Renewed authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: undermining democracy through neoliberal reform more

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 50, No. 3, December 2009 ISSN 1360-7456, pp271–276 Renewed authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: Undermining democracy through neoliberal reform apv_1400 271..276 Simon Springer Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570. Email: simonspringer@gmail.com Abstract: In the wake of the Asian Crisis, cases studies from Southeast Asia often reinforced the perception that neoliberalism is thriving in authoritarian states. Processes of intensive neoliberalisation in the region have now been ongoing for over a decade, yet attempts at democratic consolidation have been tenuous, fragile and incomplete at best, calling into question the supposed nexus between democracy and neoliberal reform. Accordingly, there is need for a moment of pause, to take stock of the neoliberalising process in the region, and importantly, to reframe the question and reflect on how and why authoritarianism is continuing to thrive in the neoliberalising Southeast Asian state. Keywords: authoritarianism, democracy, neoliberalism, Southeast Asia, violence With the adoption of even greater neoliberal reforms in the wake of the Asian Crisis, for the most part, this has simply meant that public monopoly became private monopoly while the authoritarian structure of the Southeast Asian state has remained intact (Robison et al., 2005), albeit under new governments in many instances, notably Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. This constitutes a paradox, as neoliberal ideology presents itself as being in favour of democracy (Harvey, 2005). It would seem that in such transitional contexts, foreign pressures seeking the privatisation of national economies and the opening of borders to trade and capital movements, are far more prevalent than is support for democratisation, accountability and the economic assistance needed to ease the impacts of poverty on populations (Tetreault, 2003). Some analysts of the neoliberal persuasion might attribute lamentations over this predicament as a condition of critical scholars proverbially wanting their cake and eating it too. In the neoliberal view, free markets constitute the necessary basis for freedoms in other arenas, enabling a system in which economic and social power is dispersed and able to accommodate numerous interests, and it is thus assumed that the most ideal way to encourage democratic reform is simply to develop markets © 2009 The Author Journal compilation © 2009 Victoria University of Wellington (Robison, 2002). However, an alternative interpretation exists, positing that the best way to promote markets – particularly those that would be open to ‘western’ capital – is to develop democracy as this would, in theory, dislodge the politico-business oligarchies and what is viewed as patron favouritism advanced by an entrenched central authority. Thus, while the sequencing may be debated among neoliberals, it is a moot point, as the ultimate goal is a ‘neoliberal democracy’. Democracy, however, is one of the most abused and debased words in the English language (Lummis, 1996), so we should ask if it has any meaning beyond mere rhetoric in a neoliberal context. Indeed, ‘democracy’ proposes no more of a solution to neoliberals than authoritarianism if it produces regimes where populist governments might engage in policies of redistribution or nationalist adventures that obstruct the globalisation of markets. Thus, American democracy-promotion policies have sought to construct ‘low-intensity democracies’, where elections do not subject rulers to populist and other pressures that might derail free market objectives (Robison, 2004). In Gill’s (1995) view, ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’ is the order of the day to ensure that through a variety of regulatory, surveillance and policing mechanisms, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2009.01400.x S. Springer neoliberal reforms are instituted and ‘locked in’, in spite of what the population base might desire. Alternatively, the disciplinary power of neoliberalism can be viewed as conterminous to circulating discourse, wherein neoliberal ideals are articulated, internalised and borne out through the citational chains of the discourses it promotes as governmentality (Springer, 2009b). Either way, neoliberalism entails an erosion of democratic control and accountability, as through a variety of legal and constitutional devices, the economic model is insulated from popular scrutiny and demands (Overbeek, 2000). This situation is precisely what transpired in Cambodia under the United Nations Transitional Authority in the early 1990s, when a ‘liberal democracy’, and hence a free market economy, was a mandated outcome of the country’s new constitution that was to be ratified following the peace process (Springer, 2009c,d). At the