Agents of resistance: resolve and repertoires against autocratization in Asia

ABSTRACT

Over the past few decades, the pendulum of regime change across the world has swung dramatically from democratization to autocratization. There has been much contention and debate about the extent, variation, and causes surrounding these processes. This special issue turns the spotlight away from regime change and political elites towards societal agents, particularly societal agents who mobilize and resist against autocratization unfolding within democratic and authoritarian regimes. In this introductory article, we review and critique the literature on autocratization studies, and introduce our concept of “agents of resistance.” We argue that agents of resistance can develop and engage in repertoires against autocratization under any regime type. Specifically, the contributions in this special issue highlight seemingly mundane repertoires of resistance, and how they can grow through cumulative interactions among societal agents, and between societal agents and the state. Scholars should recognize the full spectrum of resistance and both their liberal and illiberal elements to better assess the impact on global trends of democratization or autocratization. Finally, this article discusses some methodological trends with regards to the existing literature, and introduces the contributions that compose this special issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Resistance
• repertoires
• autocratization
• East Asia
• Northeast Asia
• Southeast Asia

Introduction

The pendulum of regime change has swung from democratization to autocratization in recent years. This current “cycle of high euphoria and deep depression” in democracy studies mirrors previous patterns of democratization waves and reverse waves.¹ Shifts between democracy and autocracy appear to be “manifestations of a general phenomenon in politics” that are neither unprecedented nor unique.² Amidst this vacillating cycles of regime change across countries and regions, distinct dynamics of social resistance and repertoires have emerged in response to the myriad machinations of elite state actors. This special issue turns the analytical lens back on these dynamics to investigate how key societal actors resist against autocratization in the Asian context.

How, when, and why do different societal agents engage in varying forms of resistance against state power in the context of autocratization? Motivated by this overarching question, this special issue seeks to account for the factors that animate societal resistance in East and Southeast Asia, given differences in societal actors, their goals and strategies, as well as state structures and autocratization mechanisms. The existing social science literature frequently studies how regimes undergo processes of autocratization such as the deterioration of institutional features³ and democratic decoupling,⁴ as well as the agents of autocratization, such as populist leaders, extremist political parties, and the military. Less studied, however, is how societal groups and individuals organize and engage in different repertoires of resistance against autocratization. This special issue further provides a timely corrective to this clear empirical neglect.

Through a uniquely “agency-based perspective,”⁵ this special issue begins by developing and operationalizing the conceptual category of “agents of resistance.” We include a wide range of societal actors, such as everyday citizens, university students, civil society leaders, communal activists, as well as those who adopt vague identities traversing the boundaries between regime support and anti-regime movements. By examining a diverse group of societal agents within this conceptual category, contributions to the special issue effectively push beyond the existing social science literature’s excessive focus on massive social movements and well-organized opposition parties. In doing so, it further identifies why it is those particular “agents of resistance” who resist but not others, and how they manifest their grievances and opposition.

The articles in this special issue advance two important theoretical insights on the relationship between regime type and the dynamics of resistance. First, we recognize that societal agents frequently develop and engage in mundane and cumulative repertoires of resistance against autocratization prevalent in both democratic and authoritarian regimes. When political elites use state institutions or security forces, legitimately or not, to suppress particular social groups in pursuit of their goals, societal groups are compelled to respond in creative ways. The contributions in this special issue document such cumulative and mundane forms of organization and mobilization, from organizing youth camps and community pantries, weekly repetitive protests, and joint research seminars.

Second, by dissociating social resistance from political regimes, contributions to this special issue effectively call into question a teleological view of mass mobilization and social resistance as natural bulwarks of liberal democracy. Rather, we argue that social resistance can move in both directions against and/or in support of autocratization unfolding in any regime type. For instance, certain episodes of social mobilization examined in the special issue reflect the conventional conception of resistance as pushbacks against clear regime-initiated autocratization. Yet, other episodes show that illiberal resistance can arise in democratic settings because of societal groups’ perceptions of regime autocratization. Because both liberal and illiberal social mobilization exist globally, it is all the more important to discern the grievances, incentives and constraints that various agents of resistance face, and to identify their decentralized repertoires against or in support of autocratization.

