Authoritarianism

Authoritarians are on the rise around the world, but history shows they’re mostly helpless.

In an op-ed recently published in the Hill, I write about what democracy in retreat and authoritarianism on the march mean for the future of the liberal world order. President Xi Jinping’s brazen gambit to perpetuate his unchecked rule has dashed Western dreams that global economic integration will inexorably democratize China. But that nation’s descent into despotism is just one example of a global authoritarian turn that jeopardizes the liberal international order. Indeed, that order risks crumbling entirely, as assaults on liberal democracy extend to the West itself. Read the full op-ed here.

Term limits for the leadership are not usually found in dictatorships. The Chinese Communist Party’s proposed abolition of China’s presidential term limit means that it has forgotten one of the main lessons of Mao’s long despotism. The two-term limit was inserted into the People’s Republic of China Constitution after the Cultural Revolution ended and reflected a widespread desire to prevent the return of one-man dictatorship. Its abolition signals the likelihood of another long period of severe repression. This should prompt us to think of Chiang Kaishek as well as Mao and Yuan Shikai and, in a comparative Asian vein, of Marcos and Park among others. Of course, some recognize that Putin’s example may also have significantly influenced Xi Jinping. Xi’s move will have a profound effect on world order. It will enable him to move more boldly and increases the risk of his acting arbitrarily and perhaps mistakenly in international relations. It will surely hinder China’s efforts to be respected for “soft power” as well as military and economic prowess. Xi decided to strike while the iron is hot rather than wait for later in his new term when increasing problems might have made the change more difficult. His brash step has undoubtedly aroused profound concern among the elite. Many high Party personnel, bureaucrats, judicial officials, lawyers, intellectuals, academics and business people, mindful of the past Maoist dictatorship and the increasingly repressive and arbitrary government under Xi, have seen this coming and now, in social media and other informal ways, are showing their anxieties and opposition. But not many public signs of protest can be expected, since he has stifled free expression in the past few years. There must be great grumbling and concern among the country’s elite and educated, especially since the same Party “proposals” that have eliminated term limits have also confirmed the establishment of the National Supervisory Commission that will make the regime more repressive and more free of legal restraints than ever, imposing what amounts to “the Inquisition with Chinese characteristics.” There is big risk for Xi at home since, as it becomes more obvious that China’s problems are catching up with its achievements, the government will look less impressive and the masses will begin to lose their enthusiasm and hold the great leader responsible. The elite will be less surprised but less forgiving. The external risk is more immediate. Xi’s bold consolidation of power will enhance fear of “the China threat”, and his ever greater repression will make people think of Stalin’s decades-long centralization of power, even though, one hopes, Xi will not engage in mass executions. He already is engaging in mass detentions in Xinjiang even though “re-education through labor” was abolished in name a few years ago. These “proposals” are at least a 1-2 punch against the Constitution when we consider the simultaneous establishment of the National Supervisory Commission. People often wonder—even now—how in 1937 Stalin could have said: “We need the stability of the law more than ever.” while at the very same time displaying the infamous “purge trials” to the world and lawlessly executing huge numbers of people. Xi claims to be strengthening the “rule of law” while making certain that it will never get off the ground. Tell it to all the tens of thousands in Xinjiang who are locked up in Xi’s successor camps to the supposedly abolished “re-education through labor”.

Zimbabwe’s founding father, Robert Mugabe, ushered his country into independence, then established a tyrannical regime and presided over the destruction of the economy. He was ousted in a November palace coup.

I was recently featured on a panel with Katie Simmons and Ken Wollack, moderated by Bruce Stokes, that discussed global public opinion toward democracy amid the rise of populists and autocrats, and the implications for the future of democracy and U.S. foreign policy. The discussion follows the release of a Pew Research Center survey in thirty-eight countries on attitudes toward democracy. You can check out the video of our discussion below or on CFR’s event page.

President Trump’s administration appears little troubled by the sharp democratic decline in Southeast Asia—but it should be, for economic and security reasons.

