Table Of ContentPARTICIPATION
WITHOUT
DEMOCRACY
Containing Conflict in Southeast
Asia
Garry Rodan
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
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Contents
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Theorizing Institutions of Political Participation and Representation
2. Ideologies of Political Representation and the Mode of Participation
Framework
3. History, Capitalism, and Conflict
4. Nominated Members of Parliament in Singapore
5. Public Feedback in Singapore’s Consultative Authoritarianism
6. The Philippines’ Party-List System, Reformers, and Oligarchs
7. Participatory Budgeting in the Philippines
8. Malaysia’s Failed Consultative Representation Experiments
9. Civil Society and Electoral Reform in Malaysia
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
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Abbreviations and Acronyms
ABAMIN Abante Mindanao
ACT Teachers Alliance of Concerned Teachers
Amanah/PAN Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah/PAN, National Trust Party)
AMP Association of Muslim Professionals
AWARE Association of Women for Action and Research
Bayan Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance)
Bersih Gabungan Philihantaya Bersih dan Adil (Coalition for Clean and Fair
Elections)
BN Barisan Nasional (National Front)
BS Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front)
BUB bottom-up budgeting
CCT conditional cash transfer
CDAC Chinese Development Assistance Council
CDD community-driven development
CEAC Community Empowerment and Activity Cycle
CGG Coalition for Good Governance
CODE-NGO Caucus of Development Non-Governmental Organizations
Comelec Commission on Elections
ConCom Constitutional Commission
CONPAC Coalition of Non-Governmental Organisations and Professional
Appointed Councilors
CPP Communist Party of the Philippines
CSO civil society organization
DAP Democratic Action Party
DBM Department of Budget and Management
DEPAN Dasar Ekonomi Untuk Pembangunan Negara (Economic Policy for
National Development)
DILG Department of Interior and Local Government
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DSWD Department of Social Welfare and Development
EC Election Commission
eCP e-consultation paper
EPU Economic Planning Unit
ETP Economic Transformation Program
FB Facebook
FU Feedback Unit
Gabriela General Assembly Binding Women for Integrity, Equality, Leadership,
and Action
Gerakan Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (Malaysian People’s Movement Party)
GLC government-linked companies
GRC group representation constituency
GTP Government Transformation Program
HINDRAF Hindu Rights Action Front
INCITEGov International Center for Innovation, Transformation and Excellence in
Governance
ISA Internal Security Act
Kalahi-CIDSS Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan (Linking Arms Against Poverty)—
Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services
KMU Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement)
LGU Local Government Unit
LPRAP Local Poverty Reduction Action Plan
LPRAT Local Poverty Reduction Action Team
MCA Malaysian Chinese Association
MIC Malayan Indian Congress
MOP mode of participation
MP member of parliament
NAPC National Anti-Poverty Commission
NCMPs non-constituency member/s of parliament
ND National Democratic
NEAC National Economic Advisory Council
NECC (I & II) National Economic Consultative Council
NEM New Economic Model
NEP New Economic Policy
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NGO nongovernmental organization
NKRAs National Key Result Areas
NMP nominated members of parliament
NSS Nature Society of Singapore
NTUC National Trades Union Congress
1MDB One Malaysia Development Bank
OSC Our Singapore Conversation
PAP People’s Action Party
PAS Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party)
PASC Public Administration Select Committee
PDAF Priority Development Assistance Fund
Pemandu Performance Management and Delivery Unit
PH Pakatan Harapan (Coalition of Hope)
PKR Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party)
PLS Party-List System
PMO Project Management Office
PO people’s organization
PPBM Parti Pribumi Berastu Malaysia (Malaysia United Indigenous Party)
PR Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance)
PSC Parliamentary Select Committee
PSWs Policy Study Workshops
REACH Reaching Everyone for Active Citizenry @ Home
RPRATs Regional Poverty Reduction Action Teams
SBF Singapore Business Federation
SINDA Singapore Indian Development Association
SMF Singapore Manufacturers’ Federation
SRI Strategic Reform Initiatives
SUARAM Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Voice of the Malaysian People)
TUCP Trade Union Congress of the Philippines
UMNO United Malays National Organization
WP Workers’ Party
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Acknowledgments
The ambitious scale and nature of this book project required significant
resources, made possible by generous funding from the Australian
Research Council (ARC) for the Discovery Project “Representation and
Political Regimes in Southeast Asia” (DP1093214). I am grateful to the
ARC and the anonymous peer referees who strongly endorsed my
application. Additional support from Murdoch University was also
important and appreciated.
The cooperation of an extensive range of interviewees involved in
designing, supporting, or opposing different forms of political participation
and/or representation in Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia also
provided crucial insights. I sincerely thank them for their contributions.
The book benefited too from an array of colleagues and other academics
whom I engaged with on the project, or who supported it indirectly, at
some point. Especially important were Kanishka Jayasuriya, Richard
Robison, Kevin Hewison, Jane Hutchison, Caroline Hughes, Khoo Boo
Teik, Lee Jones, Vedi Hadiz, Chua Beng-Huat, Jeffrey Wilson, Nicole
Curato, and Shahar Hameiri. Thanks as well to Kelly Gerard, Dani Arlow,
and Charlotte Pham for excellent research assistance at different stages,
and to Michelle Hackett for the same over a longer period. Sia
Kozlowski’s outstanding administrative support at the Asia Research
Centre was also appreciated.
