The State-Democracy Nexus: Conceptual Distinctions, Theoretical Perspectives, and Comparative Approaches (Democratization Special Issues) by Jørgen Møller & Svend-Erik Skaaning

Author:Jørgen Møller & Svend-Erik Skaaning [Møller, Jørgen & Skaaning, Svend-Erik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science
ISBN: 9781317227434
Amazon: B01EAHZ8TQ
Goodreads: 29981391
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

State capacity and the role of elections in two Southeast Asian cases

Malaysia has held regular multi-party elections since independence in 1957, but they have been heavily biased in favour of the main Malay party, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and its ruling coalition Barisan National (BN), a multi-ethnic alliance. Muhammad Mahatir became prime minister in 1981 and continued the tradition of regular yet biased elections until 2003 when he handed the UMNO presidency, and thus the leadership of Malaysia, over to his successor. Fernando Marcos gained the presidency of the Philippines in democratic elections in 1965 but turned the regime increasingly autocratic, culminating in the declaration of martial law in 1972. He held a final, authoritarian election in 1986 after which his dictatorship collapsed in the face of widespread popular protests. The following section explores the role of state capacity in the very different trajectories of the authoritarian multi-party elections in the Philippines in 1986 and Malaysia in 1990.

The purpose of the cases is to illustrate and thus substantiate the theoretical argument that the effect of authoritarian elections depends on the context in which they are embedded, and that state capacity is an important aspect of this authoritarian context. The two Southeast Asian cases are well suited for this purpose given the relative similarity of the contexts in which multi-party elections played out. Both countries inherited the formally democratic institution from their previous colonial masters. Ethnic tensions had occurred, taking the form of Muslim uprisings and communist insurgencies in the Philippines and clashes between ethnic Malay and Chinese in Malaysia, and both regimes referred to these to defend their authoritarian practices.44 The international environment faced by the regimes differed, but when the Philippines held its regime-toppling election in 1986, the Cold War had not ended and international pressure for democratization was not yet widespread. Although the US was involved in its former colony, President Reagan remained a firm supporter of Marcos until after the election.45 The Malaysian regime, in contrast, sustained its authoritarian practices in the 1990 elections in spite of an emerging liberal world order and the recent transition in neighbouring Philippines. Furthermore, Malaysia continued its practice of regime-sustaining authoritarian elections through the financial crisis of the 1990s and the downfall of Suharto in Indonesia, illustrating that neither economic crisis nor diffusion effects were sufficient to bring down the regime in the face of multi-party elections. Although the study does not test the conditional effect of state capacity, I reflect on the prospects for generalizing the findings to other settings and recommend further studies into the proposed effect of state capacity in the conclusion.

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