For decades, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, the longest-serving nonroyal ruler in Asia, has played a delicate political game. While using a wide range of tactics—co-option of opposition party leaders, the use of state funds to promote the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), laws and lawsuits to reduce the influence of civil society and political opponents, and reportedly sometimes outright election fraud—he also has tried to maintain at least an appearance of some political freedom in Cambodia. As a result, for decades Cambodia existed as a kind of pseudo-authoritarian state, but one in which there were greater freedoms than in neighboring nations like Vietnam, Laos, and even to some extent Thailand. The country held contested elections, even if the electoral process was highly biased against opposition parties, and the CPP used a wide range of threats and other tools to try to divide and harass the opposition. Civil society, which had been rebuilt in the 1990s, continued to flourish despite the CPP’s tough tactics toward environmental groups, some media outlets, campaigners for fairer electoral processes, and other NGOs. Foreign civil society organizations like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute continued to operate in the country. Reporters faced harassment—and worse—but in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s a young generation of Cambodian journalists emerged, and tough, independent radio, online, and print outlets investigated government activities and posed tough questions to policymakers. In 2013, the main opposition party even nearly won national elections—the true result will never be known, although some opposition figures believe it did actually win, but the election commission did not allow the CPP to lose. In the past year, however, Cambodia’s politics have slid farther backwards than probably any other country in East Asia. (Thailand is a close competitor, but the Thai military took power in 2014, not 2017.) Hun Sen and the CPP this year have launched an all-out attack on political opposition and civil society. The prime minister seems to have decided to take no risks ahead of 2018 national elections—no repeat of the possibility that his party could lose. He also appears emboldened by a new geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia in which the United States government, which historically had been one of the major critics of Hun Sen’s abuses, has chosen to mostly ignore human rights issues. Most recently, last week the Cambodian government filed papers that seek to dissolve the main opposition coalition, which would leave the opposition shattered before national elections in 2018. The proposed dissolution of the opposition is just the capstone on a year of turbulence. One of the main opposition leaders, Sam Rainsy, remains in exile. If he returns to Cambodia, he will have to face defamation charges. The other opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested in September on dubious charges of treason and is reportedly now in prison. The crackdown has extended more widely as well. The Cambodia Daily, one of the most important media outlets, shut down in September. NDI had its program shuttered earlier this year, and top Cambodian government officials are now warning other NGOs that their events could be shut down if they do not get government permission in advance. Hun Sen’s government also has closed a number of independent radio stations, and is reportedly eying an even broader crackdown on politicians and civil society. The Los Angeles Times reports that about half of the opposition’s members of parliament have fled the country. With good reason: As the Los Angeles Times reports, earlier this month Hun Sen warned that “rebels” in Phnom Penh were supposedly plotting to overthrow the government, and suggested action needed to be taken against them. Hun Sen, in fact, has been issuing dire warnings all year of how bad it could get. In June, he delivered a speech in which he warned opposition politicians and other critics to “prepare coffins” if his party happened to lose in 2018. The prime minister is certainly using every tool possible to make sure his party wins.

The current year has been one of significant backsliding for democracy in Southeast Asia, a continuation of a regional trend that has been in the works for more than a decade. This year, Cambodia’s long-ruling leader, Hun Sen, has taken the country back to the repression of the late 1990s, cracking down hard on the leading opposition party. Currently, co-opposition leader Sam Rainsy is in exile, after fleeing facing defamation charges. Co-opposition leader Kem Sokha is in jail on treason charges, supposedly being held in a remote prison. The government is shuttering NGOs, and essentially forced the prominent independent news outlet, the Cambodia Daily, to close its doors in September. Hun Sen has launched a series of broadsides against the United States, though he also has approvingly cited the White House’s treatment of the press corps. Meanwhile, in Malaysia repression on the opposition continues, while in the Philippines the brutal drug war and other abuses of the rule of law show no sign of abating. In Myanmar, it remains unclear whether the elected civilian government has any real control over the military, which is perpetuating a massive catastrophe in Rakhine State that has been called ethnic cleansing. In Thailand, the ruling junta remains in charge, the chief opposition leader has fled the country, and a crackdown continues on academics, journalists, and civil society. Next year is going to be a pivotal year for Southeast Asian democracy—and it could get much worse than it is today. Cambodia will hold national elections. Many Cambodia analysts, including opposition politicians, believe Hun Sen will stop at nothing to ensure that his party, the CPP, remains in power after the 2018 elections, even though the opposition made gains in the 2013 election, and also in this year’s local, or commune, elections. Hun Sen could, before the 2018 election, increase his crackdown—banning the CNRP, putting more CNRP members in jail, and clamping down harder on independent media. This year, besides the closure of the Cambodia Daily, the government in Phnom Penh ordered shut roughly fifteen local radio outlets, many of which aired independent programming. Radio Free Asia pulled its bureau in Cambodia out of the country as well. Meanwhile, Malaysia and Thailand may have elections in 2018 as well. Malaysia will surely have an election before the end of August. The opposition remains fragmented, and the ruling coalition is highly likely to win. Prime Minister Najib tun Razak, who recently returned from a visit to Washington, has been able to skillfully crack down on civil society while also avoiding having ongoing corruption allegations impact his domestic political maneuvering. He has continued to squeeze the opposition. As John Sifton of Human Rights Watch notes, the Malaysian government “has arrested dozens of opposition politicians and activists, charging them with sedition and other criminal offenses for criticizing the government or Najib on social media. Newspapers publishing reports critical of the government have been shuttered, and participants in peaceful protests have been arrested and charged with violating Malaysia’s restrictive Peaceful Assembly Law.” In Thailand, even the possibility of an election remains unsure, although there will likely be a vote in 2017. As I noted in a recent World Politics Review article, simply because former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has fled the country does not mean the opposition Puea Thai party has lost popularity. But, the junta may use every tool possible, if an election is held, to ensure Puea Thai does not win an outright majority in the lower house. And then there is Myanmar. The next year will be pivotal, to see whether the government can establish control over the security forces—or even wants to. This dynamic will shape the near-term future of Myanmar politics, and the direction of the ongoing crisis in Rakhine State.

