SE ASIA BACKGROUND

1. Government and
Political Regimes
in Southeast Asia

2. Countries and Cultures
of Southeast Asia
“Southeast Asia” – a term used occasionally in
academic texts in the 1920s but only entered
more general use after the Allied Forces
established the “South East Asia Command”
(SEAC) in December 1943 to coordinate their
campaign against the Japanese Imperial Army
in the region north of Australia, south of
China, and east of India.

3. - diverse collection of states, which vary widely
in history, demographics, culture, economy,
political systems, and the political challenges
they face.
- contrasts and differences vs commonalities

4. Geographical Divisions
• insular or maritime region
– Brunei
– Indonesia
– parts of Malaysia
– Philippines
– Timor-Leste
• mainland or
continental part
– Burma
– Cambodia
– Laos
– Malay Peninsula
– Vietnam

5. Malay-Polynesian cultural and linguistic
influences have shaped Maritime Southeast
Asia, and with the exception of the
predominantly Catholic Philippines, Islam is
the dominant religion of this part of the
region. Chinese-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman,
Shan, Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese) and Mon-
Khmer languages as well as the religious
influence of Buddhism historically shaped
mainland Southeast Asia.

6. Cultural differences
• subdivide both maritime and continental
Southeast Asia into highland and lowland
regions
• While the lowlands have historically been the
economic, political, and cultural centers, the
highlands have been home to most ethnic
minorities.

7. • precolonial kingdoms and empires - not
“modern” territorial states (in the Western,
Weberian sense)
• with unitary and centralized administrations,
and the state’s monopoly on the legitimate
use of force over a clearly demarcated
territory.
• Tributary
• “mandala states”

8. • Western imperial interest in the region grew steadily and
the colonial experience
• 16th century
– Iberian
– northwestern European
• Late 19th century
– United States—became a dominant influence on the political order
and living conditions for most of the region’s inhabitants.
• Today, colonial legacies remain essential to
understanding national politics in Southeast Asian
countries.

9. Southeast Asia in Colonial Times
• The whole region (except Siam) came under
Western colonial rule at some point between
1511, when the Portuguese conquered the
Sultanate of Malacca, and the 1920s
• In the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia,
the establishment of the colonial capital
Batavia (Jakarta) in 1619 to the subjection of
Aceh in 1912 took almost three centuries.

10. In the Philippines, Spanish colonial rule began in
1565 (except the south).
After taking over the colony from the Spanish, it
took the United States almost two decades to
consolidate control over its new dominion.

11. Notes: The year of independence given denotes the country’s accession to the United Nations.
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos gained full sovereignty from France in 1954, following the Geneva
Conference. The Dutch recognized Indonesian independence in 1949, but West-Papua remained
under colonial administration until 1967.

12. Colonial Rule Categories
• direct or indirect – the standard practice
– First proposed by Furnivall (1960), this analytical
differentiation is useful, but also misrepresents
the reality in the individual colonies, where
different institutional models often coexisted.
• All colonies underwent incremental change,
caused more by ad hoc adjustments to local
conditions than a sophisticated preexisting
strategy of institutional design.

13. • Direct rule - exception
– French Cochin China, i.e., parts of southern
Vietnam and eastern Cambodia as well as the
British Straits Settlements on the Malayan
Peninsula and “Ministerial Burma.”

14. The more common indirect rule, marked by
collaboration with and through traditional rulers,
was practiced in large parts of British Malaya,
Brunei, most of Cambodia, and Laos.
- the imperial powers co-opted traditional rulers
and indigenous elites into a dual administrative
and government structure. A Western resident or
district administrator at the regional level
cooperated with traditional rulers who
commanded power and legitimacy at the local
level .

15. Dutch Rule in Java
- example of indirect rule
Theory
- Javanese rulers governed their territories autonomously and were
merely influenced by the Dutch.
Truth
- the Dutch held ultimate control at the local level.
In a similar vein, French protectorates in Tonking,
Annam, Cambodia, and Laos remained under
nominal authority of the Vietnamese Emperor or
the Kings of Cambodia and Laos, respectively.
However, it was the French Governor General who
exercised actual control over these territories.

16. • Western colonialism reached its apex between
1870 and 1914
• Aspired to emulate Western models of
statehood
• In practice, the clash of European aspirations
and local conditions instead resulted in hybrid
models that combined traditional and
Western state institutions in both form and
function.

