ABSTRACT
The widespread protest activity across Indonesia in 1998, which led to the abrupt fall of President Suharto and his corrupt New Order regime, revealed the fragile nature of authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia. Across the border in Malaysia, calls for free and fair elections by the Pakatan Rakyat are symptomatic of a region with growing demands for democracy. But are protests across Southeast Asia representative of broader societal interests there? It is still unclear whether democracy will eventually flourish in a region largely dominated by electoral and competitive authoritarian political systems, which rely on patronage, strong state institutions, control of the media, weak party identification and electoral manipulation. Since the turn of the century, there has been a renewed interest in perceptions of
democracy and the durability of authoritarianism (see Brownlee, 2007; Diamond,
2002; Levitsky &Way, 2010; 2012; Mainwaring, 2012; Schedler, 2006). To date, the literature on the extent of democracy and authoritarianism in Southeast Asia looks specifically at the performance of political institutions and their failure to match up to expectations of liberal democracy. In 2002, Larry Diamond observed that we are far from consensus about what constitutes a democracy. Indeed, many regimes in Southeast Asia, according to Diamond, are pseudodemocratic “in that the existence of formally democratic political institutions, such as multiparty electoral competition, masks (often, in part, to legitimate) the reality of authoritarian competition” (Diamond, 2002: 24). These types of regimes are sometimes referred to as hybrid regimes, electoral authoritarian regimes or competitive authoritarian regimes (see Levitsky & Way, 2012; Schedler, 2006). In this article, I argue that we need to look further afield to see what else could be
underpinning the durability of authoritarianism. I suggest we look more closely at understandings and expectations of democracy. If over 90% of the population believe that their political system is a democracy (as is the case in Singapore and Vietnam), then there are very different understandings between East and West about (i) what democracy actually means and (ii) the expectations of democracy. Therefore, the focus of this article is on everyday perceptions of democracy among Southeast Asians. Three key questions underpin this research: First, why do some citizens perceive their regime as a democracy, while others do not? Second, why do some citizens rate their regime as a well-functioning democracy, while others do not? And third, why do some citizens perceive their regime as progressing towards democracy, while others do not? The answers to these questions will shed light on explaining the durability of authoritarianism in Southeast Asia and public opinion towards democracy. In looking at these questions, it is argued that authoritarianism in Southeast Asia is
not only sustained by strong state institutions (see Geddes, 1999; Levitsky & Way, 2012) but also by public opinion, which reflects different understandings and expectations of democracy. For example, we find a very high proportion of Singaporeans report that their political system is a democracy, despite the authoritarian characteristics of Singaporean institutions and the long-held dominance of the People’s Action Party (PAP). The case of Singapore is not uncommon in Southeast Asia. Indeed, we find a similar pattern in other single-party-dominated systems in the region including Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam. Does this mean that citizens in Southeast Asia who perceive their system to be a democracy, despite the lower standards of electoral competition, have different expectations of democracy? To explore this further, this article is organized in two sections: the first section compares the extent of democracy and authoritarianism in Southeast Asia in terms of regime performance. The second section explores the experience of democracy at the individual level by drawing on findings from the Asian Barometer (Wave 2).