Part Two Read Part One here.  Could the situation for democracy in Southeast Asia, which had seemed on the verge of having multiple consolidated democracies in the 2000s, get worse these days? Well, actually … In recent weeks, authoritarian rulers have demonstrated even more willingness to crack down in Cambodia and Thailand. And, Myanmar is descending into the kind of civil strife that could easily undermine the democratic transition—or even make some army leaders think they need to seize control of the country again. Likely worried about the opposition’s gains in 2013 national elections and in 2017 local elections—and perhaps emboldened by the election of a U.S. government that has demonized reporters and downgraded rights promotion as a component of U.S. foreign policy—long-serving Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen has gone on the attack against his opponents in the past six months. Hun Sen also probably is seizing this chance to defang the opposition before national elections next year. Hun Sen has now taken his crack down to a level not seen in decades. Last week, opposition leader Kem Sokha was arrested on treason charges. He was just one of many people who have been caught up in Hun Sen’s crackdown. In recent weeks the government also has forced the National Democratic Institute to remove its foreign staff from the country and end its programs in Cambodia. The Hun Sen government also has gone after the Cambodia Daily, one of the foundations of Cambodia’s independent press. The Cambodia Daily, which had been an important voice for independent reporting in the country, published its last issue yesterday. Hun Sen also is threatening Voice of America and Radio Free Asia’s Cambodia outlets, among other media outlets and civil society organizations. There are legitimate fears that Hun Sen may try to simply shut down the CNRP opposition party. Democracy in Thailand is not doing much better, although Thailand’s main opposition party, like the opposition CNRP in Cambodia, still probably enjoys significant public support. Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra apparently has fled the country instead of facing her court date on August 25, on charges related to her administration’s rice subsidy scheme. (Her verdict has been postponed until late September.) On the same day two weeks ago that Yingluck did not appear in court, her former commerce minister from the period of Yingluck/Puea Thai rule was given a forty-two year jail sentence in a case related to Yingluck’s charges. Some of these charges on the rice subsidy scheme are controversial, since those accused are standing trial essentially for government incompetence. Other Puea Thai leaders face serious charges. The military may indeed hold an election in 2018—or it might not—but in any case it has already tried to destroy the opposition, and to make sure that the armed forces have control of politics for many years to come. Then there is Myanmar. Since Aung San Suu Kyi’s government took power last year, it has concentrated on the economy and on the peace process with a number of ethnic minority groups. Indeed, Suu Kyi’s spokesperson has made clear that rights and democracy come behind economic issues and the peace process on the NLD’s priority list. So, Suu Kyi has said little as security forces have gone on a scorched earth campaign in Rakhine State since last autumn, and in recent weeks the security forces and an increasingly powerful Rohingya militant group have laid waste to Rakhine again. The Washington Post noted last week that “witnesses said Myanmar soldiers [have] torched villages and sent thousands of Rohingya fleeing across the Naf River to neighboring Bangladesh, which is already home to about 400,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled Burma in recent years,” yet Suu Kyi has not commented on the army’s tactics. The fighting in Myanmar shows no sign of ending. Human Rights Watch has documented massive burning of villages, and the United Nations reported this week that some 120,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar in just the past two weeks, adding to the number of Rohingya as refugees or internally displaced people. Under Suu Kyi, Myanmar reporters also have been increasingly threatened, whether through defamation cases or simply by harassment from the security forces. There seem to be few signs of a better future for Southeast Asian democrats, at least in the near term. Indeed, if the past five years have been terrible for democracy in Southeast Asia, the next five look even more uncertain.