17. • The process of economic, political, cultural, and
demographic change that began in the
nineteenth century was accelerated by the
vertical and horizontal expansion of colonial rule
at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Military expansion, infrastructural development,
economic dominance, and the imposition of new
legal systems by the colonial powers supplanted
traditional governing arrangements and
weakened the authority of local rulers.

18. • colonial powers looked to politically loyal
minorities for support
– These included Chinese and Indians for the
administration of British Malaya and Burma,
Vietnamese in the French protectorates,
Ambonese in the Dutch colonial army, and Karen,
Chin, and Kachin in the British military in Burma.

19. Linking local markets to the international
capitalist system of the colonial powers often
resulted in segmented regional economic
conditions.
Together, this influx of new populations and the
expanding reach of political-economic centers
into the colonial peripheries changed the
ethnic composition in much of Southeast Asia
and created new lines of conflict.

20. • reform movements emerged all over the
region following the World War I.
• Goal: to create sovereign nation states based
on Western notions of statehood.

21. Reasons for the Emergence of
Movements
Trends identified:
• improved education opportunities for the
colonial population, the adoption of Western
administrative models, and the expansion of
travel opportunities and communication
channels had created an indigenous middle
class and intelligentsia.
• tensions between the local population and
Asiatic and European migrants had increased.

22. • the collapse of European and world markets in
the aftermath of World War I and the Great
Depression had strained most colonial
economies.
• many reformers were motivated by the spread of
anti-colonial ideologies, communism foremost
among these, and wanted to emulate the model
of the Japanese Meiji reforms or the Chinese
(1911) or Russian (1917) revolutions.

23. • In countries like Burma or Indonesia, the
struggle for independence pitted
representatives of the cultural majority,
striving for territorial nationalism based on
recognition of the political and territorial unity
created by colonizers, against members of
ethnic minorities, who favored ethnic
nationalism that would give them their own
state.

24. • Political turmoil of the Great War and economic
downturn of the Great Depression - ended
Western predominance
• Second World War - Japanese military victories in
Southeast Asia further energized national
movements: After Japanese troops conquered
Dutch, British, and American colonies in
Southeast Asia in 1942, the occupation force
fostered anti-Western sentiment by promoting
nationalist groups and promising them
independent statehood.

25. Japanese occupation continued - nationalist
leaders in Burma and the Philippines
declared independence in 1943 and the
Indonesian nationalists Sukarno and Hatta
proclaimed independence in August 1945,
mere days after the Japanese surrender. While
the Netherlands tried to restore its control
over Indonesia militarily, the Dutch
government recognized Indonesia’s
independence in 1949.

26. Decolonization in the Philippines and
British Malaya
The Philippine national movement had emerged
during the latter years of Spanish colonial rule.
1880s - intellectuals demanded the colony
should receive equal treatment.
“Katipunan” began a military resistance against
Spanish troops in 1896, but the group proved
politically and militarily unprepared to gain
independence.

27. Decolonization in the Philippines and
British Malaya
• control over the Philippines passed to the United
States.
• the new colonial administration managed to co-
opt the indigenous elite by granting them a
limited level of administrative autonomy .
• Commonwealth of the Philippines - the United
States to grant full independence after a 10-year
interim period.
• Philippines finally became an independent
republic in 1946.

28. Decolonization in the Philippines and
British Malaya
• British Malaya - gained independence through
negotiations –not revolution.
• The British practice of integrating the traditional elite
into the colonial administration meant that a Malayan
national movement only emerged relatively late
• the Chinese, Indians, and Malays of its segmented
population were not easily unified into an anti-British
position.
• struggle against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM),
supported mainly by the Chinese population, brought
the British colonizers and the Malay elite together
when the party began a guerilla war in 1946.

29. Decolonization in the Philippines and
British Malaya
“the Bargain” (1955), the British mediated a
social contract among the country’s three
main ethnic groups that granted Chinese and
Indians citizenship in exchange for accepting
the constitutionally guaranteed political
predominance of the Malay population.

30. Southeast Asia Since the End of
Western Colonialism
• Brunei - only became independent in 1984
• Indonesian troops occupied Timor-Leste after
the Portuguese left the island in 1975; Timor-
Leste only attained independence in 2002.
Violent struggle Bargaining Political pressure
Vietnam
Indonesia
Malaysia
Singapore
Philippines
Laos
Cambodia
Burma

31. • Source: CIA (2017) and Croissant et al. (2009)

32. • nation-building - the project of political and
intellectual elites (postcolonial) in the almost complete
absence of a common sense of nation and culture.
• “invention of traditions” - based on the historical
experiences, political mythology, and cultural symbols
of particular groups within the segmented societies
(the case for Thai, Malay, and Indonesian nationalism)
• elites often made use of colonial constructs of identity:
(Malay-ness derived from the British “Malay Reservation Act” of 1913. It
defined ethnic identity as the combination of a common descent or
race, the use of the Malay language, and the practice of Islam.)

