Authoritarianism

The recent unlawful detention of a journalist and politician is the latest in a series of moves by Muhammadu Buhari’s administration that weaken the rule of law.

1. Continuing Political Regression In recent weeks, Southeast Asia’s authoritarian drift has continued, with several notable events. The Thai government moved to ban the opposition Future Forward Party, sparking major protests in Bangkok. The Cambodian government announced that opposition leader Kem Sokha will go on trial for treason in early 2020. And, of course, former Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has appeared in The Hague to defend Myanmar against genocide charges. She returned home to a warm reception, suggesting that her defense enjoys wide popularity across Myanmar. Other than in Malaysia, there are few signs of hope for political progress in the region in 2020. 2. Elections: Part 1 As I noted in a previous blog post, there are two consequential elections in Southeast Asia in 2020. In Singapore, the result is essentially foretold, but the extent of the almost assured People’s Action Party (PAP) victory will be interesting to watch—as will how Singapore’s anti-fake news law comes into play. In Myanmar, the result is less certain, and there are real fears that in the run-up to national elections, the politicized environment could spark new rounds of violence. 3. Elections: Part 2 Although the U.S. presidential election does not take place in Southeast Asia, the results of the November 2020 contest will have a significant impact on the region. The Trump administration has tried to beef up links with important partners like Thailand and Vietnam, has developed a new strategy for the region, and has taken a tough stance on human rights challenges in some countries like Cambodia. But it also often has ignored the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an organization, sending a relatively low level delegation to recent ASEAN meetings. The White House also has had little to say about issues of major importance to the region like climate change. A Democratic president’s Southeast Asia policy cannot be foretold with certainty, but a Democratic president likely would take a greater interest in climate change and try to reinvigorate links with ASEAN as an organization. However, given growing skepticism of many trade deals in segments of the Democratic Party as well, a Democratic president still would be unlikely to make the United States a major player in Asia’s regional trade integration. And while a Democratic president might take a slightly more hands-off approach to bilateral trade disputes with Southeast Asian nations, a United States that is more hawkish on trade overall is probably here to stay. 4. U.S.-China Relations Southeast Asian countries continue to struggle with how to adapt to a regional environment in which the United States and China have become increasingly confrontational, on issues ranging from trade to cybersecurity. Some Southeast Asian countries seem to have benefited from U.S.-China trade tensions—notably, Vietnam, but also possibly Malaysia and the Philippines. Still, many of the most trade-dependent Southeast Asian economies, like Singapore, are terrified of a return to U.S.-China trade tensions, and also are furious at the overall breakdown of global trade institutions, and the United States’ increasing hawkishness on trade. And, Southeast Asian countries increasingly accept that China is the dominant regional economic actor, and will become the dominant strategic actor, too. But China’s bullying in Southeast Asia has alienated segments of the population even in countries with relatively warm views of Beijing, like Malaysia and Thailand—and it has badly strained relations with Singapore and Vietnam. Countries are adapting, and will continue to adapt in 2020. Vietnam, for instance, continues to improve its military capabilities—and likely will continue to move slowly toward a closer partnership with the United States.

A "Right to Assist" could help prevent violent conflict and ease democratic transitions. But several important questions remain unanswered. 

Over the past decade, democracy has regressed in much of Asia, though there are notable exceptions including Malaysia and Taiwan. Southeast Asia has witnessed a reversal in Thailand, weakening institutions and norms in Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines, backsliding in Cambodia and even to some extent Indonesia, and sustained authoritarian rule in Laos and Vietnam, among other examples. Most notably, despite decades of predictions that China would, as it grew wealthier and more modern, undergo the type of political liberalization that had occurred in South Korea and Taiwan, China actually, in many ways, is more politically repressive today than it was in the early period of its reform era. The space in China today for political discussion has shrunk, even mildly reformist voices within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have been ostracized or essentially purged, the internet and social media are far more controlled than they were in China even five years ago, and the government is rolling out some of the most Big Brotheresque surveillance technology of any state on earth. In his concise but well-argued new book, Mark Thompson, head of the Department of Asian and International Studies and director of the Southeast Asia Research Center at the City University of Hong Kong, notes that China could clearly challenge the notion that modernism must necessarily, eventually, lead to political liberalization. China could indeed further modernize without democratizing. Thompson places China’s four-decade trajectory in the context of authoritarian modernization in East Asia (and to some extent other areas like Europe), where many states, at least initially, modernized their economies and societies without real political reform. He examines the links between China’s strategies and those of Singapore, the clearest model for what China has achieved—albeit one that can only explain so much about China’s development—and he cogently assesses how the Communist Party stays in power, and well could stay in power for many decades to come, diverging from the paths of other Asian modernizers, and even from Singapore. My full review of Thompson’s timely new book can be read in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia.

