Garry Rodan

Across a range of democratic and authoritarian political regimes around the world—including in Southeast Asia—new consultative institutions have expanded opportunities for citizens to participate in public policy deliberations. But how do we explain the emergence and political implications of these institutions? The political economy approach here is premised on the observation that the inability of existing institutions to contain or address conflict—especially in a context of intensified inequalities under advanced capitalist development—has precipitated a new phase in struggles over who can participate, how and on what basis in public policy consultations. The mode of participation (MOP) framework adopted here emphasises the historically specific and dynamic social foundations of political institutions. The framework can explain differences in the extent and forms of new MOPs. It can also explain why in Southeast Asia they have almost uniformly succeeded in containing democratic forces, most notably by politically fragmenting reformist forces. The focus here is on Singapore, where the People’s Action Party government has introduced the most extensive and innovative MOPs in the region. The institutional arrangements and supporting ideologies of these MOPs reflect the material, political and ideological interests of technocratic politico-bureaucrats under state capitalism and authoritarianism in Singapore.

This chapter explains why, despite some major regime transformations including democratisation, Southeast Asian polities continue to be dominated by oligarchies and place severe limits on political participation and contestation. Using a “Modes of Participation” framework, which builds on the Murdoch School, it draws attention to the legacies of Cold War authoritarianism and state-led development in creating profoundly unequal social power relations, which are institutionalised in ways that shape and limit socio-political contestation. Nonetheless, capitalism’s dynamic, conflictual nature ensures that Southeast Asia’s oligarchs continually face challenges of political management, often manifesting as struggles over political institutions. The framework explains the outcome of these struggles, illustrated with two brief case studies from Singapore and Indonesia.

Singapore's economic expansion in recent decades has been dramatic. Since 1960 its per capital GNP has increased seventeen-fold and now approximates that of New Zealand. The inter-related objectives of employment creation and economic growth through industrialization have long given way to more ambitious aims. For at least the last decade, economic policy has been oriented towards securing technology-intensive niches in the international economy in a range of service and manufacturing industries.

The idea of a clash of values between the ‘East’ and ‘West’ enjoys influence amongst academics, politicians, journalists and others interested in the implications of Asia's changing position in the global political economy. However, false monoliths are being depicted in the notion of ‘Asian values’ versus ‘Western liberalism’ which conceal major and unresolved political and ideological disputes within Asia and the West. Indeed, it is the universality of these disputes which accounts for the extensive interest outside Asia in the idea of ‘Asian values’: in particular, the resonance of so-called ‘Asian values’ with conservative ideology and philosophy. Meanwhile, self-appointed custodians of ‘Asian values’ from the elite in Asia attempt to portray emerging challenges to conservative values, from a variety of competing political and ideological perspectives, as ‘unAsian’.

This chapter emphasizes that the views and interests that prevail in struggles over accountability have profound political regime implications. Which ideologies dominate accountability institutions affects which interests might be protected or challenged through them. Only democratic ideologies insist that governance problems be determined and addressed, directly or indirectly, through expressions of popular sovereignty. Yet the most powerful basis of ideological and political mobilization around concerns over abuses of state power in Southeast Asia invoke various forms of moral political authority including: nationalism via Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam; traditional values via the King in Thailand; and of God via Catholicism in the Philippines and Islam in Malaysia. Nondemocratic ideologies of accountability – especially moral ideologies – are linked to the broader struggle over whose authority the organization of the political regime rests upon.

International aid agencies are increasingly placing social accountability at the heart of their governance reform programmes. This involves a range of social activist mechanisms through which officials are rendered answerable to the public. In both democratic Philippines and authoritarian Cambodia, social accountability mechanisms supported by international aid projects have tended to be subordinated to liberal and/or morally based ideas of accountability that help preserve existing power hierarchies and limit the scope for critical evaluation of prevailing reform agendas. Where these ideologies dominate accountability coalitions, they also often privilege non-confrontational state-society partnerships, drawing activists into technical and administrative processes limiting political reform possibilities by marginalizing or replacing independent collective political action crucial to the democratic political authority of citizens.

Structurally-based intra-elite conflicts emanating from relationships between capitalist development and state power in Malaysia mean that the merger of state and party is less cohesive than in Singapore and more prone to challenge. This translates into quite different political opportunities around which accountability coalitions potentially form. The establishment of a human rights commission in Malaysia while not in Singapore demonstrates this. In Singapore a cohesive technocratic elite has formed around a particular model of state capitalism and has kept human rights accountability reform firmly off the agenda. By contrast, in Malaysia elite fractures have created conditions in which a coalition of moral, liberal, and democratic accountability ideologies have enforced concessions.

In Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, elites have attempted to harness state-based anticorruption agencies to intra-elite struggles while societal groups have sought to render them meaningful checks on corruption. These struggles remain inconclusive but democratic forces are not well placed. In the Philippines, the power of the Catholic Church has enabled substantial mobilizations against corruption, but the reformist import of these is restricted by an overwhelmingly moralist ideological orientation. In Indonesia, civil society groups have mobilized against corruption using a mix of liberal and democratic ideals, but these groups are small and weak and have had difficulty using anticorruption campaigns to instigate wider reform movements. In Thailand, elites have harnessed moral populism promoting the authority of the monarchy in attempts to prevail over both political competitors and powerful societal mobilizations. Groups seeking to promote substantive democratic change have become targets of repression and/or co-optation by liberals, moralists, and opportunists.

Coalitions for and against particular accountability ideologies emerge in a dynamic political economy context. Towards identifying the main characteristics of such contexts, this chapter draws out the political regime significance of historical legacies – especially of the Cold War – and of contemporary capitalist and market relationships. Included here is discussion of the highly fragmented or underdeveloped nature of civil society in Southeast Asia and its implications for political coalitions. The blunting of powerful independent labour movements and social democratic political parties and movements linking civil and political society are highlighted. Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam are all analysed in these terms. The core argument of this chapter is that the social foundations of contemporary capitalism in Southeast Asia are favourable for moral ideologies of accountability exerting a pervasive influence.