Once a diverse, cosmopolitan society, Egypt has descended into corruption, inequality, and bigotry. Sound familiar?

As politicians purposefully polarize their own society for political profit, the result is rage and violence.

As I noted in previous blog posts, China has in recent years embarked upon a global soft power offensive. This charm offensive has included an expansion of Xinhua and other state media outlets into many new markets, as well as professionalizing these news services and hiring many capable reporters. The new charm offensive has included vast increases in aid, much of it part of massive new concepts like One Belt, One Road. It has included an increase in assistance for educational exchanges, new programs for training of foreign officials coming to China on short courses, and an overall effort by Xi Jinping and other senior leaders to portray Beijing as a kind of defender of the global order—at least on trade and climate change, two issues where U.S. leadership appears to be retreating. This attempt to portray Xi as the new defender of the global order was most evident during his visit to Davos, in January. There, he told attendees at the World Economic Forum that Beijing would protect free trade rules and norms, warning that “no one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.” In my previous post, I wrote that, at least in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, China’s massive soft power offensive is not likely to succeed. A decade ago, when I wrote a book on China’s then-rising soft power, it might have; Beijing was perceived more favorably by its neighbors back then, in part because it had been relatively modest in exerting its hard power influence in Southeast Asia. Now, after a decade of squabbling over the South China Sea and East China Sea, and a rising Asian arms race, China’s hard power has become significant, and threatening to neighbors. This hard power, delivered in a manner many Southeast Asian nations view negatively, undermines the entire soft power effort. But, globally, China’s image is better than it is these days in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, in part because nations in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, or the Middle East do not have to think as much about China’s rising hard power. The current partisan dysfunction in Washington also potentially makes China more appealing. But will the global democratic regression—Freedom House has now recorded eleven straight years of democratic regression in its annual Freedom in the World report— somehow boost China’s soft power? On the surface, the idea seems to make sense. If democratic leaders are failing to address major challenges like economic inequality, climate change, immigration, terrorism, technology’s impact on work and the job market, the rising cost of health care, and other issues, is it possible that an alternative model of governance would work—or at least might become more popular among citizens in many nations?   The fact that voters in democracies around the world are increasingly turning to strongman/strongwoman style candidates suggests that there is some pent up demand for an alternative model of governance, even if those strongmen are elected—which China’s leaders really are not. (The groundbreaking work of Yascha Mounk at Harvard suggests that, especially among younger men and women in many democracies, there is a greater willingness than in the past to consider alternative forms of government.) As the thinking goes, perhaps an elected strongman, like the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte or Hungary’s Viktor Orban, can break through political roadblocks, and use the popular will to make important progress on issues like economic inequality, or environmental threats, or sensible immigration? Certainly, strongman-style politicians, many of them using populist rhetoric, have made gains globally in the past decade—from Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand to Duterte to Orban to many others. So, if voters in democracies are choosing strongman-style politicians, wouldn’t they also warm to China’s own authoritarian leaders, who are supposedly delivering the goods at home? Not necessarily. China, too, has in its own way succumbed to this strongman trend. Xi Jinping is now probably the most powerful single leader of China since Mao Zedong. He has built a formidable personality cult around himself—a cult that harkens back to that of Mao Zedong. He also has cracked down hard on all forms of dissent, within the Party and in society at large. But while Xi may indeed be the most strongman-style leader China has had in decades, his style of governance is not necessarily going to boost China’s soft power around the world. Remember that in most countries that have flirted with or voted in strongmen-style leaders, these politicians were still elected. Polling by the Barometer series shows overwhelming support, in most of these countries, for the idea of electing leaders. In other words, citizens of Thailand or Hungary or the Philippines may have voted in what I have called elected autocrats, but they still overwhelmingly prefer to elect their strongmen. This point cannot be overstated. Electing modern strongmen like Thaksin or Orban is dangerous to the future of democracy—they can undermine democratic institutions even while winning elections. But the Orban/Thaksin/Duterte/Erdogan model is probably going to remain more appealing than a China-style approach, which does not really give the public a voice—not even a voice in choosing a leader who could undermine democracy. A model of an unelected strongman, chosen through opaque and byzantine political maneuvering, is indeed unlikely to be more popular than voters choosing an elected autocrat. Choosing an elected autocrat allows for the possibility that voters can eventually turn against and remove the elected leader—although, as Turkey shows, this gets harder over time. China’s system does not allow for that possibility. In my next post, I will address a second major flaw in China’s authoritarian model that undermines its global soft power.