same time, privatised means and decision makers who are not accountable to the general citizenry increasingly determine the provision of public goods and services. These constrictions of welfare provision serve to intensify the politicisation of citizenship and immigration issues, as citizens and ‘others’ come into conflict over who is inside and who is outside of what remaining protection and welfare the state provides (Peterson, 2003). Such renewed opportunities for exclusion from the sovereign order, and hence human rights, is precisely why neoliberalism can be viewed as a state of exception (Ong, 2006), (re)producing conditions of ‘bare life’ where the poor, homeless and marginalised are relegated to the status of homo sacer, a life included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion, or in other words, a life that has the capacity to be killed, but not sacrificed (Agamben, 1995). Although failing to account for hierarchies of wealth, status, and class within the global south, whereby ‘local’ economic and political elites constitute the sovereign rather than the exception, Agamben’s (1995: 180) understanding that ‘today’s democraticocapitalist project of eliminating the poor classes through development not only reproduces within itself the people that is excluded but also transforms the entire population of the Third World into bare life’ is nonetheless well taken. Notions of unaccountability, far from being anathema to neoliberals, are further captured in 272 the governance structures of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs). Bullard (2002) reminds us that the International Monetary Fund is completely unused to outside scrutiny and responds to most criticisms with defensive arrogance. She further contends that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) views transparency as simply making information accessible, while accountability means more statistical information is made available, but democracy itself does not appear to have a place in their internal lexicon (Bullard, 2002). Outwardly, however, democracy is front and centre in IFI discourse, as it is readily touted as an imperative human value in their public criticisms of the apparent lack thereof in countries where its reform policies have inevitably resulted in social discontent, and accordingly, an equally predictable violent authoritarian retort. This of course begs the question, if the IFIs are themselves not democratic, accountable or transparent institutions, is their authority to make judgements on issues concerning democracy really tenable? Given the lack of introspection the IFIs display, it is not surprising that ‘the idea that authoritarian states could play a positive development role became attractive within the West at a time when growth rates lagged behind some Asian rates . . . Within Western business circles many looked approvingly at the state’s role in sweeping aside “distributional coalitions” (labour, welfare, and environmental groups) and instituting low tax regimes’ (Rodan et al., 2001: 14). Thus, although the relationship between liberalisation and democratisation is far from straight forward, liberalisation lends itself well to opportunities for elite groups with strong commercial interest to influence political development away from democracy (Jönsson, 2002). As Duménil and Lévy (2004) argue, in a context of demands for greater reform coming from the global north, in order for global south ruling classes to preserve their privileges they must confront two options: (i) the establishment of a new social compromise of their own (to align larger segments of the population with the prosperity of the wealthiest), a condition antithetical to neoliberalism; or (ii) a shift towards an increasingly authoritarian regime, a position that neoliberalism can easily accommodate. As an illustration of such assimilation, Crotty and Dymski (1999) point to political repression as a © 2009 The Author Journal compilation © 2009 Victoria University of Wellington Renewed authoritarianism in Southeast Asia commonplace feature of neoliberalism, where the destruction of independent, democratic and sometimes militant unions has played and continues to play a crucial role in the reform processes imposed by the IMF in the aftermath of the Asian Crisis. Further, in the Southeast Asian setting, the avoidance of overt capital–labour conflict is due at least in part to industry’s heavy reliance on female labour in the context of long-standing gender-based oppression (Gills, 2002). Given the exclusions of the poor, the implicit acceptance of violently repressing those groups who seek a decent wage, and in light of the rising inequality neoliberalism has facilitated (Rapley, 2004; Wade, 2004; Harvey, 2005), it is perhaps unsurprising that the process of global neoliberalisation coincided with the rise of a new pattern of conflict, one that seems to be concerned with the identity group (however defined) and not the nation-state, so that