Politics and Government of Southeast Asia PDF

Politics and Government of Southeast Asia PRELIMINARIES U ’ N I ’ V E R ’ S The University of Batangas aims to: I ▪ T ▪ Y ▪ O ▪ F ▪ B ▪ A ▪ ▪ T ▪ A N G...

Politics and Government of Southeast Asia PRELIMINARIES U ’ N I ’ V E R ’ S The University of Batangas aims to: I ▪ T ▪ Y ▪ O ▪ F ▪ B ▪ A ▪ ▪ T ▪ A N G UB A Attributes S 1  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia C PRELIMINARIES O L L The College of Arts and Sciences aims to: E ▪ ’ G ▪ E ▪ ▪ ’ O F ▪ A R CAS T S Attributes A POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA N Course Description: D S Course Outcomes: C I E N C E S 2  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia M O INTRODUCTION D Learning about contemporary Southeast Asia can be a challenge because the region U is no longer a primary focus of international attention. Weeks go by without any major news stories about countries that only decades ago dominated the discussions L of government officials and ordinary citizens. Because of the end of the Cold War, as E well as events put in motion on September 11, 2001, international observers now focus their attention on other parts of the world. Moreover, the lingering trauma, 1 disillusionment, and cynicism of the Vietnam War have kept many journalists, political scientists, and policymakers from focusing on Southeast Asia. International news coverage of Southeast Asia remains dominated by the superficial and sensational. Images of sunny beaches, soccer-playing elephants, and “exotic” cuisine are standard fare for the reporters of the globalization era. When periodic spurts of interest in serious stories do manage to enter the global news cycle, the images are typically of tragedy, violence, and exploitation—of cyclone victims, bandanna clad kidnappers, or underage workers in sweatshops. Less frequent but more in-depth commentaries about Southeast Asia may center on the region’s transformation “from a battleground to a marketplace” or on problems of environmental degradation, but for the most part Southeast Asia’s story is persistently overshadowed by conflict in the Middle East, the movements of U.S. troops, and the global rise of China. Southeast Asia’s recent story is obviously more complex than sensational headlines and stereotypical images suggest. In fact, as the world turns its attention elsewhere, the 600 million people who live in the region are experiencing unprecedented socioeconomic change. New forms of wealth and poverty are emerging across the region. Wrenching conflicts over rights, identity, social justice, and power have become the everyday experience of many Southeast Asians. Although it no longer draws the international attention it once did, perhaps no region in the world is more dynamic. A new era in international relations has arisen in the past several decades with lasting repercussions for Southeast Asia. Political, economic, and social forces of unprecedented scope 3  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia are currently transforming the entire region. Southeast Asia in the New International Era analyzes contemporary politics in the context of these new international and domestic realities from the perspectives of both the Southeast Asians and the international community. This chapter introduces the region, describes changes accompanying the new international era, and explains how standard regime labels fall short in characterizing the richness and complexity of Southeast Asian politics. Eleven country chapters follow that evaluate each country in terms of basic political history, major institutions and social groups, state society relations and democracy, economy and development, and foreign relations. A small research guide is included at the end of each country chapter to assist readers in search of Internet based bibliographies, socioeconomic data, research sites, and blogs on Southeast Asian countries. INFLUENCES AND EXPERIENCES Southeast Asia, a region of remarkable diversity, consists of eleven countries with differing histories, cultural traditions, resource bases, and political economic systems. Except for geographic proximity and a somewhat similar tropical environment and ecology, few characteristics link all these nations into a coherent whole. Nevertheless, before the international era arrived, a broad shape to a Southeast Asian political economy had developed from a few generalized influences, experiences, and social patterns described in this chapter. These influences and experiences include religious penetration by Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity; colonialism and introduction of political ideas from the West; the rise of nationalism associated with the struggle for independence; Japanese occupation; Cold War trauma; and regional economic transition. Shared social patterns, also outlined below, include a strong sense of the village as the primary unit of traditional identity; agricultural economies overtaken by urban based manufacturing and service economies; and patron client systems that influence sociopolitical interaction. An important force shaping Southeast Asia from ancient to modern times has been the arrival and expansion of nonnative religions across the region. By supplanting local belief systems—or more often blending with them—exogenous religious influences evolved into today’s seemingly endogenous value systems, which contribute to the region’s diverse cultural milieu. Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism, arriving from South Asian sources, brought to the region Brahmanical notions of devaraja (godking), classical literature, such as the Ramayana and the Jataka tales, and karmic notions of rightful authority. Throughout the region, these cultural imports profoundly shaped the concept of power and the royal structures that wielded it. Mahayana Buddhism, brought from India via China, also influenced political ideals in the region, particularly in Vietnam, where social order was believed to stem from hierarchal (Confucian) relations, Buddhist cosmology, and (Taoist) naturalism. Centuries of overseas Chinese migration also spread the influence of Chinese religion and folk beliefs throughout the region, especially in urban areas where migrant communities established themselves. A Islam arrived from merchants and traders primarily from South Asia subsequent to Hinduism and Buddhism. It did not enjoy a wide presence in Southeast Asia until the fifteenth century, about the time Europeans first began to arrive with Christian traditions. Throughout insular Southeast Asia, Islam spread from island to island and from coastal ports to interior settlements. Christianity did not spread deep roots in the region, except for in the predominantly Catholic Philippines and East Timor, as well as among some enduring communities in Vietnam and 4  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia Indonesia. Over the centuries of religious interaction, the eclectic, religio-royal traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism have sometimes clashed with the universalist, law-based religions of Islam and Christianity. However, tolerance and syncretism rather than conflict characterize most of Southeast Asia’s history of religious practice. Taken together, the diverse practices and beliefs of these religions, and their interaction, generate an array of cultural claims on how to organize societies politically and economically across the region. Adding yet more complexity to this milieu of beliefs and practices was the gradual penetration of Western ideas of modernity, including “civilization,” nationalism, capitalism, republicanism, democracy, and communism. Most of these foreign notions and ideologies emerged in the region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that is, during the latest phase of nearly five centuries of European influence in the region. Many of the problems of political and economic development facing Southeast Asian leaders today can be traced to colonialism. The grand strategic games of imperial competition and colonial rule brought the formation of internationally recognized boundaries, which replaced the region’s nonintegrated dynastic principalities that only loosely governed rural populations and upland minority groups. Foreign attempts to integrate these disparate populations often proved difficult. The imperialists eventually guaranteed new boundaries and imposed a Western sense of geographic and political order on the region. By the late nineteenth century, national boundaries had been demarcated and the entire area of Southeast Asia, except Thailand, was in European hands. Over time, a money economy was introduced and resource extraction created largescale industries that required skilled and unskilled laborers. Because the rural populations of Southeast Asia found industrial labor antithetical to traditional values, the colonialists imported Chinese and Indians to work in factories, tin mines, and rubber plantations. The Chinese and Indian communities were often employed as a buffer between Europeans and local populations. In many cases, laws prevented the immigrants from owning land and pushed them into the commercial sector. Urban life in colonial Southeast Asia was, in many respects, more Chinese and Indian than local or European. A discernible immigrant communalism evolved in tandem with urbanization. Hindu, Confucian, and European influences affected trade, urban architecture, art, and societal tastes and norms. From the nineteenth century forward, overseas communities (the Chinese in particular) have enjoyed economic power in Southeast Asia disproportionate to their numbers. Among other changes, European colonists were responsible for the growth of the region’s first economic infrastructure of ports, railways, and roads. Although they staffed their bureaucracies with local elites, offering education to the most gifted, the colonists failed to develop institutions of accountable governance. Serving European rather than local interests, imperial administrators exploited natural resources for export and introduced new industries and economies related to mercantilist trade in tin, rubber, tapioca, opium, spices, tea, and other valued commodities. As they extracted from mines and expanded plantations, European governors wholly neglected local socioeconomic development. Over time the cruelty, exploitation, and injustice of colonial rule bred popular resentment and put into motion a new force in the region: nationalism. The rise of anti-imperial nationalism was the most consequential product of colonialism in Southeast Asia. Although deliberate movements against European control punctuated the entire colonial history of Southeast Asia, it was the ideological battles of the twentieth century that fed the transformative nationalism that came to define the region’s future. 