33. The lack of integration within the emerging social
order and the latent tensions between political
units and national identities created the tinder
for several violent conflicts that flared up after
independence. Some of these secessionist
conflicts, as in Burma, the Southern Philippines,
Southern Thailand, and West Papua, persist until
today. Whether social conflict could quickly be
contained within institutional channels or
resulted in military violence had profound effects
on the process of state-building.

35. factors account for the ebb in violent
conflict since the 1980s:
1. the number of great power interventions in the
region and tensions among ASEAN countries
significantly decreased.
2. parts of Southeast Asia became centers of
economic growth, which helped reduce internal
socioeconomic tensions and strengthened
intraregional ties. Especially Singapore, but also
Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and more
recently Vietnam, have sustained high growth
rates (Table 1.3).

37. • not without political consequences
• mid-1980s - authoritarian regimes ruled the region
• 1990s - transitions from dictatorship to democracy
• Following the downfall of Philippine President
Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, authoritarian regimes in
Thailand (1992) and Indonesia (1998–1999) collapsed
under popular demands for democratization.
• In Cambodia (1993) and Timor-Leste (2002),
democracy was instituted under the aegis of the
United Nations

38. • Despite the optimism caused by these
developments in the 1990s, democracy could not
uphold its triumphant entry into the region.
• Democracy - failed in Cambodia in the late 1990s
• the erosion of democratic standards in the
Philippines
• the collapse of civilian rule in Thailand in 2006
and 2014, and
• the absence of additional cases of
democratization seem to indicate that the state
of democracy in Southeast Asia has stagnated.

39. Three Groups of
Political Regimes in SEA
1. “electoral authoritarianism”
– includes Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and
Myanmar.
– Formal democratic institutions coexist with
authoritarian political practices.
– elections are “widely viewed as primary route to
power”

40. Three Groups of
Political Regimes in SEA
governments systematically abuse their powers
and insulate their position against political
challengers by imposing disadvantages on
opposition parties, curtailing the development
of civil society and the media, and suppressing
political dissent.

41. Three Groups of
Political Regimes in SEA
Developments in Myanmar point in the opposite
direction. Following the deeply flawed elections
of 2010, the military junta seems to be
transitioning the regime towards more
competitive electoral authoritarianism. The
National League for Democracy, the party of
opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi, managed to
win 43 out of 46 seats in the by-elections held in
2012 and secured a landslide victory with a two-
thirds majority during the regular parliamentary
elections of 2015.

42. Three Groups of
Political Regimes in SEA
Yet, the 25% reservation quota for members of
the military in the legislature and the wide
military prerogatives that limit the civilian
government’s effective power to govern in
very significant ways demonstrate the
persistence of authoritarian structures in the
country.

43. Three Groups of
Political Regimes in SEA
2. “closed autocracies” - lack multiparty elections
– includes Brunei, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand since the
coup of May 2014.
• do not tolerate even limited political competition.
• Laos and Vietnam are among only five self-proclaimed
communist single party states that survived the end
of the Cold War in 1989/90 and the dissolution of the
Soviet Union in 1991.
• The authoritarian sultanate in Brunei is one of only
five countries that hold no national parliamentary
elections.

44. Three Groups of
Political Regimes in SEA
3. “defective democracies”
– includes the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-
Leste.
• The stability and quality of these defective
democracies differ. In the Philippines,
political violence is common, civilian control
over the military is limited, civil liberties are
not guaranteed, and the rule of law is weak.

45. In Thailand, the political controversies surrounding Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra culminated in a military
coup d’e´tat in 2006. After the return to civilian
democratic rule between 2008 and 2014, the military
staged another coup against the pro-Thaksin
government in May 2014, switching its regime type
from a defective democracy to military rule.
In Timor-Leste, the democratic process and the
effectiveness of democratic institutions are fragile, but
democratic elections and political rights have remained
relatively robust and functional.

46. • Even though clientelism, neo-patrimonialism, and
untamed politicking are rampant in Timorese
politics, democracy as an abstract ideal and
democratic turnover of power are accepted
among both the political elite as well as the wider
population.
• Indonesia remains the only country that has
somewhat stabilized its democratic system, even
though it has not yet become a consolidated
liberal democracy.