Democratic Revolutions

Asia and Eastern Europe

Mark K. Thompson, Mark R. Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134409464
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Despite enormous differences between Asia and Eastern Europe, there are striking similarities between the peaceful, spontaneous, urban-based and cross-class democratic uprisings against unyielding dictatorships that have occurred in the two regions. The book explores the kind of non-democratic regimes that are particularly vulnerable to democratic revolutions. It examines why and how democrats rebel and what the results of democratic revolutions have been. Questions posed in this book include: * Why were communist rulers shot in China but not in Eastern Europe? * Why did stolen elections lead to the overthrow of Miloevic in Serbia? * Why have there been so many women leading democratic revolutions in Asia? This book attempts to democratize theories of revolution and revolutionize democratic transitions. Cases and comparisons are drawn from 15 democratic revolutions over the last two decades and the book includes in-depth studies of East Germany, China, Serbia and the Philippines.

1 The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

World attention has long since shifted away from the peaceful overthrow of Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines in February 1986. Filipino “people power” had a demonstration effect on other popular uprisings in Asia, particularly in Burma, China, Pakistan and South Korea in the late 1980s as well as in Indonesia in 1998.¹ The non-violent 1989 democratic revolutions of Eastern Europe (and a year later in Nepal) were sometimes referred to as “people power.” But few of the actors or observers appeared to be aware that the origin of the phrase was the peaceful revolt in the Philippines.² The Philippines soon returned to its status as a minor “Third World” country of which the Western world, to paraphrase Chamberlain, “knows nothing.”

Yet while “people power” has been largely forgotten as an event, it survives as a name-giving concept. “People power” has come to symbolize a peaceful, spontaneous popular revolt that topples an unbending dictatorship. Thus, two recent general studies of non-violent uprisings have used “people power” in their titles.³ But several puzzles about the nature of Philippine “people power” remain. If these are solved, its significance as an alternative model of democratic transition will be enhanced. Putting “people power” back together is not just of historical interest; it is of theoretical importance as well.

Given the emphasis on pacted transitions in the democratization literature, it is striking that Marcos of the Philippines consistently refused to negotiate with his moderate political opponents. Marcos was an unyielding dictator who had to be brought down because he would not step down. The first puzzle, then, is why “people power” was necessary in the first place.

Yet it long seemed that Marcos would be defeated by armed opposition, not peaceful protest. This conforms to the expectations of a growing literature suggesting that highly personalistic, or “sultanistic” regimes are particularly vulnerable to violent, radical revolutions. The personal aims of the ruling clique, not class or institutional interests pursued by a “bureaucratic-authoritarian” elite, form the basis of such regimes. Legitimacy evaporates as extreme personalism alienates rich and poor, civilian and military, alike. With efforts to displace the regime peacefully usually unsuccessful, armed insurrections may arise or a coup may be planned. The two major social revolutions of the 1970s, in Nicaragua and Iran, were both against highly personalistic regimes. Castro’s defeat of Batista in 1959 was in many ways similar to these revolutions. Coups are also common against such regimes, as the military overthrow of Duvalier in Haiti shows. The late Marcos regime faced both major insurgencies (communist and Muslim secessionist) and a military conspiracy.

Moderate civilian oppositionists thus confronted a double burden: they not only had to defeat Marcos peacefully before he could violently suppress them, they also had to out-maneuver both the radical communist and military rebel opposition groups to replace him in power (Muslim secessionists wanted a separate Muslim state, not national power in the Philippines). Victory by either the communists or the putschists would have led to be another form of non-democratic rule, not democratization. The second puzzle, then, is why “people power,” not a communist revolution or a military coup, brought Marcos down.

Unlike a pacted democratization, in which an institutionalized hand-over of power from the authoritarian regime to the moderate opposition is the culmination of the democratic transition, “people power” only began a highly troubled transition to democracy. Armed rebellions resumed and several coup attempts occurred while the economy stagnated and social reforms were postponed, putting the Philippines’ democracy high on the endangered list of new democracies.⁴ To paraphrase the early Huntington, in such a “praetorian” political environment, Muslims seceded, communists rebelled, and the military couped.⁵ In addition, the expectations raised by the defeat of Marcos and the accession to power of the Aquino government were extraordinarily high. In portraying her electoral campaign against the Marcos government as a battle of good versus evil, president Corazon C. Aquino created high hopes that her administration would not just restore democracy, but end corruption, introduce social reform, and strengthen the country’s national sovereignty. The survival of the Aquino government, despite “praetorianism” and high expectations, adds another puzzle to “people power”: why, despite a troubled transition, did it lead to democratic consolidation?

Critics have claimed that “people power” did little more than restore oligarchybased “cacique democracy.” Out-of-power oligarchs resumed control of much of the economy while political clans regained their dominance in Congress. Local politics in many areas was dominated by “guns, goons, and gold,” as Filipinos refer to the electoral manipulation of formally fair elections by political bosses. This raises a final question about “people power”: how democratic was it really?

Why was “people power” necessary?

