Asia amidst a Flux

In contemporary times there appears to be an ongoing debate pertaining to various models of governance which help to advance the prosperity of the general citizenry. This debate has of late come to assume a geopolitical agenda with several nations of the Global North taking note of the global trend towards authoritarianism, especially in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Several leaders like the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have advanced the agenda of forming a D-10 group comprising of the G-7 nations plus India, Australia and South Korea. The NATO 2030 white paper lays extensive attention on promoting a new allied democratic resilience, while in the US President Joe Biden has placed democratic values at the center of his foreign policy imperatives, which has been compounded with plans to host a “Summit for Democracy” in the   first year of his term, laying stress on fighting corruption, authoritarianism and gross human rights abuse.

The Indo-Pacific region has come to assume the center stage of this struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, being a repository of some of the largest and economically diverse democracies of the world and its relatively young population, whereby 50 per cent of the world’s millennial population is sought to reside in Asia. Thus, the task of re-invigorating global democratic resilience cannot be a solely “western project”. However, Asia’s tryst with democracy has not followed a set agenda, with the widespread democratization wave of the 1980s and 1990s gradually giving way to an illiberal backsliding, ominously re-associating this region with its authoritarian past. While some nations like Australia have consistently been at the forefront of checking global democratic erosion, other regional leaders have been less forthcoming in this respect.

It is important to note that despite a steady erosion of democratic governance in countries like Thailand, Philippines, Myanmar and Sri Lanka Asia today remains more democratic than it was during the Cold War years, with the support for “the way democracy is working” remaining quite high, belying the claim that democracy is not consistent with “Asian values”. However, greater dissatisfaction with regards to democratic performance has occurred in the region’s more consolidated democracies like Japan and South Korea. In these nations the problems of economic transparency, lack of accountability, weakened inner-party competition and a disengaged voter base has belied the liberal “penchant for stability.” There is difference in the way the citizens across Asia accord importance to various democratic ideals like free and regular elections, transparent and fair judicial proceedings and others. For instance, the “freedom of religion” is not accorded a degree of seminal importance in Japan as opposed to its fervent support in India and Indonesia, with freedom for media, civil society and opposition also remaining quite low across the region as a whole.

In most cases local considerations rather than sound geostrategic compulsions help populist leaders to shape their agenda, facing few disincentives in creating ever stricter curbs on individual freedom. As the recent polling in Indonesia shows most Indonesians chose economic development in lieu of democratic progress even under immense conditions of hardship. It is important to note that the lackadaisical democratic governance in some leading Western democracies like the USA is a potent cause for this general “democratic recession”.

In Asian nations inequality has trumped the levels as witnessed in Africa and Latin America, with the Asian Development Bank pointing to a rise of 42 per cent in two decades. Subsequently elite corruption leading to frequent government turnovers and high-profile political arrests has paralyzed the political agenda of various nations like South Korea and Malaysia, making it problematic to implement meaningful reforms. The enduring popularity of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak despite his arrest on corruption charges and an unholy partnership between the state and the toxic conglomerates in South Korea are instances in point.

This mistrust in government elites and the steady erosion of democratic institutions have helped new populist leaders like the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte  to come to power, who have contributed to this problem even further in an attempt to consolidate their position. Many Asian democracies are witnessing constant political polarization along ethnic, religious and political lines, which has been reflected through a rise in religious violence and religious based restrictions in Asia over the past decade. These political fault lines are not new but the effort to use them for political expediency by nationalist leaders like the Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and the now deposed Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi are of seminal importance. Despite Taiwan’s sound democratic credentials the structural “majoritarian character” of its political system has contributed to much ambiguity on policy issues, while also inhibiting its potential to deal with the problematic cross-Strait relations.

An ominous trend as being witnessed in the Indo-Pacific region is borne out by a finding of Reporters Without Borders pointing to a gloomy media environment within the region resulting in the banning of several independent media organizations and rampant police violence against reporters. Such a trend has been compounded by new NGO registration laws, conspicuous arrest of local activists and an uptick in new legislation constraining the freedom of speech. According to some scholars a time tested recourse to these illiberal practices to sustain one’s acceptance within a volatile domestic context is not a novel development. However, such a happening has contributed to the stifling of a blooming, highly networked and vibrant public sphere in nations like the Philippines.

The Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to these illiberal trends as manifest in several Indo-Pacific nations as reflective of an essential “securitization of social services”. By projecting the fight against the pandemic as a national “war” widespread lockdowns, restrictions on the freedom of movement and an expanded policing authority have become the norms of the day. Statesmen like Duterte have easily justified a slew of authoritarian measures, while enjoying a 91 per cent approval rating despite his abysmal Covid-19 response.

In some cases such statist impulses has been welcomed like the Jokowi administration’s decision to vest the Indonesian military with a prominent role to mount the nation’s pandemic response, which may serve a future illiberal justification. Some nations like Australia are grappling with the challenge to balance individual liberties with collective good, having a laissez faire attitude towards domestic politics and practices. While such an outlook has helped in fomenting a less partisan political landscape, it has severely dented the government’s accountability during the crisis hinged upon an essential structural-functional ignorance.

Amidst this overhanging pessimism there seems to be some ray of hope in the Asian horizon. The resurgence of a host of younger democratic leaders calling for liberal reforms has been a marked development. Such trends have been manifested through the student-led protests in Thailand that have swept the country for the past year and the impressive success of the Future Forward Party in the 2019 national elections before its dissolution by the Constitutional Court in February 2020. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern propelled her party towards a historic win in the 2020 general elections on the back of her successful pandemic response and a progressive agenda.

The steady expansion of cross border civil society organizations have also contributed in checking the dearth of regional organizations having a democratic mandate. The creation of the Asia Democracy Network has brought local civil society groups in Cambodia and Hong Kong together. Taiwan’s establishment of the East Asia Democracy Forum has helped to amplify exchanges on democratic best practices. These organizations serve the dual purpose of linking themselves with like-minded international organizations and helping expose their governing dispensations to public scrutiny, owing to manifest curbs on national civil society groups.

Despite such “internal” developments the “external” influence of greater powers is no less palpable. China’s essential presence in several economic development projects in Malaysia and Indonesia and its penchant for export of various digital surveillance tools is accommodative of the authoritarian playbook of several Southeast Asian statesmen. China’s bid to weaponize and even politicize race as an essential tool for covertly advancing its assumed foreign policy prerogatives can be indirectly contributing towards prompting illiberalism as an acceptable alternative in the Indo-Pacific.

The US on the converse has largely stepped back from its role of being a traditional champion of human rights, rule of law and democratic governance. This trend has been aggravated by the twin pressures of globalization and automation, which has resulted in rampant unemployment in the USA compounded with its worst response to the Covid-19 pandemic, widespread racial unrests and the attack on the US Capitol building in the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential elections. The transition in presidential administration in January 2021 is a novel opportunity for resuscitating faith in American leadership as reflective of the corrective features of democracy. However, in reality, a daunting challenge is in the offing.

References

1. Lindsey W. Ford and Ryan Hass, “Democracy in Asia,” Brookings, January 22, 2021, https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/articles/democracy-in-asia/amp/
2. Thomas Pepinsky, “ Decoupling governance and democracy: The challenge of authoritarian development in Southeast Asia,” Brookings, July, 2020, https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/decoupling-governance-and-democracy-the-challenge-of-authoritarian-development-in-southeast-asia/%3famp

Debayan Ghatak

Intern, Asia in Global Affairs