It has become, at this point, almost a trope to conclude that global democracy is increasingly imperiled, but there is considerable evidence backing this theory. In response to the global threats to democracy, some foreign policy analysts and government officials have begun to suggest that the United States and other democracies are entering a Cold War–style competition against autocracy, in its many modern forms. While autocracy—illiberal populism of both the right and the left, military dictatorship, major autocratic powers like China—is clearly on the rise globally and in Asia, a Cold War–style, grand ideological campaign against authoritarianism in general is unlikely to halt democracy’s global regression. For more on democracy’s slide in Asia, and how states should respond, see my new feature in the Diplomat.

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It has become accepted, among most experts on democracy, and among policymakers, that democracy worldwide is in increasing peril. This year’s Freedom in the World annual report on the state of democracy, produced by Freedom House (for whom I have consulted on reports on Southeast Asian states) noted that democracy had declined globally for thirteen years in a row. It further found that authoritarian states were “shed[ding] the thin façade of democratic practice that they established in previous decades,” while “countries that democratized after the end of the Cold War have regressed in the face of rampant corruption, antiliberal populist movements, and breakdowns in the rule of law” and that even consolidated democracies, in Europe and North America, faced severe pressure, backsliding, and corrosion of democratic institutions and norms. Its findings have been echoed by a range of other research, and although autocratic-leaning populists had mixed results in elections in 2018, they are not going away anytime soon. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is likely to consolidate his power in upcoming midterm elections, and possibly create a dynasty, hoping to eventually hand power to his daughter. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is undermining Mexican democratic institutions, going around institutions via referenda and other means, packing the courts, and taking other measures, as Shannon O’Neil has noted. Meanwhile, the most powerful authoritarian states, such as China, are becoming more repressive, and more globally influential, while leading democracies are far less interested in democracy promotion outside their borders. With a few exceptions, like Malaysia and possibly Ethiopia, countries that recently have seemed ready to shed autocratic governments have backslid, with repressive regimes crushing political change in places like Cambodia and Egypt or newly elected leaders failing to support the growth of democratic institutions, as in Myanmar. Amidst this gloom, a fascinating new article, based on groundbreaking new research, suggests that the global retreat of democracy is actually worse than it appears, even to some of its most pessimistic observers. In an article for Democratization, Anna Luhrmann and Staffan Lindberg of the University of Gothenburg, who base their conclusions on the V-Dem, or Varieties of Democracy, Project’s findings, argue that a “third wave of autocratization” (following the world’s two previous autocratic waves last century), or a move away from democracy, is actually affecting more democracies than was commonly thought, although usually through gradual reversals, with legal facades, rather than an abrupt democratic reversal like a coup. (I was a contributor to the V-Dem project briefly.) V-Dem is a project that uses a comprehensive, multidimensional dataset of various indicators to measure democracy in a broad range of countries. They further find that this backsliding began earlier than the mid- to late-2000s, which is when many democracy experts have traced the start of the current regression. The authors argue, in fact, that the current authoritarian resurgence actually began as early as 1994—a theory that suggests this wave of autocratization is far longer than previously imagined, and more difficult to stem, although many of the states regressing today do not revert into as brutal autocracies as in the past. Yet because so much of this backsliding was gradual, and not abrupt, it often has escaped initial notice. In addition, these types of gradual regressions, frequently cloaked in legal shifts and happening while flawed elections continue to take place—and lacking any Reichstag fire type catalytic event—have made it harder for domestic opponents of autocratization to mobilize against the growing repression. Even worse, they find that, while these gradual processes of democratic erosion are not as abrupt and severe as reversals like coups, they still almost always result in the death of democracy. Of the democratic erosions they studied, the note, only 15 percent were halted before democracy broke down—in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, South Korea, and tiny Vanuatu. Grim, indeed.

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