5  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia A traumatic experience under Japanese occupation during World War II further fueled aspirations for self-rule and independence across the region. Following Japan’s surrender in 1945 to Allied forces, Europe’s postwar leaders disregarded attempts by Southeast Asian leaders to declare formal independence. Eager for resources to rebuild their own war-torn economies, the colonists audaciously returned to extend control over their previously held territories: the British in Burma and Malaya; the French in Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos); the Dutch in Indonesia; and the Portuguese in East Timor. To legitimize their ambitions, European administrators received international recognition for their actions through postwar treaties that excluded Southeast Asians from negotiations. In 1946, the Philippines, vacated by its American occupiers of forty-seven years, joined Thailand as one of the two independent Southeast Asian countries in the early postwar period. Resolve for independence hardened. In Burma, Indonesia, and Vietnam, nationalism became an especially potent and unifying force that led to fierce struggles for self-determination. In Malaysia and Singapore, the struggle for merdeka (independence) was less violent but every bit as formative in cultivating a new sense of nationalist purpose. Across the region, experiences with colonialism had differed, but the nationalist rhetoric for genuine self-governance emerged as a political lingua franca among anticolonial revolutionaries. Thailand, having escaped direct colonial rule, developed its own sense of nationhood stemming from its proud record of independence. Hoping to bind the various peoples within the borders of its constitutional monarchy, modernizing Thai elites cultivated the nationalist creed “Nation, Religion, King.” Relentless anti-imperial political activity and painfully violent episodes of engagement with colonial forces gradually produced two significant consequences for the region: the overdue withdrawal of the Europeans and the rise of a handful of charismatic, larger-than-life independence leaders, including Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Aung San in Burma, Tungku Abdul Rahman in Malaysia, and Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia. But even as decolonization and courageous independence leaders offered fresh hopes under sovereign statehood, a new dimension of geopolitical struggle, the Cold War, entered the scene and overwhelmed the region. For Southeast Asians, the ironically named Cold War thoroughly destabilized the region with occupation, warfare, and even genocide. From 1945 to 1989, the effects of superpower politics led to the deaths of more than 10 million soldiers and civilians. Countless bombs and bullets from conventional warfare and unimaginable atrocities caused by zealous ideologues and murderous despots, not to mention the appalling use of chemical defoliants, produced long- term tragedy for many Southeast Asians even as their countries finally achieved true independence. The political and economic chaos of the Cold War thus not only delayed the independence of Southeast Asian states but retarded their early development by politically dividing societies, peoples, and communities. The Cold War was fought in Southeast Asia along three interrelated dimensions: internal ideological struggle, superpower rivalry, and interstate conflict. Leftist movements embracing communist visions for state control existed in every major Southeast Asian country during this period. Competing ideological visions pitted communism against not only democratic capitalism (which scarcely existed in the region) but also right leaning militaries, traditional monarchists, and neo-imperial foreign influences. U.S.–U.S.S.R. superpower rivalry, expressed most clearly in the Vietnam War, was also affected after 1960 by the Sino-Soviet split over global communist 6  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia supremacy. Ever in search of international patrons, Southeast Asian communists exploited this split to suit their largely nationalist purposes. The meddling of three external Cold War powers in the region exacerbated existing conflicts and created new tensions. The most tragic conflict resulted in the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge, who, before the illegal U.S. bombing of Cambodia, had demonstrated insufficient capacity to seize Cambodian state power. China, which had supported Vietnamese revolutionaries against both the French and the Americans, turned on its former communist ally in the mid1970s by supporting the Khmer Rouge in an attempt to outmaneuver the Soviets, who maintained support for Vietnam. China’s communist leaders count among the very few diplomatic supporters of Cambodia’s Pol Pot clique, which is responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians during its three-year reign of terror. Superpower rivalry insidiously politicized ethnic relations throughout Southeast Asia as well. During the Cold War, both communist and noncommunist governments engaged in shocking anti- Chinese violence and brutality over suspicions that ethnic Chinese harbored political loyalties to Beijing. Other ethnic minorities became the mercenaries and puppets of external powers and local opportunists, especially in the mountainous upland areas of Vietnam, Laos, and mainland Southeast Asia. In the so-called Golden Triangle—the lawless tri-border region where Burma, Thailand, and Laos meet the Mekong River and its tributaries—powerless upland minorities were recruited and coerced to do the bidding of warlords, revolutionaries, arms dealers, opium traffickers, government militaries, and CIA operatives. Forever questioned about their allegiances, and treated as pawns in the strategic calculations of more powerful actors, Southeast Asia’s minorities suffered greatly during the Cold War. The Cold War also produced new alliances and interstate conflicts between Southeast Asian states. Nonalignment, attempted by some, became an impossible position to maintain over time. Thailand and the Philippines, both noncommunist states, joined the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) under the tutelage of the United States. In the 1960s and ’70s, both countries provided troops and territory to the United States for staging actions in Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, and the reduction of U.S. commitment to the region, noncommunist states relied more heavily on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organization originally created in 1967 as a bulwark against growing communism in the region. Indonesia, led initially by the charismatic Sukarno, originally claimed Cold War neutrality only to invite an internal battle between left and right forces within the country. Sukarno’s failed balancing act led to the rise of the anticommunist Suharto regime, which took power after a murky 1965 coup and countercoup. Ten years later, General Suharto’s Indonesian troops forcibly occupied East Timor in a bloody campaign without U.S. objections. The invasion occurred only nine days after a left leaning organization had declared East Timor independent from Portugal. Thus, Indonesia, formerly neutral and nonaligned, turned to the U.S. as its Cold War patron and contributed to American objectives in the region. Cambodia, which once claimed Cold War neutrality under King Sihanouk, found itself under the influence of all three major powers during the Cold War. In the wake of its secret bombing campaign, the U.S. supported Lon Nol’s coup over Sihanouk in 1971 only to provoke the Chinese backed Khmer Rouge and fuel their rise to power in 1975. Later, in January 1979, Soviet backed Vietnam forcibly occupied Cambodia, putting it under Moscow’s ultimate control. Six weeks after Vietnamese troops took control of Phnom Penh and pushed Pol Pot and his followers to 7  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia jungle redoubts near the Thai border, China launched a brutal attack against Vietnam. Disastrously, both sides lost thousands of troops in the monthlong conflict, in which China seized territory only to retreat after a fierce response from Vietnam’s battletested military. China’s leaders claimed victory, but Vietnamese troops stayed in Cambodia throughout the 1980s until the United Nations brokered their withdrawal. During the 1980s, the final decade of the Cold War, the U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia included only a few bases in the Philippines. Focused on new reform efforts at home, China and the Soviet Union also began to disengage from the region. As the soldiers, operatives, and advisors of the superpowers departed, a rather unexpected but transformative force became established in the region: Japanese businessmen. Despite the fact that Japan had attacked and occupied all of Southeast Asia in World War II and that lingering resentment and fear persisted, Japan’s meteoric postwar economic success brought Southeast Asia into its economic orbit. Singapore was among the first to benefit. As Japan’s export-oriented economy grew, so too did its need for raw materials, petroleum, and other imports. Tiny Singapore did not produce many of these resources, but it benefited from increasing oceangoing traffic to and from Japan because of the geographical positions of its port facilities. Singapore joined South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as models of third world economic success, known collectively as the “Asian economic dragons.” In the mid1980s, Japan’s growing investments in Southeast Asia expanded rapidly as a result of the appreciating value of the Japanese yen, which made exporting from Japan expensive. Escaping the high yen, Japanese industrialists moved production to a number of Southeast Asian countries where cheap labor and favorable currency exchange rates made the region a prime export platform. All of this was timed with policy shifts in many Southeast Asian countries designed to emulate the successful export-oriented industrialization strategies of the Asian dragons and their move away from import substitution industrialization. Southeast Asian governments aggressively courted ties with Japan, causing trade volume to expand. Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and to a lesser extent the Philippines each moved toward a development model of activist state guidance of private sector–driven export growth. Malaysia’s prime minister appropriately dubbed the new development approach the “Look East Policy.” As economies grew and middle classes began to coalesce, new interest in democracy and political reform began to surface across the region. In 1986, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, a U.S. Cold War ally who had suspended democracy and manipulated law to extend his own rule, was ousted in a massive popular movement known as “People Power.” Thailand also moved closer to democracy by electing its first civilian prime minister since a failed period of democracy in the mid1970s. Even economically autarkic Burma faced new prodemocracy forces. In 1988, demonstrators forced the country’s ruling military junta to schedule elections for a representative parliament. After officially changing the country’s name in English to Myanmar in 1989, the elections were held in 1990 but the losing generals did not honor the results. However, with the democratic genie now out of the bottle, popular aspirations for representative government in Burma have persisted since, often provoking brutal suppression. Elsewhere in the region, authoritarian leaders repressed growing aspirations for democracy even as the Cold War showed signs of thawing in Europe. On the communist left, Vietnamese leaders opened the economy but not its political system. On the nationalistic right, longstanding governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore viewed greater democracy as a threat to 8  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia budding economic success. Following the Cold War, public pressure for political reform would emerge as a new force that Southeast Asian governments would constantly face. SHARED SOCIAL PATTERNS In addition to the religious influences, colonial history, nationalist movements, and Cold War experiences that have shaped this otherwise diverse region, some observable social patterns also add definition to a Southeast Asian political economy. These generalized patterns are not universal, but they are widely shared across the region and contain elements of both “continuity and change”—a phrase commonly used among Southeast Asian specialists who are forever attempting to characterize the enduring and dynamic patterns of socioeconomic behavior in the region. Southeast Asian nations are characterized by an agricultural base that traditionally has been the heart of everyday life. Historically, the agricultural village served as the major unit of identity for the rural population, acting as its educational, religious, cultural, political, economic, and social center. Although urban growth expanded as trade increased over time— accompanied by Indian, Chinese, Arab, and European influences on the royal and colonial centers of power—the basic economic unit for most Southeast Asians, until recent decades, has been the peasant-style family-operated farm. Generally, the family farm was part of a village economy characterized by subsistence production, with most of the farm products being consumed by the family or within the village. Experiences differed, but feudal-type arrangements across the region fed the development of landed elites, aristocrats, and royals who exploited the labor of rural populations for imperial projects—a pattern repeated later by European colonists (absent any local cultural foundations that historically ameliorated popular resentment of royal power). Some areas of Southeast Asia today remain characterized by traditional village arrangements and subsistence agriculture, but the socioeconomic picture has grown increasingly complex. The arrival of green revolution technologies, commercial agribusiness, and rising expectations of educational opportunity and material gain defines agrarian change today. “Farmers” are replacing “peasants” in the economic sense of these terms, and life inside most villages is now fully interdependent with life outside the village due to a host of transformative factors: rural- tour-ban migration, expanding nonfarm work, globalized labor markets, remittance economies, new communication technologies, and rising consumerism. Over the past fifty years, the agricultural sector’s economic importance has continued to decline relative to industry and services, although employment in the sector remains considerable. In spite of these changes, the hierarchical structure traditional to the village still finds expression in the region’s political life. Southeast Asian societies, generally speaking, remain fundamentally organized into networks of superior-subordinate (patron-client) ties. These networks form the basis of political structures and affect the allocation of resources and values. In their positive expressions, these relations form “moral economies” where uneven but reciprocal relations bring mutual benefit to participants in a context of cultural appropriateness and meaning. Where there are marked inequalities in wealth, status, and control, and where resources are insufficient, those with limited access can seek alliances with individuals at a higher socioeconomic level or access to state resources. The relationship is reciprocal in the 9  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia sense that the patron expects support, protection, labor, or some other service in return for dispensing benefits to the subordinate. In their pejorative interpretation, patron-client systems prop up authoritarian forms of government with vast networks designed for patrimony. The strongest networks are capable of manipulating rivals or depoliticizing opponents through cooptation and participation. Such relational asymmetry can also foster exploitation, and risks endless power struggles between elites who vie for each other’s client networks. Representative forms of democratic government in Southeast Asia thus both benefit and suffer from these patron-client systems. Such networks can link those who wield state power with ordinary citizens and, potentially, link voting constituencies with elected officials. Left unchecked, however, patron-client partiality can threaten the legitimacy of democracy through favoritism, nepotism, corruption, and abuse of official power. Throughout Southeast Asia, rising demands by individuals and groups for increased governmental accountability, transparency, and recognition of civil and political rights clash with the deep-seated impulses of power elites to defend traditional forms of patronage. Citing cultural appropriateness, Southeast Asian elites have at times fashioned regimes that are, in the name of social order, structurally designed to institutionalize state patronage. Socioeconomically, a common pattern throughout Southeast Asia is the presence of an influential overseas Chinese business community. In most Southeast Asian urban centers, a deeply rooted overseas Chinese community discernibly, and disproportionally, influences commercial life. The experiences of such communities differ from country to country, and degrees of assimilation, hybridization, and communalization differ markedly; nevertheless, this presence influenced the course of events domestically and internationally. During the Cold War, tensions between China and Taiwan, and communists and republicans, often reproduced themselves in cities such as Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok. Communist movements in the region often had a real or perceived Chinese tilt to them—a reality often proving fatal to overseas Chinese when anticommunist nationalists turned to violence, as they did in Indonesia in 1965. Having established themselves economically over time, Southeast Asia’s Chinese communities were well positioned when trade and business expanded in the 1980s as a result of export-oriented policies across the region and market openness in the People’s Republic of China. Around this time, overseas Chinese networks also linked Southeast Asian countries to the flourishing economies of Hong Kong and Taiwan. By the time the new international era dawned in the 1990s, many Southeast Asian Chinese were now visibly expressing their Chinese roots and identities; what was once considered a social liability emerged as a new economic asset. Moreover, powerful alliances between political leaders and wealthy overseas Chinese increasingly began to shape the political economies of the region. The influences, experiences, and social patterns lending shape to the Southeast Asian experience described above compose only a partial set of factors able to explain the various events and trends associated with the politics of Southeast Asian countries. The country chapters that follow illustrate this fact by employing much greater sensitivity to the particular conditions, events, individuals, groups, and institutions that make up political life. Nevertheless, in addition to these shared social patterns, and the common forces of colonialism, nationalism, and the Cold War discussed above, profound changes to the international system that followed the Cold War’s end now influence the political economy of the region in new and unprecedented ways. 10  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ERA An extraordinary sweep of international change occurred following the end of the Cold War in 1989. The extent of these changes, which occurred rapidly, stunned the world and irrevocably recast international relations. The major catalyst responsible for causing a break with the past was Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policies in the 1980s put in motion the end of the bipolar conflict that had structured world relations since World War Gorbachev, who took the helm of the U.S.S.R. in 1985, acted on the assumption that the economically stagnant Soviet Union could flourish only if it pursued perestroika (comprehensive economic restructuring) and glasnost (opening of society). His reforms included a foreign policy of imperial disengagement, which U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush welcomed. Populations across Western and Eastern Europe celebrated the Soviet leader’s reforms. By the late 1980s, a new global optimism emanated from events being driven by the Kremlin’s new agenda. In Asia, Gorbachev’s policies meant the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan, demilitarizing the SinoRussian border, ceasing aid to Vietnam and leftist insurgencies in the region, and abandoning military bases at Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang in Vietnam. Vietnam responded to Gorbachev’s changes by seeking to restructure its own economy. Pursing a new strategy, doi moi (renovation), Vietnam’s communist leadership began to permit free market activity and foreign investment. These moves were in line with changes already sweeping communist China. China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, had previously broken from the failed development policies of his predecessor, Mao Zedong, and began to allow market forces to operate within communist China. During the 1980s, Deng encouraged international trade and foreign investment in China by establishing ties with Asian businesses and Western multinationals. In the new international era overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia become major conduits for business between China, Asia, and the world. The People’s Republic of China, a once feared Cold War power in Southeast Asia, enjoyed a new economic role as a regional economic partner and a formidable export competitor. In the new international era, the bipolar world of communists and noncommunist rapidly transformed itself into a more multipolar world where states, regions, international organizations, and nonstate actors exhibit new forms of power and influence. Although the United States stood alone as the dominant global power in the 1990s, it soon learned that relative power is far from absolute power. Asia’s own rising economic influence and Europe’s deepening integration with the former communist states of the old Soviet bloc created new poles of economic and political power in a globalizing world. The new era also became defined by increasingly assertive international bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. These organizations established and enforced the rules of globalization, often coercing struggling governments to implement their policies of market fundamentalism in the process. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also proliferated across the world in the 1990s, promoting humanitarian, development, and rights-oriented causes. As for the United Nations, its increasingly visible blue helmeted peacekeepers became symbols of a new activist (but often impotent) international community. Added to all of these new forces were powerful stateless 11  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia actors tied to nefarious networks of terrorists, drug lords, and human traffickers that operated even as Southeast Asian economies benefited from the post-Cold War peace dividend. The region’s boom economy from the mid1980s to the mid-1990s resulted in a large part from increased trade Although Japan had led Southeast Asia in its economic success in the closing and investment between East and Southeast Asia, and domestic entrepreneurship. Joined ventures and foreign financed enterprises expanded quickly and deliberately too textiles, footwear, electronics, automobile parts, cosmetics, agribusiness, petroleum refining, and other diverse industries and manufacturers. Local entrepreneurs, cut deals with each other and with investors arriving daily from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. Double-digit economic growth and trade balance surpluses soon characterized Southeast Asian “tiger economies,” as they came to be known. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia drew the greatest attention and fueled the region’s rapid economic growth. The passing of Cold War tensions unleashed a phase of rapid economic growth. The passing of Cold War tensions unleashed a phase of rapid economic liberalization and forward-looking optimism. Encouraged by Western governments, the IMF, and globalization advocates, Southeast Asian governments liberalized their financial markets, putting an end to many restrictions (and safeguards) that formerly regulated the flow of capital into and out of their countries. As a result, joint ventures and foreign financed enterprises expanded quickly and deliberately into textiles, footwear, electronics, automobile parts, cosmetics, agribusiness, petroleum refining, and other diverse industries and manufactures. Portfolio investment poured into the region from day traders and short sellers in New York, London, and Tokyo. Double-digit economic growth and trade balance surpluses soon characterized the Southeast Asian “tiger economies,” as they came to be known. Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and to a lesser extent the Philippines and Vietnam, all participated in the rapid economic growth unleashed by the passing of Cold War tensions and rapid liberalization of trade and financial markets. The phenomenal economic growth rates the tigers experienced—as high as 10 percent per year during this period—fundamentally changed the Southeast Asian landscape. The most obvious change was the increase in per capita gross national product (GNP). Per capita GNP in Thailand in 1977, for example, was $300; by 1997 it had climbed to $2,970. Similar growth in per capita GNP occurred in the other countries over the same period: Malaysia, $660 to $3,531; Indonesia, $150 to $692; the Philippines, $310 to $1,049. Singapore’s rose even more dramatically, from $2,120 to $24,664, hence its “dragon” status. Corresponding figures for reforming but populous Vietnam and for economically stagnant Burma, Cambodia, and Laos indicated less improvement, by contrast. By 1997, per capita GNP in these countries still averaged less than $500. By the mid1990s, so confident were Southeast Asians in their path to success that regional leaders began to engage the world in a debate that pitted “Asian values” against “Western values.” The chief spokesmen in this debate were politicians from Singapore and Malaysia. Their contention was that because Asian culture valued social order over political freedom, it allowed economic markets to thrive even as societies remained orderly. Centuries of pent-up resentment against Western superiority unleashed itself in transpacific rhetorical punches. The West’s high crime rates, divorce rates, declining educational standards, and sedentary lifestyles of TV watching were cited repeatedly as evidence of American inferiority. “You Americans have this mantra about your high standard of living,” argued a senior Asian diplomat, “but if standard of living means not being afraid to go outside after dark, or not worrying about what filth your 12  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia children will see on all those TV channels, then our Asian societies have the higher standard.” The message was unambiguous: The world would be a better place if countries began to learn from Asia rather than the West. Journalists writing from New York and London countered by listing human rights injustices and corruption tied to Asian governments. The Asian values debate symbolized the sweeping changes that had come to the region in the new international era. Political ideology, interstate war, and superpower meddling were no longer central concerns for the modern states of Southeast Asia. Instead, the key issues became economics, development, integrated markets, and stable political development. Southeast Asian societies also became more concerned with the negative effects of rapid growth, such as deforestation, pollution, traffic, corruption, and (contrary to the rhetoric of some Asian politicians) increased drug use, criminal activity, and alienation among Southeast Asian youth. Still, in the bigger picture, building walls around their countries and isolating their economies. The exception was Burma, which, after reneging on promised political reform and refusing to recognize the 1990 election results unfavorable to the military government, persisted in its strategy of socialist economic autarky. Burma’s dreadful standard of living, however, only reinforced the dominant view in the region that interaction, not isolation, was necessary for a country to flourish. Indeed, every Southeast Asian country that tested the open market proposition experienced unprecedented economic dynamism. The results of openness included a phenomenal rise in the people’s standard of living, but success was accompanied by widening gaps between the rich and poor and unprecedented policy challenges in infrastructure, public health, and education. The new international era also saw Southeast Asian societies transformed by new forms of communication. Television, mobile phones, Internet cafés, satellite communications, and the entire digital revolution changed the way information was spread from person to person in this new era. No longer could governments fully control information flow among the populace. In the new era, the challenge for governments became balancing the effects of technological change, foreign investment, and international trade against political demands for greater openness and governmental transparency. Another challenge that has emerged is, alas, the threat and reality of financial crisis—something that would affect all the booming countries of Southeast Asia. A classic lesson of international political economy is that economic interdependence creates greater sensitivity and vulnerability to global markets. The globalization of Southeast Asian economies had made the region’s countries increasingly vulnerable to external forces and the volatility of international markets. These vulnerabilities proved to be real when the region suffered financial disaster in 1997. In the early 1990s, China’s government, already advantaged by the country’s seemingly endless supply of cheap labor, devalued its currency, making its exports even more competitive than those coming from Southeast Asia. With their currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar, most Southeast Asian countries’ exports consequently became more expensive than China’s in international markets. China subsequently began to attract foreign investment more rapidly than Southeast Asia, and exports in the tiger economies began to level off after a decade of breakneck expansion. 13  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia By the mid1990s, the current account surpluses enjoyed by Southeast Asian tiger economies turned into current account deficits. With more buying power for imports, foreign products and luxury goods entered local markets, causing imbalances to grow. Many reminded unworried by the imbalances and moved investment into new sectors. Wirth export opportunities slowing, Southeast Asians increasingly engaged in real estate speculation and invested in lavis projects. Local stock markets continued their climb. Capital inflows and easy credit also expanded in the mid1990s, made possible by earlier deregulation of financial and capital markets. Because local currencies were pegged to the US dollar, local borrowers often denominated their loans in US dollars to take advantage of their lower interest rates. Over a few short years, debt obligations mounted across the Southeast Asian business community. Slowing revenues from the declining exports and an oversupply of new housing and high-rise office space caused the real estate bubble to burst. Debtors then began to default. Stress on financial institutions grew and the financial mismanagement of banks and investment firms began to make headlines. Corruption in both the public and private sectors drew greater attention, and government scandals invited fierce public criticism, especially in Thailand and the Philippines, where democratization had expanded a free media. In Indonesia, Suharto’s thirty-year regime, built on performance legitimization, faced unprecedented signs of weakness. By 1997, international investor confidence in Southeast Asia’s tigers began to slip. Global currency traders, recognizing the shakiness of the region’s economies, bet against the Southeast Asian currencies, undermining their worth even more. Government attempts to support the currency pegs proved futile. The result was a cascade of overnight currency devaluations from country to country, which in turn precipitated inflation, unemployment, and a massive outflow of capital from all the tiger economies. The sudden devaluation of local currencies, combined with rapid economic contraction, left local Southeast Asian investors saddled with massive loads of debt. Many investors faced the impossible task of meeting inflated repayment obligations in the face of declining revenues. Southeast Asia found itself in a full-fledged financial crisis. Leaders in Southeast Asia responded ineffectively to the crisis, allowing the downturn to spread throughout all of Asia, eventually hurting markets across the globe. Southeast Asia’s politicians seemed incapable of making the difficult decisions necessary to resolve the crisis. Instead, they hunkered down, blamed Westerners, and continued to protect cronies and undermine public- spirited technocrats. The public, more educated and savvier than ever, knew better and realized that whatever the sins of international investors, their own government and business leaders also shared the blame. The region’s shellshocked governments eventually turned to the IMF, the world’s lender of last resort, to help them finance their way out of the crisis. The IMF saw itself as the economic doctor of the new international era, ready and able to administer the treatments countries needed for financial recovery. It provided multibillion-dollar loans, but only on the strict conditions that recipient governments would raise interest rates, increase tax rates, adopt strict budget austerity, and totally restructure their ailing financial sectors. It was the wrong medicine. The IMF’s ill-conceived rescue packages proved damaging to already suffering economies. The cash liquidity the IMF provided to the stressed tiger economies largely went to pay off foreign creditors and financial institutions; it did little to spur economic growth. Government budget austerity measures exacerbated existing economic contraction, and local investment 14  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia plummeted. Higher interest rates and tax burdens further inhibited local investment when it was most desperately needed. Rather than stimulate their economies with public spending, governments were bound by IMF conditionality only to starve their economies further. Social and political disruption followed. Rampant unemployment, rapid inflation, and economic hardship turned into antigovernment protests and disorder. As a result, these once famed emerging markets and their proud political leaders saw governments change in the wake of the crisis and IMF rescue packages. Only Singapore, with its more advanced and resilient economy, and Malaysia, whose leaders had opted to reject IMF money in favor of capital controls, survived the 1997 Asian financial crisis intact. The 1997 Asian economic crisis shook Southeast Asia’s confidence in open trade and financial globalization. Asian leaders stopped talking about Asian values. In fact, to a significant degree, the crisis set Southeast Asian countries on disparate courses that continue to the present day. Recovery patterns have differed markedly from one case to the next. Indonesia, which suffered the most severe setback, sunk into deep political crisis, ending thirty years of rule under General Suharto. The collapse of his regime led not only to greater democracy in Indonesia but also to the birth of East Timor, which had been under Indonesian occupation since 1975. Thailand, after cycling through rotations of parliamentary coalitions, eventually elected a new party (the Thais Love Thais party) whose billionaire leader turned to populist policies and ultimately ignited a political crisis that continues to this day. Philippine voters turned to an action movie hero to manage recovery, only to throw him out of office for corruption a few years later in a reprise of People Power. Vietnam slowed its pace of reform and increased surveillance of political opponents. Then, in the wake of the Asian economic crisis and the political changes it spawned, the new international era grew even more complex as a result of terrorist attacks half a world away. Southeast Asia’s newly installed leaders faced a new, more complicated foreign policy matrix following the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Already worried about their sluggish economies, Southeast Asian officials now had to concern themselves with U.S. President George W. Bush’s declarations of an international “axis of evil” that tied rogue states to stateless terrorist groups. His announcement that the countries of the world were either “with us or against us” put unwanted pressure on the region’s governments. Predictions by the Bush administration that Southeast Asia would become the “second front in the War on Terror” caused even wider reverberations of concern and anxiety in the region. Aside from the Philippines, which had long battled Muslim separatists in the country’s south, none of the ASEAN governments enthusiastically embraced the Bush administration’s view of a post–September 11 world. Thailand was a reluctant partner, and Singapore turned to the United States only pragmatically, especially after Islamist groups bombed hotels and embassies in neighboring Indonesia. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq turned many of Southeast Asia’s large Muslim populations against the United States. Over time, events (or more precisely nonevents) proved American predictions that Southeast Asia would become the second front of international terrorism erroneous. Notwithstanding the locally driven terrorist activities of longstanding irredentist Muslim organizations in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines, internationally sponsored terrorism in the region has been sporadic. Since 9/11, five dramatic bombings in Indonesia at the hands of internationally sponsored terrorists led to over two hundred deaths and hundreds of injuries. While no doubt a matter for local and international concern, the frequency and intensity of terrorism in the region is on par with that experienced 15  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia by Europe. Compared to terrorist violence hotspots in the Middle East and South Asia, Southeast Asia remained relatively calm. As government officials adjusted to a post9/11 world and pursued policy packages with hopes of returning to the high growth rates of the previous decade, another global concern caught their attention: rising China. Southeast Asian countries continued to be outperformed economically by China throughout the first decade of the 2000s. China had become Asia’s new economic power. Because of its strict currency regime and regulated foreign capital markets, China’s economic competitiveness was less affected by the Asian economic crisis. With respect to its relations with Southeast Asia, China’s direct and indirect influence on the region came through new free trade deals, tariff reductions, business connections, and even increased cultural influence. By the time Southeast Asians watched Beijing’s impressive pageantry and execution of the 2008 Olympiad, ASEAN’s combined economies ranked as China’s fourth largest trading partner. By 2015, ASEAN’s combined economies had surpassed both Japan and South Korea in terms of total trade volume with China. Since recovering from the 1997 economic crisis, only modest economic growth has returned to their tiger economies. Although incomes have recovered and general progress in overall development is visible, aggregate comparisons of basic indicators now illustrate the vast economic disparities that characterize the region. In terms of economic power, performance, and poverty, Southeast Asia’s economic dynamism has created a region of remarkable disparity. Tables 1.1 and 1.2 highlight select economic development indicators for the region. Table 1.1 Country Comparisons: Select Economic Figures Sources: World Bank, UNDP, ADB, OECD, and CIA World Fact Book. 16  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia When adjusted for purchasing power parity, microstates Singapore ($82,763) and Brunei ($75,700) lead the region in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (2014 figures). Malaysia ($24,715) follows at a distant third, with Thailand ($14,600) and Indonesia ($10,585) further behind. The Philippines ($6,916), Vietnam ($5,629), and Laos ($5,162) come next followed by those in the lowest tiers in terms of her per capita production: Myanmar ($4,800), Cambodia ($3,242), and Timor-Leste ($2,277). Even with the most optimistic forecasts, it will take many decades for Southeast Asia’s poorest to reach the average living standards that the region’s richest countries enjoy today. Table1.2 Country Comparisons: Select Development Figures Sources: UNDP, World Bank, Transparency International, and Freedom House. By combining 2015 World Bank income classifications with broader development indicators that consider poverty rates, education, health, access to water, and levels of corruption, the countries of Southeast Asia can be divided into four general groups: High income/high development Brunei, Singapore Upper middle income/medium development Malaysia, Thailand Low middle income/medium development Indonesia, Philippines. Vietnam Low income/low development Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Timor-Leste In total, the dynamic forces of the new international era have bolstered and expanded the economic power of Southeast Asia and its tremendous economic diversity. ASEAN’s combined GDP of $2.3 trillion is already larger than India’s and is predicted to overtake Japan’s by 2028. Yet, generalizing the whole region’s progress in economic production and human development is increasingly challenging (and increasingly meaningless). In spite of the integration of the region’s disparate economies through initiatives such as the ASEAN Free Trade Area and the 17  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia Greater Mekong Subregion, the development trajectories of Southeast Asian countries seem to grow more disparate with each passing year. A similar trend of divergent paths characterizes the political regimes of the region. COMPARING POLITICAL REGIMES Because of the great diversity among Southeast Asian states, as well as the many influences and changes they experience over time, categorizing Southeast Asian political regimes is difficult and must be complemented by analyzing the unique attributes of each country’s experience. Why this is the case is demonstrated below, and in the following chapters. If one is primarily interested in identifying the regime types of Southeast Asia’s countries, a standard approach would be to use accepted regime classifications and to analyze which countries fit those definitions. By employing Larry Diamond’s six-fold typology and the widely used Freedom House ratings (free, partly free, and not free), such an analysis is possible and fairly straightforward. Diamond’s typology distinguishes two types of democratic regimes (liberal and electoral); three types of authoritarian regimes (competitive, hegemonic electoral, and politically closed); and ambiguous regimes, a residual category for systems too difficult to classify due to changing conditions or ongoing instability. With respect to countries that label their own systems “democratic,” Diamond encourages making a distinction between regimes in transition that aspire to liberal democracy from those that are pseudo democracies, that is, systems where elections exist but institutional arrangements are deliberately designed to inhibit party competition, pluralism, or civil liberties. From the perspective of Diamond’s typology, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia all fall within the general category of democracy. Each of these systems, however, is an electoral democracy and falls short of meeting the criteria to be identified as an established liberal democracy (where political and civil liberties exist and endure, and where changing sets of elected leaders are chosen by and accountable to an electorate through fair elections that are repeatedly held). Indonesia, one of the electoral democracies, is the only Southeast Asian country rated “free” by Freedom House in 2012. However, it is still a young and fairly untested democracy. Indonesia’s political system remains deficient in some aspects of electoral fairness and durability, but, having ended Suharto’s long, hegemonic rule, the country appears to be on track to becoming a liberal democracy, more so perhaps than either Thailand or the Philippines as of 2012. Only a few years ago, Thailand had a pluralistic system that was approaching the definition of liberal democracy. In fact, Thailand was classified by Freedom House as “free” for seven consecutive years (1998–2005). Once a democratic beacon in the region, Thailand has since suffered from multiple electoral driven political crises, a coup d’état, constitutional legitimacy challenges, politicized judicial interventions, and episodic clashes between civilian demonstrators and government security forces. In flux from one year to the next, Thailand saw its freedom rating swing from “free” to “partly free” to “not free,” and back to “partly free” from 2005 to 2008. Ongoing political crisis has kept its “partly free” designation in place and pushed the country into the netherworld of regime classification. Thailand, which saw its first 18  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia democratic constitution appear in 1932, currently lies somewhere between an electoral democracy and an ambiguous regime. The Philippines—not in political crisis but accurately classified as “partly free” by Freedom House in 2012—is also closer to an electoral democracy than a liberal democracy. This fact is discouraging given the citizens’ aspirations for liberal democratic rule and the country’s long experience under democratic constitutions, which dates to the 1940s. Democratic institutions in the Philippines are semi dysfunctional in that they often serve as a veneer for oligarchic rule. Corruption, lawlessness, intimidation, and violence permeate politics and competitive elections for public office. The Philippines’ electoral democracy serves elite interests over those of the broader public. Under Diamond’s typology, Malaysia is best classified as a competitive authoritarian regime, where a significant parliamentary opposition exists but a dominant party coalition is able to retain governmental power for decades at a time. The country is often cited as an example of an illiberal democracy. Recent developments indicate that the authoritarian features of the country’s system are weakening and party dominance is under stress. The Malaysian political regime—under the weight of more intense parliamentary contestation and changing public attitudes favorable to liberal democracy—may eventually improve its current regime label. In contrast is Singapore, where the ruling People’s Action Party has perpetually inhibited the development of a significant parliamentary opposition by restricting oppositional speech, harassing government opponents, and manipulating a politicized judiciary. Singapore is a pseudo democracy or, more precisely, a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime. Somewhat similarly, the Cambodian People’s Party, under the tight grip of strongman Hun Sen, has used extra electoral mechanisms to intimidate opposition parties, politicians, and activists to ensure ongoing rule. Cambodia is also classified as a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime within Diamond’s typology. Due to the lack of competitive elections and serious restrictions of political and civil liberties, Vietnam and Laos share classification as politically closed authoritarian regimes. Myanmar, which released opposition figure Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and allowed her and other opposition candidates to run in competitive elections, remains politically closed within the Diamond system, although it is no longer static. As in Vietnam and Laos, political pluralism does not genuinely exist in Myanmar, and new constitutional arrangements retain the military’s role as the dominant political actor. Tiny Brunei, an absolute monarchy, also meets the definition of a politically closed authoritarian regime. Timor-Leste, an infant state still dependent on international support and succor, is best classified as an ambiguous regime. Although the practice of parliamentary politics evolves and it may aspire to liberal democracy, the country’s most pressing problems are political disorder and weak state capacity. Democracy enjoys general legitimacy among Timorese but electoral instability, political violence, and growing regionalism on the island undermine state development and the rule of law. With more time and experience, Timor-Leste is likely to see its regime classification change to electoral democracy. Regime classification is useful for general comparisons, but it does not adequately portray Southeast Asian nations over time. Without supplementary analysis, regime labels are simply insensitive to the particular political structures, events, and behaviors that animate the 19  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia political life of particular countries. The characteristics of political repression in Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Brunei, for example, are different in each country, yet all are classified as politically closed authoritarian regimes. Similarly, the historical political experiences and trajectories of Singapore and Cambodia could not be farther from each other in almost every way, yet both share typological classification as hegemonic electoral authoritarian regimes. Indeed, the difference in experiences among countries that share a regime label can be greater than countries with different regime labels. The difficulties and limitations of categorizing the Southeast Asian political systems emphasize the importance of viewing them as highly diverse and worthy of analysis from the vantage point of their unique attributes. Only more specific examination and comparative analysis can get observers beyond stereotypical images, highly generalized economic development classifications, or regime labels that obfuscate more than clarify. Building an appreciation for the political economic realities that characterize the experiences of Southeast Asian countries requires case-by-case examination. The country chapters of this book are designed with this objective in mind and thus offer a first step toward such an exploration. The chapters begin with Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—the countries of Peninsular Southeast Asia (sometimes referred to as “Mainland Southeast Asia”). The book then completes the regional survey with chapters on the Philippines, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei—the countries of Insular Southeast Asia (sometimes referred to as “Maritime Southeast Asia”). END OF MODULE 1 Learning Materials: 1. PowerPoint Presentation 2. Educational Video Clips Expected Output: Quiz About the Lesson Time Allotment: Three (3) Hours or One (1) Week REFERENCES: Dayle, Robert M. (2017). Southeast Asia in the New International Era Seventh Edition. 2465 Central Avenue Boulder, CO 80301. Westview Press. Dayle, Robert M. (2013). Southeast Asia in the New International Era Sixth Edition. 2465 Central Avenue Boulder, CO 80301. Westview Press. 20  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia M O D Thailand has become an exemplary case study of how third-world countries can U advance economically while attempting politically to achieve stable democracy. The consequences of episodic political instability in Thailand have not undermined the L capacity of its 69.5 million people to generate improvements in quality of life and E maintain relatively peaceful conditions. Compared with their regional neighbors, the Thais have escaped brutal occupation, destructive revolutions, tyrannical dictatorship, and the setbacks of protracted war. Since 1932, when they first adopted constitutional monarchy, the principal project of the Thai people has been to develop a modern economy in tandem with a workable democracy. LEARNING OUTCOMES 1. Trace the political and governmental background of Thailand. 2. Enumerate and discuss the institutions and social groups of Thailand. 3. Identify the state-society relations and democracy of Thailand. 4. Trace the economy development of Thailand. 5. Understand Thailand’s foreign relations. Today, Thailand ranks among Southeast Asia’s “tiger economies” and is considered an economic success story with wide global recognition. This success stems from a history of astute adaptation of those aspects of modernization and development that were appropriate to traditional Thai ways, especially adaptations that ensured the maintenance of two key cultural institutions: Buddhism and monarchism. Throughout their history, as citizens of the only Southeast Asian nation never to have been colonized, the Thais never had a foreign culture forcibly thrust upon them. Instead, they have searched, adapted, and struggled to create their own path to economic and political development amidst the dynamic influences of a global society. Thailand’s progress toward political liberalization and democracy is all the more striking given that for centuries the government was autocratic in form and spirit. Power was the privilege of a small elite as well as of absolute monarchs who were not accountable to the people and whose authority was enhanced by an aura of divinity attached to the highest levels of office. Those who ruled were believed to possess superior ability and moral excellence. Common citizens exhibited little interest in affairs beyond their own villages. Vestiges of elite rule remain embedded in Thai political culture, but rising expectations and new norms of democratic practice reflect a deepening preference for political participation, accountable government, and recognition of human rights. The Sukhothai Kingdom (c. 1238–1350) was the first Thai controlled kingdom in history. In this formerly Khmer ruled area, the Thais absorbed the cultures of the Khmers, Mons, Hindus, and Chinese and began the assimilation process that is important even today for understanding modern Thai society. Buddhism and Brahmanism flourished among the Thais during the Sukhothai era. Characterized in Thai textbooks as an idyllic golden age, its nurturing kings boasted “fish in the water; rice in the fields,” built exquisite temples to support thousands of 21  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia monks, and maintained a sizeable elephantry to protect the kingdom. The Sukhothai Kingdom expanded and retracted, depending on the fortunes of military campaigns, until the long Ayutthaya period (1350–1767) began. The Thais adapted much from the Hindu influenced Khmers, who dominated the region from the ninth through the fourteenth century. In particular, Thai kings were transformed from paternalistic guardians into autocratic god kings with the attributes of a Brahmanic deity. The perception of the kings as devaraja (godkings), remains even today as an important element of the veneration shown the king by his subjects. Notwithstanding this aura of godliness, Thai kings did not enjoy absolute power but were limited by court factionalism, competition for power, and an assumption of kingly virtue. During the Ayutthaya period, important institutions were established that still influence Thai society. A feudal like sakdina (field power) system was introduced that provided structure and hierarchy to the social and political relationships of the Thais. As dictated by officials in its walled capital city along the Chaophraya River, virtually all persons in the Ayutthaya kingdom were given sakdina rankings according to the amount of land (or number of people) they controlled. The ranking determined the salary of officials, the deference due them, and their labor obligations to the state. Although the quantifiable character of the sakdina system had ended by 1932, the informal hierarchical nature of the system has endured as an element of Thai society. The destruction of Ayutthaya’s capital by invading Burmese in 1767 was a traumatic event in Thai history. The political social system was torn asunder. Despite the near total destruction of the kingdom, the Thais displayed remarkable recuperative powers and in a short time resumed life under a new centralized government in Bangkok led by the Chakri Dynasty. Some of the Chakri kings were reform oriented—systematizing administrative structures, freeing slaves, bringing in highly educated technocrats, and ensuring the continued independence of the nation from Western colonialists. From 1851 through 1910, two legendary Chakri monarchs, King Mongkut and his son King Chulalongkorn, advanced significant reforms to modernize Siam—as it was then known to the world. The present king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, is the ninth of this dynasty. 22  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia Even after the 1932 revolt, which overthrew the absolute monarchy and established a constitutional monarchy, politics remained in the hands of a small elite group, now mostly civilian bureaucrats and military generals with little competition or balance from forces outside the bureaucratic arena. The military, which emerged as the country’s dominant institution, has controlled political power in Thailand for about fifty of the past seventy-five years. From 1932 to 1973, Thailand’s political system was a classic bureaucratic polity. The basis of political power was highly personalized and subject to informal political manipulations and loyalties. It was also very unstable. A cycle of military control followed by weak parliamentary government, constitutional crisis, and coup d’état emerged and began to characterize Thai politics over time. Thailand entered the modern period at the end of World War II in considerably better shape than most of its Southeast Asian neighbors. Having acquiesced to Japanese occupation (and thereby having suffered little war damage) and not having fought a debilitating struggle for independence, Thailand was relatively secure and stable. Initially after the war, Thailand seemed headed toward a constitutional system of parliamentary democracy, but the army soon took power. The most influential of the early postwar leaders was Marshal Sarit Thanarat, the army commander in chief who became prime minister in 1957, declared martial law, and ruled dictatorially for six years. He was the first prime minister to make economic development the cornerstone of his rule. His successor, Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, followed in Sarit’s footsteps by keeping the military in firm control of every aspect of government and by pursuing economic development. During both administrations, the legislature was impotent, political parties were for the most part forbidden to form, and corruption was rampant. These leaders also cooperated with the United States during the Vietnam War, providing logistical support, Thai troops, naval bases, and airfields that were used throughout the Cold War campaign against communists in the region. In response to the low level of political accountability and the high level of corruption, the “Great Tragedy” of October 14, 1973, occurred when the citizenry rose against Thanom and his government. Upon his orders, the military massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters at Democracy Monument in Bangkok, a bloody event that resonates in Thai society to this day. Thanom and his ruling partners were subsequently forced into exile at the behest of King Bhumibol. The king then followed their expulsion by appointing the first civilian government since the immediate postwar period. Thailand’s next experience with democracy thus began as a result of courageous student protests with the king’s support. The 1973 revolt raised the expectations of many Thais that fundamental economic reforms would be carried out. The succeeding three-year period, however, coincided with a worldwide recession and with inflation that temporarily ended the country’s improving economic growth. Hence, the hopes of many Thais that democracy would improve their lives were dashed by an economic situation over which the new government had little control. Aside from establishing a minimum wage and some new funds for rural development, little was accomplished during this period The civilian government was also faced with an international and regional situation over which it had little control. The change to communist governments in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975 and the rise of insurgency throughout the Thai countryside shocked many Thais, who felt that only an authoritarian, military dominated government could deal effectively with these threats. Because Thailand’s traditional security ally, the United States, was withdrawing from 23  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, the civilian government renewed ties with China in hopes of counterbalancing a rising Soviet backed Vietnam. This destabilizing state of flux added to the uncertainty many Thais felt. Thai society was polarized between left and right, driven by the effects of Cold War politics in the region. Democratic civilian rule lasted only until October 1976, when the military again overthrew the government, proclaimed martial law, and abrogated the constitution. Sparking the takeover was another massacre of students, at Thammasat University in Bangkok, in which scores of unarmed students were brutally executed in a crackdown jointly conducted by military and rightwing paramilitary forces. Predictably, the new military leaders adopted a strong anticommunist agenda. Many of their targets were leftist students and the civilian politicians of the previous government. Fearful of the military, thousands fled into the countryside, joining peasant insurgents. The leftist coalition of intellectual urbanites and rural revolutionaries, however, never materialized into a massive insurgency capable of usurping state power, as similar coalitions had in neighboring countries. The ongoing presence of the covert Communist Party of Thailand and its associated insurgency, however, allowed for successive Thai governments, generals, and bureaucrats to justify strict national security policies and harass opponents in the name of anticommunism—a practice that continued until the end of the Cold War and beyond. The military remained the dominant government institution until 1988. Under General Prem Tinsulanond’s prime ministership, the country began to liberalize politically into a type of semi democracy. Prem included civilian technocrats in his cabinet and relied on the freely elected legislature for support of his programs. Despite two coup attempts against him, he remained in power from 1980 until 1988, when he voluntarily stepped down. Chatichai Choonhavan was the first elected member of Parliament (MP) to become prime minister since the 1973–1976 period. Chatichai assumed his new position following the 1988 elections, when his political party, Chart Thai (Thai Nation), received the largest plurality of votes and Prem refused to accept another term as prime minister. The smooth transition from Prem to Chatichai reflected new optimism about Thailand’s evolution toward democracy. Chatichai had served as minister under previous administrations and held a reputation as a big business playboy. However, as executive, he initiated a number of highly popular policies, such as raising the salaries of government officials as well as the minimum wage for laborers, banning the indiscriminate cutting of trees, and standing CHATICHAI CHOONHAVAN up to the United States on trade and other economic issues. Chatichai’s idea to transform Southeast Asia from a “battleground into a marketplace” was especially popular with the business community, which sought to open economic ties with Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. His policies were supported by his coalition majority as well as by military leaders, at least initially. Nevertheless, the problems of patronclientism and corruption continued to be important parts of the political process. The phenomenal economic growth of the late 1980s, fueled by East Asian investors, had brought large amounts of capital 24  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia into the Thai economy. These new resources became the targets of public officials who sought them for private gain. Thai citizens became increasingly skeptical about Chatichai’s professed concern for the majority, which had not gained from the economy’s high growth rates. Many Thais viewed his cabinet as primarily concerned with big business interests. On February 23, 1991, hopes that Thailand was beginning to institutionalize democratic civilian processes were dashed when a military coup d’état ousted Chatichai’s government and restored military power. The military claimed that its primary motivation for the coup was the pervasive corruption of the sitting politicians. Thai newspapers, unencumbered by censorship, had been reporting for months on the rampant corruption among top-level cabinet members. Huge telecommunications projects, massive road and elevated commuter railway ventures, cable television contracts, and new oil refineries became well-known examples of multibillion-dollar deals arranged and managed (or mismanaged) by Chatichai government ministers whose primary aim was to perpetuate their own power base and personal wealth. Coup leaders announced these politicians had become “unusually wealthy.” Coup leaders also cited the rise of a “parliamentary dictatorship” as another reason for the takeover, complaining in particular about rampant vote buying. A more direct cause for the coup, however, was a pattern of slights carried out by Chatichai and perceived by military leaders as threats to their traditional prerogatives. Immediately after seizing power, military leaders abrogated the constitution, dismissed the elected government, and set up the temporary National Peace Keeping Council (NPKC). The NPKC, led by Army Commander in Chief Suchinda Kraprayoon, gave itself the powers of martial law and became the arbiter of public policy. Initially, the people greeted the 1991 coup with acquiescence, though not enthusiasm, and there were no public protests or demonstrations. The NPKC moved quickly to establish an interim constitution and to name Anand Panyarachun, a distinguished civilian, as prime minister. His appointment was a sign that the military believed the populace would not tolerate direct military rule for long. Anand’s appointment was universally praised, reflecting his impeccable status and reputation as a diplomat, administrator, and businessman. Coup leaders emphasized their commitment to policy continuity in economic matters. Political parties were retained, and a national legislative assembly was established to approve a new constitution and arrange for an election. For the overwhelming majority of Thais, the coup changed nothing except the names of the kingdom’s top government leaders. New parliamentary elections were scheduled for March 22, 1992. During the interim, the junta gave Anand wide leeway in running the government but also asserted its views forcefully regarding the promulgation of the new constitution. The final document returned Thailand’s legislative body to its former system, in which the appointed upper house of Parliament was given equal power with the elected lower house in matters of policymaking. Anand’s administration also set forth policy measures supporting privatization, trade liberalization, deregulation of the economy, a value-added tax, infrastructure projects, and constraints on labor unions. For the March 1992 polls, military backed parties, which were close to General Suchinda, formed a joint campaign scheme to minimize competition and elect promilitary candidates. On 25  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia the other side were parties opposed to continued military dominance in Thai politics. If elected, they pledged to amend the constitution so it reduced the role of the military and bureaucracy. A chief leader of this latter group of parties was Bangkok governor Chamlong Srimuang, who had given up his gubernatorial position to lead a new party, Palang Dharma (Moral Force). Chamlong, a former military officer, enjoyed a reputation for being incorruptible, which was unique in the Thai political establishment. He campaigned wearing an indigo farmer’s shirt and cultivated an austere image as a faithful member of Santi Asoke, a new Buddhist sect that rejected superstitious practices and demanded a strict lifestyle of celibacy, vegetarianism, and material sacrifice. The campaigns reflected many of the problems that have surrounded Thai elections to the present day: party jumping, vote buying, and ineffective monitoring of candidate behavior. The runup to the election included poll watch volunteers who attempted to monitor individual candidates’ campaign expenses, which were limited to $40,000. Radio, television, newspapers, and banners featured slogans designed to discourage people from vote buying and “selling their freedom.” Although vote buying occurred throughout the kingdom, poll watchers reported only a few cases of outright fraud, such as ballot box stuffing. The March 1992 elections resulted in a narrow victory for parties aligned with the NPKC. Ironically, the coalition government the election produced included many “unusually wealthy” politicians of the ousted Chatichai government. Embarrassingly, the first nominee for prime minister this coalition proposed had his name withdrawn after the U.S. State Department confirmed it had denied him a visa because of alleged drug trafficking in the politician’s business base in northern Thailand, in the vicinity of the infamous Golden Triangle. The promilitary parties then nominated coup leader General Suchinda, who had previously promised that he would never seek the prime ministership. In