State, Patrimonialism, and Elections: Democratization in Southeast Asia

• In Event: Democratization by Elections?

Abstract

“Democratization by elections” has quickly become a prominent explanation for how even flawed elections can advance democratic change in authoritarian regimes (Donno 2013, Edgell et al. 2015, Howard and Roessler 2006, Lindberg 2006, 2009a, 2009b). This relationship is especially prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe, but has also been studied in Latin America and the Middle East. Despite a focus on regional patterns in democratization, Southeast Asia has remained almost entirely absent from this research agenda. Between 1945 and 2015, authoritarian regimes in SE Asia oversaw 86 competitive elections, but today only Indonesia and the Philippines are electoral democracies. What explains the persistence of authoritarianism in a region of competitive elections?

In this paper, we both explain the resilience of electoral authoritarianism within SE Asia and provide a novel perspective on elections and democratization globally. Two features of SE Asia’s authoritarian regimes—strong states and neopatrimonial practices—prevent even competitive elections from leading to political liberalization or democratization within the region. It is only when neopatrimonial practices become unsustainable in weak states that elections may produce democratization; even then, the causal role of elections as agents of democratic change warrants close scrutiny, for elections may simply signal the completion of the democratization process.

Our argument draws on two mature literatures on the antecedents of democratization. One is on neopatrimonialism, a hybrid mode of domination combining the informality of patrimonial relationships with the formality of legal-rational institutions (Bratton & Van De Walle 1994; Brownlee 2002). We show that in SE Asia, the nature of political authority in regimes such as Cambodia and Indonesia inhibits the democratizing power of elections. The second literature is on state strength (Kuhonta 2008; Slater 2010). Here the heightened capacity of regimes such as Malaysia, Myanmar, and Singapore to coerce rivals, extract revenues, register citizens and cultivate dependence dilutes the democratizing power of elections. Within SE Asia, elections have only brought democratization when weak states proved unable to continue neopatrimonial strategies of rule.

Our argument has implications for existing research on democratization and elections in authoritarian regimes. Theoretically, our argument offers a cautionary note for citizens, civil society organizations, opposition parties, international organizations and foreign powers that conceive of elections as avenues for democracy. It suggests a return to preexisting findings about democratization by elections elsewhere in the world to identify the background conditions that enable elections to have democratizing effects. Conceptually, we emphasize the need to distinguish between elections as causes and elections as features of democracy. This potential tautology is particularly pronounced in the case of Indonesia, a case where elections represent the culmination rather than the cause of democratization. Empirically, the paper capitalizes on the opportunities SE Asia provides to scholars as a region “relatively neglected” in comparative politics (Kuhonta, Slater, & Vu, 2008: 2). It likewise responds directly to Edgell et al. (2015), who urge scholars working in this literature to delve more deeply into cases from Asia. Methodologically, the paper employs both within-case historical analyses and cross-national statistical techniques to examine the relationship between flawed multi-party and multi-candidate elections and democratization. Our integrative multi-method approach provides a stronger basis for assessing the causal effect of elections on democratization. Taken together, our contribution offers an answer to why SE Asia still remains “recalcitrant” to democratization (Emmerson 1995) and, in particular, why the link between elections and regime change identified in other world regions finds little support in SE Asia.

We begin by describing the theory of democratization by elections, with particular focus on its prescriptions for achieving regime change via flawed elections. We then show theoretically how state strength and neopatrimonial domination may counteract the power of repeated elections to lead to democratization. Next we provide the first analysis of democratization by elections in SE Asia. Using seven case studies and a cross-national statistical test, we find elections that competitive elections in authoritarian regimes do not increase the subsequent likelihood of democratization in the region, even though we do find such effects in a global sample. The conclusion addresses the implications of our argument, emphasizing how the countervailing forces of state strength and neopatrimonial domination may explain cross-regional patterns in electoral democratization previously identified.

Authors

• Lee Morgenbesser, Griffith University

• Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell University