Table Of ContentGangsters,
and
Democracy,
the State
in
Southeast Asia
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1998
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Southeast Asia Program Publications
Southeast Asia Program
Cornell University
New
Ithaca, York
1998
SEAP
Editorial Board
Benedict Anderson
George Kahin
Stanley O'Connor
Keith Taylor
Oliver Wolters
Southeast Asia Program Series Number 17
Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications
NY
640 Stewart Avenue, Ithaca, 14850-3857
©
1998 Cornell Southeast Asia Program
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, no part of this
book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Cornell
Southeast Asia Program.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-87727-134-8
Contents
Democracy and the State in Southeast Asia 7
Carl A. Trocki
The Sinking Schooner: Murder and the State in Independent Burma,
1948-1958 17
Mary P. Callahan
Crime, Society, and Politics in Thailand 39
fames Ockey
Murder, Inc., Cavite: Capitalist Development and Political Gangsterism
in a Phillipine Province 55
John T. Sidel
"Muslim" Political Brokers and the Phillipines Nation-State 81
Patricio N. Abinales
Democracy and the State in
Southeast Asia
Carl A. Trocki
One of the most enduring aspects of Southeast Asian political history seems to
be the shifting dynamics of centrifugal and centripetal tendencies. The past fifteen
or more centuries have seen a succession of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic
monarchies, and colonial administrations, all seeking to assert the primacy of
central state structures. Scholars such as Oliver W. Wolters and Stanley
J.
Tambiah have called attention to the resilience of local identities and to the
fragile nature of "imperial" state structures. Tambiah's depiction of traditional
Siam as a "galactic polity" shows a state system which seems an apt model for
many other pre-modern Southeast Asian polities.2 A familiar figure in these
landscapes is the type of political entrepreneur which Wolters has styled a "man
of prowess."3 Together these elements, the segmented, mandalic polity and the
charismatic, opportunistic strongman, have acted both as the stimulus for change in
Southeast Asian politics as well as a chronic source of instability.
More recently, military and civilian governments have faced similarly
fissiparous tendencies as they sought to centralize new nation-states, often within
the framework of earlier colonial administrations or other pre-modern polities. In
collaboration with, or in opposition to these agencies, regional power holders have
tried to maintain their control over local manpower and other resources. These
leaders have sought to mediate, to their own profit, new instruments of power
emanating from the center or deriving from global economic changes. Both the
agents of the central state and the local men of power have employed stratagems of
cooperation, subterfuge, or coercion in the ever-shifting balance of power between
centers and peripheries, or perhaps more appropriately, between major and minor
centers.
1 The studies here grew outofa panel at the AAS Annual meeting in 1992, in Washington, DC,
on "National Authority and Local Power." I would like to thank Patricio Abinales, Mary
Callahan,JamesOckey, andJohnSidel whocommented onearlierversionsofthis essay.
2 Stanley J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renounces A Study ofBuddhism and Polity in
Thailand against a Historical Background (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
3 O. W. Wolters, History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore:
Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies, 1982).
Carl A. Trocki
Against the backdrop of this fundamental tension, recent decades have seen the
emergence of "democracy" movements among the peoples of a number of emerging
Southeast Asian polities. These movements have been supported, at least
formally, by the Western democracies as well as other members of the world
community. As a result, democratic forms, including elected legislative bodies and
executives, regular elections, political parties, written constitutions, and formal
guarantees of political and individual human liberties have become part of the
legitimizing apparatus of most Southeast Asian nations. These movements and the
practice of electoral and democratic politics have given a new twist to relations
between central and local, or regional power structures in Southeast Asia.
The maxim that all politics is local, long a cliche in American political life,
has now gained a new importance in Asian politics. For some reason, however,
students of most Southeast Asian governments have neglected the significance of
this approach to the study of politics in the region. Most have focused on the level
of national politics, or even international politics, and have presented the view
from the capital city. This includes the work of Silverstein, Trager, and Taylor on
Burma and Wilson and Girling on Thailand.4 Wurfel and others have done similar
work on the Philippines, but in contrast to studies of other parts of the region,
Philippine studies has a precedent for local history and interest in local everyday
politics.5 Works by McCoy and Larkin are key examples of studies that focus on
local issues.6 Likewise, economic anthropology and sociology have contributed to an
important paradigm in Philippine political studies that builds "upwards" from
the local studies of sociologists like Hollnsteiner and Lynch, to the provincial
studies of Agpalo and Machado, to the holistic models of scholars such as Lande.7
There is nothing comparable elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
4 Josef Silverstein, Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1977); Robert H. Taylor, The—State in Burma (Honolulu, HI: University of
Hawaii Press, 1987); Frank N. Trager, Burma From Kingdom to Republic: A Historical and
Political Analysis (New York: Fredrick A. Praeger Publisher, 1966); David A. Wilson, Politics
in Thailand (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962); John L. S. Girling, Thailand: Society
and Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981).
5 David Wurfel, Filipino Politics: Development and Decay (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1988).
6 Alfred W. McCoy, and Ed. C de Jesus, eds., Philippine Social History: Global Trade and Local
Transformations (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1982); Alfred W. McCoy,
ed., An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines (Madison, WI: Center for
Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1993); John A. Larkin, The Pampangans:
Colonial Society in a Philippine Province (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972).
7 Brian Fegan, "Folk-Capitalism: Economic Strategies of Peasants in a Philippine Wet-Rice
Village." (PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 1979); Girling, Thailand: Society and Politics;
Mary R. Hollnsteiner, The Dynamics of Power in a Philippine Municipality (Quezon City:
Community Development Research Council, Universityofthe Philippines, 1963);Carl H. Lande,
Leaders, Factions, and Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics (New Haven, CT: Southeast
Asia Studies, Yale University, 1964); Frank Lynch and Alfonso de Guzman II, eds., Four
Readings on Filipino Values (Quezon City: Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila
University, 1973); Kit G. Machado, "Leadership and Organization in Philippine Local
Politics," (PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 1972); Kit G. Machado, "From
Traditional Faction to Machine: Changing Patterns of Political Leadership in the Rural
Philippines," Journal ofAsian Studies 33,4 (August 1974): 523-547; Remigio Agpalo, Pandanggo
sa Haw: The Politics ofOccidental Mindoro (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1965).
