Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa: Lost in Transition

176 Pages·2016·1.67 MB·English

by  Teresita Cruz-del Rosario

THE
MODERN
MUSLIM
WORLD
COMPARATIVE POLITICAL
TRANSITIONS BETWEEN
SOUTHEAST ASIA
AND THE MIDDLE EAST
AND NORTH AFRICA
Lost in Transition
Teresita Cruz-del Rosario
& James M. Dorsey
The Modern Muslim World
Series Editor
Dietrich   Jung
Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies
University of Southern Denmark
Odense ,  Denmark
The modern Muslim world is an integral part of global society. In
transcending the confi nes of area studies, this series encompasses scholarly
work on political, economic, and cultural issues in modern Muslim
history, taking a global perspective. Focusing on the period from the
early nineteenth century to the present, it combines studies of Muslim
majority regions, such as the Middle East and in Africa and Asia, with the
analysis of Muslim minority communities in Europe and the Americas.
Emphasizing the global connectedness of Muslims, the series seeks to
promote and encourage the understanding of contemporary Muslim life in
a comparative perspective and as an inseparable part of modern globality.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14429
Teresita   Cruz-del Rosario • J ames M.  Dorsey
Comparative Political
Transitions between
Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and
North Africa
Lost in Transition
Teresita   Cruz-del Rosario James M.  Dorsey
National University of Singapore Rajaratnam School of
Singapore International Studies
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
The Modern Muslim World
ISBN 978-1-137-54348-6 ISBN 978-1-137-54089-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54089-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016945492
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F
OREWORD
This book was sparked by prolonged informal discussions comparing
transition in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, as well
as an initial stab at comparative analysis in a fi rst journal article. To the
degree that scholars have sought to compare the 2011 popular revolts
in the Middle East and North Africa with other parts of the world, the
focus was on Eastern Europe and Latin America. The decision to look at
a comparison with Southeast Asia grew out of recognition of signifi cant
similarities as well as differences between the two regions. It was further
informed by the fact that we have lived and worked in the Middle East,
North Africa, and Southeast Asia for more than 40 years.
Anti-government protests in 2011 on public squares across the Middle
East and North Africa that toppled four autocratic leaders were as fi ery and
passionate as were those staged by Burmese monks and students in 1988
and 2007, who demanded an end to military rule. The self- immolation
of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed al-Bouazizi in December 2010
sparked an outrage that gave birth to anti-government protests and popu-
lar revolts in a swath of land that stretched from the Atlantic coast of Africa
to the Gulf. This singular event evoked the same sentiment that returned
social movements to the public sphere in the Philippines and spawned
new ones, in the aftermath of the cold-blooded assassination of opposition
leader Benigno Aquino in 1983.
But unlike Libya, after the demise of Col. Muammar Ghaddafi in
2011 that gave birth to rival governments and scores of warring militias,
Indonesia emerged from its revolt against General Suharto in 1998 as a
fairly coherent nation state. Both countries were ruled by two military
v
vi FOREWORD
offi cers who seized power and whose regimes endured for over three
decades, yet the contrast in their transition outcomes could not be starker.
There are no civil wars in Southeast Asia that threaten to redraw national
boundaries, while the postcolonial borders of at least two Middle Eastern
countries—Syria and Iraq—are in doubt and many question whether they
will remain even loosely federated nation states when the dust of sectarian
wars settles.
Two oft-cited “models” of Muslim democratic success—Indonesia
and Malaysia—feature signifi cantly more sharia ordinances than Egypt,
Tunisia, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, or Lebanon, to name only a few. It is
also worth noting that mainstream Islamist movements in the Arab world
largely no longer include the hudud punishments for theft, adultery, and
apostasy in their political platforms and rarely discuss them in public.
South and Southeast Asian Islamists, on the other hand, haven’t been as
circumspect.
These and other observations regarding the nature of civil society, the
structure and the role of the military, the character of ethnic strife, the
varieties of regimes in Asia and the Arab world, the place of donor aid, and
regional and global geopolitics drove us to take a stab at more systematic
analysis.
Our various backgrounds in student activism, experience in govern-
ment, academia, and as a foreign correspondent furnished us with a shared
interest and complimentary perspectives. Covering the Middle East for
over 40 years often amounted to street and battlefi eld ethnography in
the midst of wars, assassinations, kidnappings, and the rise of autocracies
that seemed, at times, invincible. Working for the government sector after
people power in 1986 in the Philippines provided a crash course in transi-
tion politics in the school of hard knocks. On the ground reporting from
the Middle East and North Africa in recent years as the popular revolts
and the counterrevolution unfolded, as well as our ringside view of the
demonstrations in Bangkok in 2014 and the eventual imposition of mar-
tial law in Thailand, offered immediacy as we witnessed the return of the
generals in various guises. Field research in Myanmar a week before the
by-elections in 2012, and subsequent visits in 2013, provided immediate
insights and exposure to a country in the midst of multiple and competing
directions for social change. It was an experience that was simultaneously
exhilarating and troubling, as the generals retreated even as they continue
to maintain a grip on power through various institutional arrangements.
Dialogues with Burmese media practitioners and civil society activists
FOREWORD vii
operating in above-ground circumstances for the fi rst time in 50 years
was wholly reminiscent of the feverish pace of the Philippine transition in
the post-uprising period of 1986. Across the border, exiles from minority
communities living and working in Chiang Mai in Thailand were more
guarded with their optimism. The exception that is Tunisia remains the
only bright spot in the Middle East and North Africa. The awarding of
the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet
for its contribution to building a pluralistic democracy, demonstrates that
democratic transition in the world’s most troubled region is possible, even
if it is a torturous, and at times, retrograde process.
These and many more observations led to speculations about transi-
tion processes in both regions and constitute many subtexts in this book.
Eventually, we surrendered our intellectual hunches to the beckoning of
systematic research. However, without these fi rst-hand experiences as a
backdrop to our scholarship, we would be engaging in armchair theoriz-
ing rather than analysis built from the ground up.
Collaboration on this book was possible because of the unwavering
support of both our institutions. The Asia Research Institute (ARI) at
the National University of Singapore and the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University are our
institutional pillars. They offered an unrivalled environment in which to
undertake this research project.
We are particularly grateful to ARI Director, Prasenjit Duara, RSIS
Executive Deputy Chairman, Ong Keng Yong, and Dean, Joseph Liow
Chin Yong, for appreciating the merit of this research project and making
available the resources to write in a highly unperturbed environment. To
a large extent, the venue for writing this book in Singapore is not purely
accidental. Singapore refl ects signifi cant lessons of transition. First and
foremost is the fact that when transition processes are carefully and sensi-
tively managed, as Singapore has done since its separation from the Malaya
Federation in 1965, their social, economic, and political outcomes tend
to be unequivocally positive. As a result, Singapore’s successful transition,
despite legitimate criticism, offers important lessons for countries in both
regions that are still grappling with their own.
Teresita   Cruz-del Rosario
James   M.   Dorsey
October 2015
Singapore

C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 Nascent and Latent: Differential Roles of Civil Society
in Southeast Asia and the MENA Region 21
3 To Shoot or Not to Shoot: The Military
in Political Transitions 55
4 Superpowers, Regional Hegemons,
Ethno-N ations, and Sectarian States:
Identity Politics in Transition Regimes 89
5 Conclusion: Transition(ing) to What? 123
Bibliography 139
Index 155
ix