what many Thais referred to as “the second coup,” General Suchinda accepted the nomination and, in the process, reversed the steps Thailand had taken toward democracy. To express dismay, some 50,000 protesters demonstrated against the new government following the announcement of Suchinda’s appointment. The anti-Suchinda demonstrations grew larger in the days that followed, bringing well over 100,000 Thais onto Bangkok streets in May 1992. Led by Chamlong and opposition leaders, mobile phone carrying urbanites, members of the middle class, and white-collar professionals demanded that Suchinda step down. Many began a hunger strike around Democracy Monument, site of the 1973 mass demonstrations. Although the Cold War in Southeast Asia had ended years before, Suchinda anachronistically claimed that the demonstrators were pawns of “communist elements” that sought to end Thailand’s constitutional monarchy. Tension built, and the size and intensity of the protests grew. In an episode eerily reminiscent of 1973 and 1976, Thai soldiers filed into Bangkok upon Suchinda’s orders and began indiscriminately shooting into the defenseless crowds. Suchinda’s troops also took control of the country’s media and communications networks, but demonstrators with cameras and handheld video equipment recorded the violence and broadcast the images outside of Bangkok via fax machines and videotape. The unprecedented and effective method of spreading uncensored information undermined the military’s standard 26  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia practice of propagandizing coup events to manipulate Thai and global opinion. Although the full count is not known, hundreds of people died from soldier fired weapons in the crackdown of “Black May 1992,” a tragic product of Suchinda’s hubris and miscalculations. The public’s reaction to the massacre was one of overwhelming sadness and anger. Suchinda had not recognized that public expectations of civilian rule and participatory democracy had become the new norm. Many Thais were profoundly embarrassed by The night a protest turned deadly the violent turn of events. In the new international (Bangkok, “Black May 1992”) era, when many countries were moving inexorably toward more open and liberal regimes, Suchinda had taken Thailand in the other direction by precipitating another military coup, manipulating postcoup elections to stay in power, and authorizing a Tiananmen-style crackdown on prodemocracy protesters. After the violence, Prime Minister Suchinda was subsequently driven from office, his legacy a disastrous forty-eight-day reign. His welcome removal came after a globally televised rebuke by King Bhumibol, who made both Suchinda and Chamlong kneel before him as he sat regally on his throne. Suchinda was reprimanded for bringing death and shame to the country. Chamlong was scolded for forcing headstrong protests that put civilians at risk. The king succeeded in ending the crisis by dismissing Suchinda, agreeing to amnesty for all persons involved in the demonstrations, and supporting constitutional amendments designed to reduce the military’s dominance in politics. As in 1973, the king’s intervention during a political crisis was praised by an adoring public as timely, consequential, and historic. In a second extraordinary royal intervention related to the May 1992 crisis, the king approved the return of Anand Panyarachun as prime minister. The king’s decision occurred just before the Parliament overwhelmingly passed constitutional amendments requiring prime ministers to be elected members of Parliament and reducing the role of the military dominated Senate. Anand’s appointment was met enthusiastically by most Thais, who recalled the international praise he earned for running an honest and efficient government during the previous interim period. Anand once again acted with admirable decisiveness as an interim leader. With the king’s appointment legitimizing his authority, he demoted top military leaders responsible for the violence, removed important state enterprises from military control, and scheduled a new round of parliamentary elections, announcing he would remain in office for only four months, a promise he kept. The September 1992 elections featured 2,417 contenders from sixteen parties contesting 360 parliamentary seats. Few of the candidates were newcomers, although many jumped parties. Some parties changed their names and distanced themselves from the tainted “devil” parties affiliated with the military. The prodemocracy “angel” parties won the poll and formed a government under the leadership of a civilian politician as leader of the country. Chuan Leekpai, the soft-spoken, moderate leader of the Democrat Party from Trang Province in the south, assumed the position of prime minister. From his offices in Government House, the 27  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia country’s executive center, he led a 207seat coalition in the 360member House of Representatives. Chuan’s immediate challenge was to find a balance between democratic rule and sensitivity to the traditional prerogatives of the military. He also faced the challenge of keeping together his fragile administration, which included leaders of the coalition parties who themselves coveted the prime ministership. Opposition leaders pointed to Chuan’s lack of charisma and leadership and his lack of policy initiatives and new programs to address the growing list of problems facing the country: traffic congestion, pollution, environmental degradation, child labor, HIV/AIDS, centralized decision-making, water shortages, and ubiquitous corruption. In May 1995, his parliamentary coalition fell apart due to a land reform scandal in the south (a Democrat stronghold) and because of conflicting demands among the ruling coalition of political parties. New elections were called. In the July 1995 election, about 40 million people voted. Predictably, campaign issues were vague because political parties in Thailand at the time did not articulate clear platforms or represent particular ideologies. Party hopping ensued, with competitive candidates being offered up to 5 million baht ($200,000 in 1995) to switch parties. Voters were offered 100 to 300 baht ($4 to $12) if they promised to vote for a particular candidate. The major personality in the campaign was Banharn Silpaarcha, leader of the Chart Thai party. Party members noted Banharn’s vast experience: He was a billionaire business executive with six terms in Parliament and a former minister of agriculture, industry, interior, finance, and transportation. Because he represented a rural constituency, he was viewed as someone who understood the average Thai. Banharn’s campaign opponents charged that he was thoroughly corrupt, citing his nickname, “Khun AeThiAm” (Mr. ATM), given for his impressive reputation for managing huge networks of patronage. Banharn’s cabinet was highly factionalized and his party coalition was unstable. He was scorned by Bangkok voters and intellectual elites who viewed him as a country bumpkin. Banharn’s administration turned out to be a disaster characterized by corruption, a lack of direction, personal dishonesty (Banharn was discovered to have plagiarized his law thesis), and economic malaise. Though he was forced to call new elections in November 1996, little changed as a result. Retired general Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, leader of the New Aspiration Party, won control, after benefiting from many members of Parliament who had defected from Chart Thai’s waning star. Like Banharn, Chavalit was unpopular among Bangkok’s elites and the leading newspapers, although he had achieved popularity in rural areas for his support of developmental projects in the country’s northeast provinces, or Isan region. Even so, his tenure was also short-lived. As prime minister, Chavalit faced two tremendous challenges: the passage of a new constitution, from a process that began prior to his tenure, and the 1997 Asian economic crisis, which began in Thailand during his watch. A major political crisis was averted when the Parliament overwhelmingly passed a new constitution on September 27, 1997. This approval represented the culmination of a long but inclusive process that had brought many segments of Thai society into drafting the constitution. Many observers considered it to be the most democratic constitution in Thai history, the “People’s Constitution.” Chavalit’s support for its passage added legitimacy to his leadership and bought him some time amidst crisis conditions owing to the collapse of the Thai baht in June 1997. As a result of the crisis, rising 28  Politics and Government of Southeast Asia unemployment, inflation, IMF conditionality, and a failed financial sector, Chavalit’s status became increasingly tenuous. Large demonstrations opposing his leadership began. The protests centered on Chavalit’s inability to resolve the economic crisis. Under his watch, the baht had lost half its value against the dollar, the stock market had fallen precipitously, and the IMF was asked to bail out the country with a loan of some $17 billion. Most Thais blamed the political system for the economic crisis, believing that politicians were more concerned about perpetuating their own power and profiting business associates than the public good. It was thus no surprise when the embattled Chavalit announced his resignation as prime minister, an office he had held for just eleven months. The mass protest that forced his resignation was indicative of the extra parliamentary change agents of Thai politics:antigovernment demonstrations, coup d’état, royal intervention, judicial rulings, or some combination of these methods. Chuan Leekpai, of the opposition Democrat Party, managed to forge a coalition majority and was appointed interim prime minister until new elections could be held in 1998 under new constitutional provisions. Chuan instituted reform measures to rescue the economy and mandated transparency and accountability, but the crisis continued to hurt the bulk of the population financially. IMF guidance and austerity demands proved unable to resuscitate the economy. A new election in 2001 led to the rise of Dr. Thaksin Shinawatra, a telecommunications mogul and founder of the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) political party. A former minister and estranged ally of Chamlong Srimuang, Thaksin was among Thailand’s richest businessmen, having made his fortune selling computers to Thai government agencies and creating extensive holdings in the CHUAN LEEKPAI communications sector with mobile phones, pagers, broadcast television, and satellite communications. In a few short years, Thaksin’s business empire spanned most of Southeast Asia’s rapidly growing markets and his name appeared on Fortune’s list of the world’s richest people. However, Thaksin was not a member of the traditional Bangkok bureaucratic or intellectual elite. His early career was in criminal justice, a field that had brought him to the United States for master’s and doctoral degrees and then back to Thailand, where he worked in the Metropolitan Police Department. Of Sino Thai origin and a proud son of silk traders in provincial Chiang Mai, Thaksin was ranked among the country’s unrefined nouveaux riche in the eyes of Bangkok’s urbane aristocrats. Thaksin’s business savvy and meteoric success, combined with his former political associations THAKSIN SHINAWATRA with Chamlong’s Moral Force Party, seemed to combine the two qualities many common Thai voters believed were needed in an emancipator able to free them from the economic crisis and dreaded IMF loan conditions: competence and trust. What voters did not fully appreciate at