Much is being discussed in Southeast Asia this month as Asean, the region's premier organisation, reaches its golden jubilee. One salient issue is the domestic politics and governance within individual Asean states and across them. Asean comprises a mix of regimes that span the spectrum from absolute monarchy in Brunei to newly emergent democracy in Myanmar and socialist-community rule in Laos and Vietnam, with many shades in between. How Asean's regime types evolve and behave will be consequential and potentially decisive for the organisation's coherence and effectiveness in broader Asian regionalism.
While projecting 50 years into the future of Asean development is a fraught enterprise, the instructive past can be a guide. When Asean reached its silver jubilee in 1992, it was partly marked by a book project consisting of short essays by intellectual and policymaking luminaries of the region. The anthology was broadly reflective and covered a wide gamut of issues from the genesis and evolution of Asean and social and cultural dynamics to relations with the major powers. Not much was mentioned of democracy and human rights, except for a chapter on "the problem of legitimacy".
As the region was just coming into its own after an initial postcolonial emergence and intramural conflict through the Cold War years -- still without Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) at the time -- it was unsurprising that the commemorative and contemplative 1992 Asean volume hardly mentioned human rights and democracy. But over the past 25 years, and over the next 25 years, domestic politics and governance will matter inordinately more than in the past.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. The second of this two-part article will appear Saturday..
Asean's conundrum on domestic politics and governance is centred on modernisation and development. The correlation between rising income and political liberalisation has long been established under what is known as modernisation theory. As sustained economic growth is attained, developing societies become more affluent and "modern", giving rise to new social strata with greater financial means and sophistication. In turn, as poorer rungs of societies move up to become burgeoning middle classes, these new vested groups are supposed to pursue their self-interest by demanding more rights and freedoms to be ruled by their representatives with good governance and the rule of law, not abused and repressed by unelected authoritarian governments of different shapes and forms.
In Southeast Asia, modernisation and democratisation have been a mixed bag. In fact, the conspicuous anomaly in Southeast Asia is a reverse modernisation correlation, pitting sustained economic growth on the one hand and a lack of inexorable democratisation on the other. The jury is out, so to speak, on how rising economic development will shape political regime types in Asean. But so far the Asean states have proved less democratic on the whole than one might have imagined in view of the region's economic development.
Given its diverse regime types that cover the range from rule by a few to government by the majority, Asean is and will continue to be a global testing ground for the future of democracy and authoritarianism. Since the end of the Cold War, Southeast Asian states have had mixed fortunes in spawning and sustaining democratisation. Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines to a lesser extent, have made remarkable democratic gains but with corresponding reversal in Thailand and erosion in Cambodia and Malaysia.
While the longer-term verdict of democratisation in the region will take years to determine, it is clear from learning by doing that only in countries where leaders with a greater good beyond themselves in mind who can plant firm and fertile roots of majority rule can democratisation take hold without reversal. Moreover, in an inverse correlation, corruption remains the Achilles' heel of democracy in Southeast Asia. And civil society is indispensable but sometimes insufficient agent of democratisation.
Indonesia is an apt starting point. Like most Southeast Asia countries, its economy was ravaged by the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997-98, which undermined and unseated President Suharto, its hitherto strongman. His deputy, BJ Habibie, took over and oversaw the harrowing period of violence and turmoil that followed. Yet President Habibie opened up the political system and allowed a freer press and political party setting, culminating with a general election in 1999. Through manoeuvring and playing different sides against each other, Abdurrahman Wahid emerged as president of a coalition government for two years even though his National Awakening Party won a minority of the vote. The overall election winner, Megawati Sukarnoputri of the Indonesian Democratic Party, succeeded, and steered and steadied the country until the next poll in 2004.
The Habibie, Wahid and Megawati years constituted a crucial transition from the vacuum left by Suharto's downfall. These three leaders might have been associated with dithering and fumbling on governance issues but they were seen as clean and fair while paying attention to basic rights and freedoms. They instituted and strengthened democratic institutions, such as civil society groups and anti-corruption laws, including the vaunted Corruption Eradication Commission.
Presiding over two terms in 10 years, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono built on earlier gains, and consolidated what had been an inchoate popular rule into a bright and third-largest democracy in the world. In Indonesia's case, leaders cultivated democratic institutions that outgrew and outdid them. Under President Joko "Jokowi' Widodo, Indonesia is now faced with myriad development challenges, from infrastructure needs and poverty eradication to income redistribution and erosion of religious tolerance. Yet Indonesia has turned its back resolutely on an authoritarian past for a more democratic future. By 2017, it is as difficult to imagine a military coup in Jakarta as it is easy to think of another putsch in Bangkok. Such is Indonesia's democratic consolidation, notwithstanding setbacks and hiccups along the way.
Myanmar's fragile but breath-taking democratic transition is another case in point. For almost five decades, its military leaders ran a thuggish dictatorship that repressed the Myanmar people, repeatedly violating human rights and even robbing an election victory from its civilian opposition, the National League for Democracy (NLD) under Aung San Suu Kyi. But after suffocating under years of Western sanctions, international opprobrium and regional embarrassment as Asean's albatross, the top brass, led initially by Senior General Than Shwe and later Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, eventually relented for self-preservation by coming up with a roadmap and a biased constitution.
Yet the consequent reform drive from 2011, under former president and ex-general Thein Sein, took on a momentum of its own and led to a remarkably free and fair election in November 2015. In 2017, Myanmar is now ruled by a civilian-led government headed by Ms Suu Kyi and the NLD, with Htin Kyaw as the titular president. The military retains control of several security-related portfolios, one of two presidential deputies, and constitutional amendments.
The Suu Kyi-led government has a chance to forge a new consensus and new development pathways. A major task ahead under Ms Suu Kyi's leadership will be to rebuild civil society organisations and democratic institutions, including her own NLD. She also has to keep the military on board at an arm's length, promote national peace process, and manage rights concerns in Rakhine state. Myanmar's de facto civil-military compromise is fragile. It will need ongoing military accommodation and civilian magnanimity in a spirit of mutual trust and goodwill. Such is Myanmar's tightrope in the immediate years after Asean's 50th anniversary.
The Philippines, is another country in the neighbourhood that remains firmly on the democratic course, notwithstanding recent setbacks on governance. Under President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines has made a dramatic U-turn compared to his predecessor Benigno Aquino III. While Mr Aquino made great strides against corruption and promoted human rights and good governance, Mr Duterte fits the mould of traditional strongmen in Southeast Asia.
Although elected and popular, Mr Duterte has been responsible for a violent war on drugs that has killed several thousand in the country, many extra-judicially. Philippine democracy is alive but not so well on human rights and governance, which raises questions and contradictions about the democratic fabric in that country. Yet the point in regional comparison is that military rule does not appear on the cards in the Philippines. Its chief challenge is to sustain electoral rule that is consistent with democratic values and human rights.
Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines have come a long way from their military past. Their democratic roads are full of bumps and potholes but they have led the way in regional democratisation over dictatorship. How these three countries fare in the coming decades will have much to say about how Asean will turn out to be as a regional organisation. How the other regimes, particularly Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand, fare will also matter as Asean moves forward.