Most democratic transitions are prompted by revolutionary potential. When high levels of discontent become explosive due to disappointed expectations and moral outrage in society, then a regime faces the prospect of rapid mass mobilization. But many authoritarian regimes in the “Third World” as well as “mature” posttotalitarian regimes in Poland and Hungary seized the initiative and negotiated with the opposition before a revolutionary situation emerged. These non-democratic regimes decided that the risks of holding on to power were greater than the disadvantages of democracy. This calculation derived from the collective interests at stake in highly institutionalized non-democratic regimes, regardless of whether they were military or civilian, communist or anti-communist in character.⁶ By initiating a democratic transition, such hazards could be avoided while at least some interests within the non-democratic regime were salvaged despite democratization. Ex-authoritarians often won power in free elections (and when defeated in their first try sometimes succeeded in the second, as in Lithuania and Poland). They maintained the status of key state institutions, particularly the “military as institution” in Latin America. They kept bureaucratic posts while avoiding political prosecution under democratic rule. It was considered better to negotiate and save something than to grasp on to power and perhaps lose all.

But in the Philippines – as well as in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua and Romania, among other countries – warnings to initiate a transition before it was too late were ignored because of the highly personalistic nature of these regimes. As discussed in this book’s introduction, “sultanistic” rule involves personal interests usually impossible to protect once power has been relinquished. Because they serve no class, institutional, or other major social interests, personalistic dictatorships enjoy little or no legitimacy outside a small ruling circle of family and friends. Sultanistic dictators are little concerned about the professional standing of key state institutions because they are organized on the basis of loyalty more than on competence. This patrimonialization of the state makes the orderly removal of the dictator by the military hierarchy or ruling party unlikely. Since such non-democratic “family affairs” alienate so many social groups, there is little hope the regime can win competitive elections or retain an important place in society after the transition. Once toppled from power, personalistic dictators are killed (Ceauşescu), forced into exile (where they are not always safe, as Somoza’s murder abroad shows), or brought to international justice (Milošević. For a sultanistic ruler, clinging to power is often a matter of life and death or at least the question of whether he will spend his remaining days in jail.

Marcos created a “conjugal dictatorship.”⁷ Marcos and his wife, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, along with their families and cronies, were the regime. The regime’s technocrats resigned or were forced out of office one by one, particularly when they ran afoul of Imelda Marcos. They were but high paid political cover for the arbitrary power of the dictator and his unfathomable corruption. The first lady was the second most powerful person in government (controlling, among other things, a major ministry and the governorship of Metro Manila). Other Marcos–Romualdez family members also held high state positions in government or statecontrolled corporations, which they used for personal profit. Imelda was notorious for extorting businesses, spending extravagantly, and traveling widely (particularly on international shopping expeditions). She rose from an impoverished childhood (she grew up in a garage) to become a beauty queen and the wife of the then rising Senator Marcos. Once she came to share presidential power, she took revenge upon wealthier family members of the prominent Romualdez clan as well as other members of the elite she felt had snubbed her. Her turbulent marriage with Marcos divided the regime along “his” and “her” factional lines and contributed to her increasing megalomania.⁸

Despite his anti-communist rhetoric, Marcos’s real enemies were from the old oligarchy – particularly the Aquino–Cojuangco clan (Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. was his chief political enemy) and the Lopez brothers (his main economic competitors). Before Marcos, the country’s two major “parties,” really but shifting national agglomerations of the oligarchy, alternated regularly in office. They shared the spoils of public office at regular intervals. Marcos played monopoly with this old system, increasing and concentrating state resources in his, his family’s, and his “cronies’ ” hands during the martial law period. He also achieved a greater monopoly on violence than at any time since the colonial era, disarming local warlords, taking police powers away from local politicians, and keeping a tight grip on the military. Marcos seized a number of his enemies’ assets. Prominent Filipino firms and foreign investors alike had to give 10–25 per cent of their equity gratis et amore to Marcos or one of his associates in order to receive necessary government permits.⁹ Billions of dollars in foreign aid and loans to the Philippines ended up in private bank accounts of the Marcos family and its cronies, a major cause of the country’s debt crisis in the mid-1980s.¹⁰ Government financial institutions were looted, the country’s gold reserves mysteriously declined, and government statistics were systematically manipulated to deceive international financial institutions.¹¹ In short, Marcos’s was family, not class-based, rule.

