Garry Rodan

The capacity of the People’s Action Party (PAP) of Singapore to continually reproduce an authoritarian regime stands in sharp contrast with the situation in Taiwan and South Korea. Yet there is nothing theoretically exceptional to this case. Singapore’s political institutions, as elsewhere, are the product of dynamic social and political interests, conflicts and coalitions. However, analysis must not only take account of how various interests and coalitions relate to the state, but also how they may be embodied in the state, or selectively excluded from it. Processes of state transformation are integral to the analysis of political regimes and associated institutions. The durability of Singapore’s authoritarian regime owes much to the mutual transformation of state and party that availed the PAP of new instruments and bases of power. The pervasive social and economic roles assumed by the PAP state have undermined the basis for independent, oppositional political coalitions to emerge. Importantly, the regime is not without ongoing tensions and contradictions and has undergone significant political change over time. Thus, rather than asking why democracy has not arrived in Singapore, the question is what direction political change has taken and why? The approach taken here has general implications for the understanding of the prospects and nature of political transitions.

Consider this paradox: substantial political change including increasing political participation in Southeast Asia in the last decade has often been accompanied by a narrowing of the channels for political contestation. Neither the fact, nor the complexity, of political change in Southeast Asia or elsewhere has totally eluded theorists. Indeed, there is now greater recognition that this political change may be either heading in directions other than liberal democracy, or is manifesting in new variants of liberal democracy. The proliferation of so-called hybrid regime theory and the burgeoning literature on the quality of democracy reflects this. Such work has highlighted how problematic many of the ‘Third Wave’ transitions to democracy have proved to be. In the process, political institutions have been subjected to unprecedented detailed scrutiny and analysis by transition theorists in the attempt to characterise diverse political regimes.

Neoliberalism is principally a political project of embedding market values and structures not just within economic, but also within social and political life. Its objective is a reshaping of power relations. However, within the neoliberal camp there have always been differences over how far this process should extend and by what means it should be achieved. Neoliberalism is a dynamic and at times problematic amalgamation of interests and ideologies. Indeed, the emergence of the Post-Washington Consensus (PWC) with its emphasis on market supportive institutions is as much reflective of these internal frictions as it is of the overall unifying aspects of the neoliberal reform agenda. The advent of the ‘war on terror’ and associated US foreign policy towards unilateralism adds another dimension to internal neoliberal debates about the most appropriate and effective ways to internationally embed market power and values (see Rodan and Hewison 2004).

The end of the Cold War period represented a critical juncture in the global expansion of capitalism, freeing up resources on the part of the U.S. to lead and support an accelerated neo-liberal push. Economic regimes that stood in the way of neo-liberalism came under increased scrutiny and support for authoritarian political regimes became more difficult to rationalise. Following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, concerted pressures towards governance reform in the region, notably from U.S.-dominated international financial institutions, also intensified. However, new security concerns by the U.S. are likely to play an important role in mediating such conflicts as U.S. economic and security interests become more fused. This paper explores the implications of this process, with examples drawn from Singapore and Thailand, where, in different ways, the advance of neo-liberalism has posed challenges for established economic and political interests. However, we argue that the U.S.-led ‘war on terror’ is also creating opportunities for some of those interests to consolidate or promote authoritarian rule.

Two decades ago political opposition in various parts of East and Southeast Asia was primarily characterised by peasant insurgencies and radical student movements questioning the very basis of the capitalist path to development. Their campaigns were often conducted outside constitutional processes. In the last decade, however, capitalism and industrialisation has firmly taken root in the region and capitalism’s ascendancy is not in question. As a consequence, the nature of political opposition, the forms through which it is conducted, and the actors involved have undergone a transformation. Extra-constitutional challenges are limited and the predominant agendas of political oppositions in the region have decidedly narrowed to more reformist goals. The new reformers are drawn from new social forces generated by the very processes of rapid capitalist industrialisation, including elements from across a range of classes: bourgeois, middle and working classes. To differing extents and by varying means, they are shaping the contests over power in the region’s dynamic societies.

It is quite clear that Australian industry is in crisis. Workers are being shed at an increasing rate, investment continues to decline while productivity and technology lag further behind that of overseas competitors.

The problem has so far been addressed in two ways: a downward push on wages and a resolve to maintain protection. Yet it is difficult to see how these two strategies, as presently conceived, can be effective. It is precisely in those industries receiving the heaviest protection, footwear, textiles, clothing, transport equipment and fabricated metal products, that the greatest unemployment has occurred recently and where the lag in technology, productivity and investment is most serious. On the wages front, no one has yet explained exactly how far wages will have to be depressed before profitability and competitiveness return. Given existing levels of investment and technology in Australian industry, there is nothing to suggest in the argument of free-market economists that anything higher than those wage levels existing in the Third World would make an impact.