sources of these ‘new wars’ lay predominantly within rather than between states (Demmers, 2004; Desai, 2006; Kaldor, 2006). Such conflict can be seen as a reflection of the geographic restructuring and uneven development that neoliberalism provokes (Harvey, 2005). Former Keynesian patterns of redistribution are replaced with intrastate competition, as particular cities and/or regions become loci of development and investment, while peripheral areas are ignored. Following from a geographical imagination of indigenous-as-rural, marginalisation is furthered and differences are magnified, resulting in a pattern of conflict primarily between ‘underdogs’ (Uvin, 2003), as ‘topdogs’ insulate themselves from reprisal through an ever tightening security regime that utilises both the apparatus of the state, such as authoritarian clampdowns on public space (Springer, 2009c,d), and private measures visible in the landscape, such as fenced properties patrolled by armed guards (Coleman, 2004). What’s more, the violence that swells among underdogs engenders Orientalist discourses that insidiously posit ‘local’ cultures as being responsible for the bloodshed, erasing the contingency, fluidity and interconnectedness of the ‘global’ political economy of violence, which licenses further neoliberal reforms, as neoliberalisation is positioned as a ‘civilising’ enterprise in the face of such purported ‘savagery’ (Springer, 2009a). © 2009 The Author Journal compilation © 2009 Victoria University of Wellington The current implicit support for authoritarianism is not without historical precedent. Xing et al. (2002) note that following the Second World War, American foreign and economic policies were aimed at fostering right-wing authoritarianism as a palisade to communism, where the central theme of US post-war policy in East Asia was basically the revival of the Japan-centred capitalist regional economy, including South Korea and Taiwan. In contrast to the prevailing rhetoric of ‘western’ modernisation, Rodan and Hewison (2004) argue that the principal driver of American foreign policy was the threat to capitalism, not democracy. The Chilean coup during the ‘other 9/11’ is also demonstrative in this regard, as in 1973, America considered Pinochet’s iron fist as necessary to replace the elected socialist government in what is widely regarded as the first state-level neoliberal experiment (Plehwe et al., 2006). The Chilean trial also proceeded with the understanding that resistance to neoliberalism was to be expected as the state moved to ensure that its policy reforms were instituted, which required the threat of immediate state violence to dissenters and those who refused to capitulate, and equally necessitated that local elites be bought into the process of neoliberalisation. If local elites can be convinced that neoliberal reforms such as deregulation and privatisation will offer them an opportunity for enrichment, the tensions of neoliberal reform may be minimal, and, in point of fact, even beneficial among the upper classes. Elsewhere, I have argued that this is precisely the case in post-transitional Cambodia, where neoliberalisation has become a useful part of the existing order (Springer, 2009d). The potential for a small elite to consolidate their wealth and privilege obviously does not bode well for democracy, and in contrast to the experiences of the upper class, subjection to neoliberalism for the lower classes is much more problematic, as the benefits of neoliberalisation are not as forthcoming. Poverty and inequality are still prevalent in much of Southeast Asia, and the neoliberal notion of the ‘trickle down effect’ has ultimately failed to materialise for the poor, and particularly for those living in peripheral areas. Neoliberalism may thus actually provoke a more authoritarian outlook, as those left behind come into conflict with those reaping neoliber273 S. Springer alism’s rewards (Canterbury, 2005), particularly if the changes are rapid and a legitimising discourse for neoliberalisation has not already become widely circulated. This is why penetration at the level of governmentality, and the production, functioning and circulation of a legitimising discourse becomes a determinant of the degree of authoritarianism needed under neoliberalisation. Furthermore, the threat of communism has been largely replaced with the ‘war on terror’, meaning that support for authoritarian regimes by the United States has been reinvigorated (Rodan and Hewison, 2004; Springer, 2008). This war against terrorism has brought with it a revived nexus between police and military power. Preventive arrest and detention in concert with extensive powers of surveillance generate panoptic conditions not only in the American heartland under the Patriot Act, but also in her present colonies of Iraq and Afghanistan (Gregory, 2004), and even further afield in ‘the second front’ in the war on terror, Southeast Asia (Tyner, 2006). Indeed, the logic and extent of this