In this introductory article to the special issue, we first critically review the literature surrounding autocratization in Asia. We choose to study this region because of the diversity of democratic and autocratic regimes, as well as the numerous dynamic instances of societal organization, mobilization, and resistance that have emerged over the past two decades. In doing so, we also highlight how the centrality of regimes in the existing literature generates blind spots in analyses about society’s perceptions of autocratization. Subsequently, we elaborate on our concept of “agents of resistance” and describe how these agents engage in different resistance repertoires against the state. We then discuss some methodological trends with regards to the existing literature. Finally, we conclude with brief introductory summaries of the articles in this special issue.

Autocratization syndrome in Asia

Advances by populist autocrats at the turn of the twenty-first century have intensified apprehension about the state of contemporary democracy. Some have depicted these notable trends in terms of democratic backsliding,⁶ democratic erosion,⁷ or democratic regression.⁸ Others have dubbed these global tides the “third wave of autocratization” to depict the institutional decline of democratic attributes,⁹ or regime transitions towards autocracy.¹⁰ Larry Diamond warned of this trend when he concluded, “We are perilously close to and indeed have probably already entered what Huntington would have called a ‘third reverse wave’, that is, a period in world history in which the number of transitions away from democracy significantly outnumber those to democracy.”¹¹

In this special issue, we define “autocratization” as a process of culminating autocratic qualities within any regime type, including hybrid and democratic regimes, rather than as the negation of democratic institutional attributes or regime transitions. Thinking of autocratization as a continuous and overarching concept independently from democratization allows us to locate critical autocratization developments in a porous, elusive, and fluctuating process. Most importantly, it accommodates contemporary developments that have displayed a plethora of innovative authoritarian and illiberal practices that do not uniformly manifest in changes to core democratic institutions.¹² The traction towards autocracy in recent years has been “substantive and dynamic rather than negative and systemic,”¹³ “gradual and subtle” rather than sudden and dramatic.¹⁴

This conceptualization of “autocratization” is an attempt at avoiding nascent debates in the political science literature over regime transition, particularly democratic backsliding.¹⁵ As a first-order concept, this conceptualization accommodates a continuum of characteristics that does not necessarily culminate in specific junctures of autocratic consolidation, democratic breakdown, regression, or backsliding. Moreover, it is also flexible enough to allow us to identify and include in this special issue societal groups’ “perceptions of regime autocratization” as a second-order variable. We define this variable as the degree to which specific societal groups believe that a regime is undergoing autocratization. This variable is separate and distinct from whether the regime is actually substantively autocratizing or not.

Accordingly, the Asian countries studied in this special issue have shown a syndrome of autocratization that is both familiar and distinct. Regimes like Vietnam have remained staunchly authoritarian. Under Nguyen Phu Trong’s leadership, the Vietnamese communist regime has clenched its fist by centralizing party rule, regulating cyberspace, and cracking down on civil society.¹⁶ Elsewhere, autocratization has made measurable advances through the breakdown of the electoral process, disbandment of opposition parties, and volatile regime change that resemble past patterns and conventional autocratic repertoires. The overt seizures of power by the military juntas in Thailand in 2014 and in Myanmar in 2021 marked an abrupt reversal to autocracy after an interregnum of democratic rule. Myanmar has since plunged more deeply into civil war between the Tatmadaw (the military) and the National Unity Government (the government in exile). In Thailand, the first electoral return in 2019 did not signify the restoration of democracy but rather a step towards the institutionalization of authoritarian rule.¹⁷

In other cases, autocratization has stretched over a long durée in legalistic institutions. In Singapore, a series of legislations passed in parliament within the past decade have strengthened executive powers to act against state-identified criticisms of the judiciary, online falsehoods, and foreign interference.¹⁸ These legislations have drawn staunch denunciation from opposition parties and progressive civil society groups who allege that the legislation stifles dissent against the government. Similarly, in Malaysia, colonial-era legislation that empowered the government of the day to crack down on the opposition has persisted over time. Most notably, the country’s Sedition Act of 1948, which empowers the government to investigate and arrest persons who engage in conducts of “seditious tendency,” has remained, even with numerous pre-electoral promises to repeal it. As the dominant autocratic Barisan Nasional’s popularity waned after the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, it used these repressive laws to repeatedly justify repression against anti-government protestors and reform activists over the next two decades. To this day, these laws have remained on the books even as opposition parties toppled the autocratic incumbent for the first time in 2018, and again in 2022.¹⁹

