216. DEMOCRACY IN ASIA PANEL (PANEL I)
216.
Panel Title : DEMOCRACY IN ASIA PANEL (PANEL I)
Chair : Celito Arlegue
Participant :
Min Li Julia Lau
Paper Title : Democracy in Southeast Asia - Second Nature or Artificial Imposition?
Abstract :
The recent military coup in Bangkok that toppled Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra sparked some critical responses from the United States government and other quarters. The Thai people, however, appear to accept the situation and their newly appointed Prime Minister, Surayudh Chulanont. The incident, juxtaposed against what appears to be democracy in action in Indonesia and total authoritarianism in Burma (Myanmar), as well as emerging or \"hybrid\" democracies elsewhere in the region, has revived questions about whether democracy in Southeast Asian nations is a viable ideology and political identity for their citizens, or an"unnatural" imposition by Western powers that is destined to be short-lived in a region characterized by cleavages in race, language, religion and ethnicity.
This paper will argue that both nature and nurture shape the rules of politics, especially in democratizing and authoritarian states, such as we find in Southeast Asia. Developing countries watch and learn from developed countries about how to behave in the world, but depart from accepted norms from time to time. The paper will also examine the impact of maturing citizenry, higher standards of education and living, and globalization on politics in Southeast Asia. The key research questions are why "democratic" rules that seem stable break down at times of crisis in Southeast Asian politics, and why the populace accepts undemocratic styles of governance and political order, in exchange for economic prosperity and pragmatic survival. These issues are timely and important in this age of supposed American unipolarity. A deeper understanding of the causes of democracy and other driving forces in Southeast Asia can arguably guide policymakers across the region to design foreign policies and make domestic decisions that signal better to the outside world, especially the US, their country\'s true political nature in a clearer and more accurate manner. This paper will reference Aristotle's Politics¸ Machiavelli's Discourses, and modern political science literature including neorealist and neoliberal institutionalist classics. Of direct interest are the interesting signposts that Albritton, Bureekul and Gang in late 2005 (following Mishler and Rose) surfaced when they examined the impact of"cultural socialization" and interactions with government on various issues including democracy and democratic pluralism in eight Asian nations, to test whether institutional reasons and actual government performance rather than cultural and socialization factors accounted for distrust in governments in Asia. By drawing inspiration from several social science disciplines, it is hoped that an optimistic account of the future can be created, and serious discussion on the prospects of democracy and other forms of government in Southeast Asia inspired.
Celito Arlegue
Paper Title : The Interaction between development and democracy in Southeast Asia: The Philippines and Thailand compared
Abstract :
The interaction between development and democracy has been one of the most controversial issues in international and comparative political economy which baffled both academicians and policy-makers alike. This issue first came to the fore in the aftermath of World War II, when democratic institutions were either imposed or promoted in the defeated Axis powers and newly decolonized states. During this period, it was widely believed that democracy would facilitate the recovery and survival of these countries because of its assumed relationship with economic growth. In the 1960s and early 1970s, however, the global swing away from democracy of many states put the issue linking development and democracy into the backseat. The advent of the third wave of democratization in the mid-1970s, followed by demise of the superpower competition in the early 1990s, revived scholarly interest on the link between development and democracy. For some scholars and policy analysts, the transition to democracy of about thirty countries and the implosion of the Soviet Union, signaled the universalization of democracy, particularly liberal democracy, as 'the final form of human government'. This democratic triumphalism was accompanied by renewed curiosity on the value of democracy, not only politically, but socially and economically as well. While democracy is already expected to ensure the orderly and peaceful transfer of power from one government to another, the mood in the aftermath of the Cold War also tended to associate it with other values like social justice, economic development, among others. The linkage between development and democracy is arguably the most contentious of these associations. The complex relationship between development and democracy is evidenced by diverse (and contradictory) theoretical perspectives and research traditions that attempt to either support or debunk the linkage between these two variables. This paper would seek to examine these different theoretical perspectives and research traditions by looking at some model studies which utilized them. In line with this general objective, it would describe the basic features of each perspective and tradition, its major criticisms, and its usefulness in understanding the dynamics between democracy and development. The paper would also attempt to demonstrate the utility of a particular research tradition by analyzing the interaction between democracy and development in Asia. Asia constitutes a fertile setting for exploring the nexus between development and democracy because the varied experiences of countries in the region can both support and debunk the development-democracy thesis. The Southeast Asian sub-region, for one, has countries which can serve as empirical examples of all the possible relationships between these two variables. For purposes of this paper, the cases of the Philippines and Thailand would be highlighted. Both of these countries can be considered ‘third wave' democracies , but they appeared to have diverging experiences with regard to development. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part provides a working definition of development and democracy. The second part looks into the different theoretical perspectives and research traditions in the study of development and democracy. The third part, which is the heart of the discussion, scrutinizes the link between development and democracy by comparing the cases of the Philippines and Thailand. The fourth and final part provides some conclusion and prospects for the future.