I am grateful to Cornell University Press’s anonymous referees, who
made numerous suggestions that were acted on to enhance the manuscript.
A special thanks to Roger Haydon for his expert guidance and advice in
the processes leading to this book’s publication—what a pleasure to work
with him and the production team at Cornell University Press.
Throughout the challenges of researching and writing this book, it was
Jane Tarrant who suffered most from my obsession with “struggles over
political representation” and who also remained my most important
supporter. I cannot thank her enough.
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Introduction
STRUGGLES OVER POLITICAL
REPRESENTATION
In this book, two simple propositions are made. First, the development of
market capitalism with its deepening inequalities and its disruption of
established patterns of social power and interest generates new political
challenges for both entrenched elites and those at the political margins.
Second, the struggles for power unleashed within these processes do not
simply take the form either of elites ramping up the instruments of
authoritarian control or of broader populations seeking to enforce and to
extend existing models of representative democracy. Rather, both elites
and their opponents are moving beyond these institutional paradigms to
construct or pursue their own models of participation, representation, and
democracy with vastly different objectives in mind. For many entrenched
elites, these initiatives are designed as political instruments to enforce and
consolidate deepening concentrations of power and wealth and to
domesticate opposition. For those on the margins of power, they are
intended as the political vehicles for these concentrations to be dismantled.
This study examines the central paradox in this general institutional
recalibration of politics; namely, that expanded political representation—in
both its democratic and nondemocratic forms—is serving more to
constrain political contestation than enhance it. It will refer specifically to
Southeast Asia, where these broad processes have been an important
aspect of recent institutional change. Here, it is argued, structures of
increased political participation have tended to intensify political
fragmentation among anti-elite forces, militating against broad reformist
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coalitions. Ideologies favoring a depoliticization of conflicts either
emanating from the uneven effects of capitalist development or
compounded by them have also been institutionalized.
The Study’s Wider Significance
Southeast Asia presents as an excellent locus for this study not because it
is distinctive or different. On the contrary, it can serve as a theoretical
laboratory for understanding dynamics between capitalist development and
political regimes in general. These dynamics are not just shaping conflicts
in Southeast Asia but across the globe. Political and social crises linked to
the effects of capitalist development are being played out in the populist
politics that have characterized Donald Trump’s controversial presidential
victory in the United States and in the majority support in Britain to
withdraw from the European Union. They are also at the heart of the rise
over recent decades of right-wing anti-immigration populist parties in
Europe and left-wing redistributive populist movements in Latin America,
the anti-globalization Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States,
and equivalents elsewhere following the global financial crisis of 2007–
2008.
Analysts identify a “hollowing out” or diminishing of democracy in
Western Europe (Hay 2007; Mair 2013; Streeck 2014) and a fundamental
“disconnect” in the United States between an unrepresentative political
class and citizens (Fiorina and Abrams 2011). Meanwhile, delayed but
sweeping capitalist transformations elsewhere have failed to generate the
democratization anticipated. Indeed, capitalism and authoritarianism in
China and Russia, among other places, have become a demonstrably viable
combination for the foreseeable future.
In an analysis encompassing both established liberal democracies of
advanced capitalist societies and those in Spain, Brazil, and Turkey, where
capitalist development and democracy have more recently combined,
Tormey (2015) provocatively hypothesized the “end of representative
politics.” It is argued in this book, however, that the emergence of new
nondemocratic forms of representation as a mechanism for narrowing the
space for political contestation is at least as significant as, if not more than,
the bypassing of representation altogether.
Across a wide range of democratic and authoritarian regimes around
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the world there has been a proliferation of diverse new forms of political
participation and assorted exhortations about “active citizenship,”
“empowerment,” “participatory democracy,” and “delegative democracy.”
However, meanings and purposes attached to these concepts vary, as
competing forces struggle over the extent and nature of permissible
political conflict through these new institutions. Different ideologies of
political representation are integral to the aims, strategies, and outcomes
between contending forces.
The global rise of participatory budgeting over recent decades is
emblematic of this struggle. In various ways, this has created opportunities
for citizen involvement in decisions about how public budgets are spent.
This includes in established liberal democracies such as in the United
Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France, and Germany, as well as in
more recent democracies and postauthoritarian societies such as Brazil,
Argentina, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and even in authoritarian
regimes such as China, Mozambique, and Albania. However, who can
participate in these deliberations, how, and on what particular questions
about the budget are contested and/or tightly controlled matters within
these countries.
The same applies to myriad other creative—often distinctive—
initiatives in public policy consultation or feedback involving popular
forces and/or technical experts outside of government. In the process,
democratic representation can either be bolstered, introduced, or
substituted with nondemocratic alternatives.
Populism’s recent resurgence has exposed the limits of many new
forms of public political participation to contain conflict. It has also
intensified unresolved normative contention over appropriate political
participation and representation in complex, globalized capitalist market
systems, and their increasingly unequal material and social outcomes.
Recent radical institutional reform prescriptions from egalitarian, elitist,
and other worldviews highlight this.
In Against Elections, van Reybrouck (2016) attributes widespread
political resentment, cynicism, and/or disinterest among citizens to the
dominance of powerful elite interests over electoral politics and
institutions of representative democracy. Van Reybrouck’s solution lies in
a return to the principles of Athenian participatory democracy to ensure
direct and meaningful popular power. By contrast, in Against Democracy,
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