security apparatus is global in scope, as police have used violent assaults and preemptive strikes against participants in mass demonstrations in a plenitude of national settings (Purcell, 2008). Renowned political economist Cox (2002: 35) fulminates against this recent development of the present neoliberalcum-neoimperial era, suggesting that ‘[t]he manipulation of consent through the casting of military and police action as the pursuit of high moral principles, the evoking of patriotism to exclude or marginalise dissent, and the erecting of new “Star Chamber”-type judicial proceedings to punish offenders, together contribute to the transformation of state and society from a politically liberal towards an authoritarian, disciplinary and repressive collectivity’. In the Indonesian context, Robison (2002: 109) indicates that investor perspectives on the country are informed by an underlying sense of nostalgia for ‘the good old days’ of Soeharto when things were certain, where investors are not primarily concerned with whether there is democracy or not, or even whether there is corruption or not, but instead require ‘a strong government, democratic or authoritarian, that provides predictability and keeps in check coalitions that might contest the terms under which 274 they operate’. Kinnvall (2002) corroborates this point, suggesting that the global capitalist market is not necessarily always hostile towards authoritarianism or supportive of democracy, but instead actually benefits from the presence of a ‘strong state’. Yet pace the ‘strong state’ thesis, neoliberalism requires precisely the opposite conditions to function, and not because of a mistaken belief that neoliberalisation sees the state wither in the face of increased market power (see Peck, 2001; Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Peck and Tickell, 2002, who I follow in their more nuanced accounts of the ‘actually existing’ neoliberalised sate). In Migdal’s (1988) rendering, there are two facets to a ‘weak state’. The first concerns ‘state autonomy’, or the relative distribution of power between state and society, particularly those dominant interests in the private sector of the economy. The second, drawing on the Weberian dichotomy of patrimonial and rationalbureaucratic polities, relates to ‘state capacity’. From this, Hutchison (2001: 56) contends that ‘[o]n this basis, a weak state is one in which relatively little distinction is made between the personal interests and official duties of decisionmakers in the executive, legislature, and/or bureaucracy and, therefore, is one in which the policy-making process is constantly stymied by particularistic demands’. Thus, if we accept the Marxian political economy critique that neoliberalism is an elite driven project, as it so clearly seems to be (see McMichael, 2000; Overbeek, 2000; Cox, 2002; Duménil and Lévy, 2004; Rapley, 2004; Harvey, 2005; Berger, 2006; Carroll and Carson, 2006), neoliberalism appears more appropriate to the conditions that underline a ‘weak state’. As the desires of the capitalist class coincide with and come to dominate neoliberal policy orientations, ‘particularistic demands’ become the insignia of the neoliberalized state. Moreover, in contrast to the notion that authoritarian regimes constitute ‘strong states’, Jomo (2003) argues that they are actually indicative of ‘weak states’, in the sense that they have an inability to secure legitimacy among the population, requiring authoritarian regimes that resort to repressive measures. The lack of consultation with the general population as to the economic character of the state, coupled with reduced access to social provisions for the poor – who still continue to © 2009 The Author Journal compilation © 2009 Victoria University of Wellington Renewed authoritarianism in Southeast Asia constitute an overwhelming majority in most Southeast Asian states – means that accountability rings hollow in the neoliberalised state. This ultimately works to further adhere neoliberalism to an authoritarian disposition as it seeks to fill the legitimacy vacuum with violence. In the end, it is not the accountable, democratic state that is the ideal political shell for neoliberalism (Jayasuriya, 2000), nor is it an absentee state that is required. Rather, neoliberalism seeks a ‘differently powerful’ (Peck and Tickell, 2002) regulatory state capable of insulating its institutions from capture by those vested interests that inhabit such institutions as parliaments. Accordingly, Harvey’s (2005: 176) assertion that the ‘[n]eoliberal concern for the individual trumps any social democratic concern for equality, democracy, and social solidarities’, should be taken quite seriously if we are ever to abandon the nightmare of the global market, which as a parochial expression of neocolonial thought, moves our theorisation from one God and one king, to one money, one market, and one justice (Amoroso, 2002). 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