The financial reach of this “conjugal dictatorship” was extended further through a subcontracting of corruption known in the Philippines as “crony capitalism.”¹² Though production remained privately owned, Marcos allowed cronies to monopolize key commodities through special taxes, production privileges, or importexport licences. Each crony had his kingdom: Herminio Disini was the tobacco king, Rodolfo Cuenco the cargo king, Roberto Silverio the auto parts king, Antonio Floriendo the banana king, Jose Campos the drug king, Roberto Benedicto the sugar king, and Eduardo Cojuangco the coconut king. Marcos was known simply as the king.¹³

The personalistic character of his regime helps explain why Marcos consistently refused to negotiate with the opposition or give them a fair chance at the ballot box. A quintessential “lawyer politician” in the Philippines’ legalistic political tradition, Marcos went to great pains to maintain constitutional and democratic appearances.¹⁴ But he, not the “constitution,” was the law of the land. Elections were manipulated.¹⁵ Benigno S. Aquino, the leading opponent of Marcos, was assassinated upon his return from exile to the Philippines in August 1983 by agents of the regime. Aquino had pledged to seek a negotiated settlement with Marcos. But Aquino was seen instead as a dangerous personal rival, particularly by Imelda Marcos and army chief of staff, Fabian Ver, who had assumed informal power while Marcos underwent a life-threatening kidney operation. Subsequent offers of dialogue by the opposition leaders, including by Aquino’s wife, Corazon, were also rejected by Marcos, although the Catholic Church and the US government urged him to talk with his opponents. Marcos clung to power despite grave illness, economic crisis, the emergence of a major protest movement, and growing international isolation, out of fear that he would be killed or tried, and his wealth confiscated, if he left office.¹⁶

Armed forces chief of staff Ver was not a military professional but a “political” general whose fortunes were tied to Marcos’s (Ver had once served as his chauffeur). This made a move by the military hierarchy against Marcos – such as occurred in Greece after the Cyprus disaster or in Argentina following the Malvinas/Falklands war defeat – highly unlikely even after the Aquino assassination had destroyed the regime’s credibility at home and abroad. The ruling KBL (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, New Society Movement) party was little more than a patronage network of Marcos loyalists, with no power independent of the president’s will. Personalism precluded a transition initiated from within authoritarian structures. In short, “people power” was necessary because Marcos, given the family-based, “sultanistic” character of his regime, had no incentive to relinquish power.

Why did “people power” defeat Marcos?

Marcos’s family-based rule created a broad-based opposition: the poor did not fight the rich, broad segments of society fought together against the regime. As recent theories of revolution suggest, working-class or peasant struggle against a regime dominated by the industrial bourgeoisie or rural landlords is far less likely to lead to a successful revolution than cross-class coalitions against highly personalistic rule.¹⁷ Sultanistic rulers alienate the upper and lower classes alike, as well as elements within the military.

Under martial law, the Philippine communist party grew from a band of student romantics to the largest communist insurgency in Southeast Asia.¹⁸ The loss of electoral patronage contributed to rising social tensions in the countryside. Corruption and land grabbing by regional warlords and Marcos cronies, as well as human rights abuses, fueled further discontent. The communists capitalized on this situation, and their recruiting proved particularly successful in coconut-and sugar-growing regions where crony monopolies kept wages low.¹⁹ Instead of defeat at the hands of a professional military, such as in Brazil, the Philippine communist rebellion prospered under martial law and a Muslim rebellion continued despite a peace accord. With elite military battalions concentrated in Manila to protect Marcos and the armed forces increasingly de-professionalized, the communists’ rural-based insurgency grew from only several hundred troops before martial law to 8,000 soldiers by 1980, reaching an estimated 20,000 by 1983. At the same time, a major Muslim secessionist rebellion, which led to civil war in the southern Philippines in the early 1970s, was not defeated despite a peace accord signed in the mid-1970s.²⁰ This secessionist challenge diverted substantial military resources at a time when the communist insurgency was growing.

Alienated by fraudulent elections in 1978 and 1980, opposition politicians took the first step toward joining the communists in a boycott of the 1981 presidential polls.²¹ The boycott, led by the communist front group, the “National Democratic Front” (NDF), seemed to set the stage to further closer cooperation with disaffected elites.²² Arbitrary repression, particularly when it targeted elites, such as the Aquino assassination, along with soaring levels of corruption and economic crisis, led many members of the Philippine oligarchy seriously to consider backing a communist-led revolt against Marcos. Developments in the Philippines seemed to run parallel to the recent Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, where moderate politicians had joined radicals in overthrowing the Somoza regime through guerrilla force. If there was to be a communist-led revolution anywhere in Asia in the 1980s, the Philippines seemed the most likely place for it.

Highly personalistic regimes are also endangered by military coups.²³ The corruption of the military hierarchy and its blind loyalty to the dictator angers lower-ranking officers who have retained loyalties to the “military as institution.” Given the unpopularity of the regime, dissidents in the armed forces may encourage or take advantage of an incipient opposition insurrection to seize authority for themselves. In Haiti, a popular rebellion supported by the Catholic Church against Duvalier was preempted by a faction of the military, which took power for itself.

A coup strategy in the Philippines was led by defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile. As a marginalized former member of the inner circle waiting for his chance to take revenge on Marcos, Enrile was the Ion Iliescu of the Philippines. Like Iliescu, the down-but-not-out Romanian communist who led the conspiracy that toppled Ceauşescu, Enrile was in but not of the f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The puzzles of Philippine “people power”
• 2 Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia
• 3 The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution
• 4 To shoot or not to shoot
• 5 Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia
• 6 Democratic revolutions and the “clash of Samuel Huntingtons”
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography