooperated with one another to standardize questions and response formats to achieve global comparability in understanding the Third Wave transition to democracy and the role played by attitudes and values toward politics, governance, democracy, and political reforms. In this spirit, where possible, the chapters in this book include data from the WVS and the regional Barometer Surveys to validate and cross-check the findings emerging from the SAIS Surveys.

When the SAIS Democracy Project began in 1999, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand were all democratic systems enduring the stresses created by the financial crisis of 1997. At that time, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand appeared to be economically fragile but politically stable as power passed peacefully from one leadership group to another. Indonesia, in contrast, was just entering the transition to democracy and appeared on the brink of failure from the breakdown of law and order and the possibility that the Indonesian army might return to power. The SAIS 2000 Survey was expected to contrast three relatively stable democracies (Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand) with an ailing one (i.e. Indonesia). By the time the SAIS 2011 Survey entered the field the list of relatively stable democracies had changed, including Indonesia, along with Korea and the Philippines while the previous democratic stature of Thailand had declined markedly as a result of one military and several judicial coups ousting elected governments.

Korea’s success in establishing democracy in a country without a democratic tradition has made it one of the most interesting cases of Third Wave democratic transition. In the span of one generation, Korea has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries into one of the world’s most successful economies. Korea began its transformation from military rule to representative democracy in the late 1980s and, over a ten-year period, successfully established democratic institutions in a country that had not previously been capable of peacefully transferring power to the opposition. In 1993, Kim Young-sam became the first civilian president elected after 30 years of military rule, and this trend continued in orderly elections featuring civilian politicians from different parties. There is consensus that a return to the pre-1993 days of military involvement in the political process has become virtually impossible. How much progress Korea has made in consolidating its democracy? Korea’s passage to democracy has featured responsible elite decisions, rising prosperity, and a measure of good fortune, but it remains an electoral democracy in which presidents have at times resorted to extra-legal tactics to overcome the political deadlock in periods of divided governments, its political parties are personal political vehicles, and citizen participation in day-to-day politics has been decreasing. In spite of becoming one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, the levels of involvement in civil society and political participation between elections approximate Indonesia and the Philippines rather than other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Indonesia is Asia’s latest democratization success story. As a result of the financial crisis of 1997–1998, President Suharto was driven from power through a combination of protests, the collapse of local and international private sector confidence, and, most importantly, the collapse of Suharto’s support within the Jakarta elite. The prospects for political reform in Indonesia seemed bleak in the years immediately following the fall of Suharto’s New Order in 1998. Fragile governments faced emboldened legislatures, law and order declined for several years during the transfer of responsibility from the army to the police, terrorist bombings took place, and substantial loss of life occurred in ethno-religious conflicts. The future did not seem to augur well for democratic reform. However, the drive for change that began during the 1997–1998 financial crisis was maintained through the uproar surrounding the dismissal of President Habibie, the impeachment of President Abdurrahman Wahid, and the listless administration of President Megawati Soekarnaputri. The fact that Indonesia made a successful democratic transition is not in dispute. Yet, data from the SAIS surveys indicate that the country’s progress toward democratic consolidation is not as complete as it seems. The political system has been showing signs of democratic stagnation and backsliding, with the political elites trying to tighten its grip on key oversight institutions, often in ways that reduce transparency and the effectiveness of the institutions themselves. In addition, parliamentary and party systems are becoming increasingly associated with corruption, and citizens’ confidence in the strength of the democratic consolidation process appears to have decreased over time.

The Philippines is the oldest democracy in Southeast Asia. Spanish and American colonial authorities as well as post-independence governments have been criticized for not creating a developmental state with an autonomous bureaucracy capable of overruling the desires of family oligarchs and special interests alike. Instead, elections came first, giving pre-existing elites the opportunity to seize and maintain power. When the Philippines became independent from the United States in 1946, elections under universal suffrage became the root of popular democracy in the Philippines. By the late 1960s, the procedural democracy had yet to generate many of the results that Filipinos expected. The vast majority of Filipinos continued to live in poverty, governing elites belonged to old political clans, voters were mobilized at the local level through a combination of violence and patron–client relations, and the votes were subsequently delivered en masse to the Manila candidate promising the most in future concessions and favors. Political parties were vehicles for personal candidacy and issue-wise were ‘as different as Coke and Pepsi’. Although there was widespread understanding of the ills of the Philippines, ‘the anarchy of families’⁴ that ruled the country seemed more interested in self-enrichment than in passing laws that might enhance economic development and create social justice. Corruption in government was rampant, and the Philippines fell behind the emerging tiger economies of Asia. In addition, violence peaked and provided the recently re-elected President Marcos with a pretext for declaring martial law in 1972. The People Power Movement that overthrew President Marcos in 1986 marked a second opportunity to make democracy work. The new constitution restored pre-martial law democracy with all of its vices and virtues. The presidency of Corazon Aquino was plagued with attempted coups and failed to meet the high expectations of the People Power Movement. The economy remained sluggish, there was no land reform, communist and Muslim rebellions continued, and there were few improvements in the lives of common Filipinos.

The administration of Fidel Ramos was substantially more successful, but the constitution prohibited him from serving a second term, and he was instead succeeded by a movie-actor-turned-mayor, Joseph Estrada, a pro-poor candidate who had served as vice president under Ramos. President Estrada, never favored by the Manila elite, was driven from office by street demonstrations and the public refusal by the Commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to accept commands from the president. Election results that had placed Estrada in office were voided by a disguised military coup subsequently blessed by the Supreme Court. President Estrada was succeeded by his vice president, Gloria Maca...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Democracy Is Not the Only Game in Town! Democratic and Authoritarian Attitudes in Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand
• 3. Democratization and the Indonesian Middle Class: Waiting for Godot?
• 4. The Decline of Political Participation in Korea between 2000 and 2011
• 5. From Subjects to Citizens: Democratic Consolidation in Thailand between 2000 and 2011
• 6. The Philippines: Who Votes, Who Participates, and Why?
• 7. Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction with Political Leaders in Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand
• 8. Conclusions: Politics Is More Difficult than Physics
• Appendix 1: The SAIS Surveys
• Bibliography
• Index