Feng Chongyi
Paper Title : Democrats within the CCP since 1989
Abstract :
Contrary to the view that political suppression, economic success and the rise of nationalism in combination make democracy irrelevant in China, a pro-democracy discourse flourishes and deepened. This research explores the impact and potential of democrats within the Chinese Communist Party after the 1989 Tiananmen Incident. It also compares the contexts and strategies of China's democrats with those in the former Soviet Union, and thus seeks to increase our understanding of general issues in the transformation of communism and the transition to democracy. This project sets out to test four main hypotheses: that due to the shared post-totalitarian structure there is a process of transformation of the communist party in China today similar to that in the former Soviet Union in the era of Gorbachev; that democrats within the CCP will play a key role in China's transition to democracy; that a pro-democracy discourse has been kept alive after the 1989 crackdown and intellectual resources for a transition to democracy is available in China; and that the transformation of Li Shenzhi and others from loyal communists to liberal democrats is a guide for understanding the emerging dynamics within the CCP.
Trevor W Preston
Paper Title : Semi-Democracy? Hybrid Regimes and their Discontents in Malaysia and
Singapore
Abstract :
This paper assesses how contemporary Malaysian and Singaporean political regimes fit into the semi-democracy model as developed by William Case. The semi-democracy model first emerged in the immediate context of the post Cold War era where explanations of democratization then being popularized by Samuel Huntington's Third Wave and others failed to account for the lack of democratization in Malaysia and Singapore despite their continued and sustained economic growth. The semi-democracy model emerged to account for this discrepancy by taking an eclectic approach which posits Malaysia and Singapore as hybrid regimes existing somewhere between authoritarianism and democracy. I use three criteria to analyze the semi-democracy model base: its explanatory power as it relates to the empirical record of Malaysian and Singaporean political regimes, its generalizability and application to cases outside Southeast Asia, and finally, its ability to account for and explain political change. Ultimately, I contend that the utility of the semi-democracy model relates to intrinsically normative questions of how to conceptualize democracy on an either narrow procedural or larger substantive level. The semi-democracy model is derived from a predominately Western procedural conceptualization of democracy which privileges unimpaired political rights and civil liberties. Such a reading of democracy may misread and ignore some of the substantively democratic achievements of Malaysia and Singapore in terms of continued inter-ethnic harmony, social and class mobilization, and poverty alleviation
G. Gunaryadi
Paper Title : Indonesian and Dutch Political Parties in Perspective
Abstract :
A comparative analysis on Dutch and Indonesian political parties is not only intriguing but also challenging at least on three accounts. First, the Netherlands was the former ruler of Indonesia for more than three centuries. There is a need to certain degree to explore the legacies of the colonial past on Indonesia's political system and parties. Second, since the dawn of the Era Reformasi, Indonesia has undergone an impressive transition toward democracy i.e. the multi-party system, a regime that has been firmly established in the Dutch political system. Third, the influence of stronger regionalism has also watered the political spheres in both sides: the Neth-erlands in the sui generis European Union (EU) and Indonesia in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) although both organisations are hard to be regarded as identical. This paper strives to compare the realities of political parties in these two countries within their dis-tinctive environment and context. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part com-pares the political and electoral systems, and the influence of regionalism on political parties in both countries. The second part compares the political parties using four yardsticks: party ty-pology, performance in the latest two elections, representation in the government, and leader-ship successions. Before that, for the comparative analysis in the second part, the political par-ties from both countries are selected as sample based on the parliamentary representativeness in the latest two elections and political ideological streams. Quantitative and qualitative ap-proaches are mutually applied in the analysis.
