Garry Rodan

Amidst intensifying great power rivalry between the US and China, the Australian government has looked to greater cooperation with Southeast Asian countries to navigate a peaceful and prosperous course through the rough seas of this second Cold War. This is an understandable but also problematic direction. Economic and security imperatives have long been intertwined. The challenge now, however, is to understand how so in the new political economy of militarised neoliberalism, and the implications for regional engagement. Otherwise, policy plans have shaky foundations. This argument is prosecuted with an illustrative focus on policies of joint Australia and Southeast Asia cooperation in ‘green’ industries, most advanced with Indonesia. Political economy research reveals how policies of cooperation meant to avoid taking sides in superpower contestation can have starkly different outcomes. Identifying and analysing dominant coalitions of economic and socio-political interest, mediating how official policy is implemented or obstructed, is pivotal to understanding the constraints and possibilities of effective cooperation.

Labour control through coercion, violence, and restrictive laws is well analysed for Southeast Asia. Less understood is why, how, and to what effect, political participatory institutions articulate with labour control strategies. Central to such an understanding is analysis of political coalitions shaping these institutions, and the historical and dynamic political economy foundations of these coalitions. In this article it is argued that an ideologically cohesive coalition of technocratic politico-bureaucrats seized power in Singapore during the Cold War, and established state capitalism through which both labour and private capital can be politically disciplined. These power relations are integral to the capacity for state-sponsored participation rationalised through ideologies of consultative authoritarianism. By contrast, in post-Cold War Cambodia, a coalition encompassing private conglomerates, domestic political actors, international investors, and organisations initially supported labour participation but without ideological consensus over why or how. Intra-coalitional tensions emerged when trade unions aligned with political opposition to challenge crony capitalism’s patronage networks and ideologies linking the ruling party and domestic business, leading to greater reliance on state coercion to control labour.

Contrary to popular claims, civil society is not generally shrinking in Southeast Asia. It is transforming, resulting in important shifts in the influences that can be exerted through it. Political and ideological differences in Southeast Asia have sharpened as anti-democratic and anti-liberal social forces compete with democratic and liberal elements in civil society. These are neither contests between civil and uncivil society nor a tussle between civil society and state power. They are power struggles over relationships between civil society and the state. Explaining these struggles, the approach in this Element emphasises the historical and political economy foundations shaping conflicts, interests and coalitions that mobilise through civil society. Different ways that capitalism is organised, controlled, and developed are shown to matter for when, how and in what direction conflicts in civil society emerge and coalitions form. This argument is demonstrated through comparisons of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

In both the Philippines and Singapore, rapid capitalist development over the last decade combined with intensified inequalities in wealth and income. The conflict this generated resulted in significant – but very different – political responses by elites and popular forces in these countries. In the Philippines, public disenchantment with established elites and institutions fuelled support for populist representation through the authoritarian Rodrigo Duterte. In Singapore, populist sentiments were evident also, but ruling elites were more effective in containing conflict to reinforce prevailing institutions of representation. The explanation for these different outcomes resides not in the intrinsic quality of established institutions, but in the contrasting social foundations on which they rest: technocratic state capitalism in Singapore and private oligarchic capitalism in the Philippines.

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.