Autocratization has also unfolded through espoused popular will under democracies. Situated against the institutional failings of the Philippine weak state, Duterte’s strongman rule has garnered widespread popular support and even the highest approval ratings compared to past presidents,²⁰ in spite of his blunt assaults on civil rights, executive aggrandizement, and excessive coercion.²¹ Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s landslide victory in the Philippine 2022 election again reinforces the popular appeal of strongman rule. The persistence of Indonesia’s democracy in Southeast Asia has too been called into question. Among other worrying signs shown by Indonesia, the viability of Prabowo's 2014 and 2019 election bids and the violent mob outbreak following the 2019 elections, as well as Islamist mobilization against sectarian activism and Jokowi’s heavy-headed repression in response, adhered to the pattern of culminating fine-grained autocratic attributes within democratic systems.²² In South Korea, autocratization has been a cascading process described as “to become soaked by a drizzle without noticing.”²³ It has been manifested in exacerbated polarization across political arenas as well as among society’s most ardent and civic participants on both the left and the right like the Taegukgi protesters and the Moon-ppa supporters, in combination with other symptoms.

Regime focus and neglect of societal perspective in autocratization studies

Much debate in the existing literature has centred on the causes, magnitude, and variation surrounding autocratization as a global phenomenon that is occurring in many countries, particularly from the vantage points of political regimes and elite actors. For example, the recent literature on autocratization emphasizes how incumbent regime elites sow polarization and disorder both online and offline to engage in executive aggrandizement.²⁴ The vast majority of the literature on democratization also repeats that emphasis on incumbents and elites. Whether incumbent elites split or defect,²⁵ decide whether to repress protests or not,²⁶ or strategically liberalize to preserve their power,²⁷ what elite actors do is frequently seen as pivotal to the rise and fall of democracy.

This has prompted Tomini, Gibril, and Bochev to plead for wider interests in “resistance against autocratization” as a field of inquiry.²⁸ In doing so, they offer a categorization of three main groups of actors: “institutional resisters” who inhabit formal state institutions; “political resisters” who are political elites and parties within and outside of state institutions; and “social resisters” that are constitutive of actors across societal spheres writ large.²⁹ Of these, lesser systematic attention has been paid to the who’s, how’s and why’s of mobilization by societal actors at the grassroots that stand up against, but who may also sometimes be in support of autocratization. In contrast, in the nascent literature that has examined resistance against autocratization, the majority emphasize how elite opposition party leaders can potentially forestall autocratization via more institutionalized tactics and strategies.³⁰

In this special issue, we take up the challenge put forth by Tomini, Gibril, and Bochev in two ways. First, we focus on “social resisters.” We develop a broad and novel concept called “agents of resistance” to encompass a wide variety of actors in both democracies and autocracies. We clarify this concept in the following section.

Second, more substantively, we study societal actors’ perceptions of regime autocratization, rather than simply assume their normative support for democracy. In the existing literature, the prevalent understanding of resistance is heavily tainted with the lens of regime types, in which resistance is automatically assumed and treated as fighting for or in defense of democratic values and institutions while the absence of resistance is associated with acquiescence to authoritarian rule. While some of the cases from East and Southeast Asia examined in this special issue aptly fit the conventional view of resistance as “standing up against autocratization,” others shed a different light that directly questions this rigid and assumed link. Instead, they reveal that some societal groups are merely responding to particular policies that are deemed to be unjust, and vying for the protection of their own social group against the perceived autocratizating actions of the state. Thus, even as many of the resistance movements confront and refute the ruling regimes, they do not always articulate or identify their own causes in terms of democratization or anti-autocratization.

Conceptualizing agents of resistance

As mentioned earlier, this special issue departs from the existing literature’s emphasis on opposition parties and traditional civil society actors. Several important studies have focused on the roles and strategies of opposition parties.³¹ Because opposition parties are typically better resourced, organized, and well connected to significant segments of the public, they are frequently thought most suitable to be on the frontlines defending democracy. Opposition parties can mobilize street protests, use their limited powers in parliament to block autocratizing legislation, or induce media outlets to expose autocratization and spark public outcry. Even when voters are polarized and are willing to sacrifice democracy at the altar of partisan gains,³² opposition parties can play a crucial role in actively defusing polarization and restoring the middle ground to fortify democracy.³³

Others have primarily focused on civil society actors.³⁴ Building upon a tradition in political science that views civil society as democracy’s midwives,³⁵ these studies assume that liberal non-governmental organizations that advocate for human rights or free media would naturally become democracy’s defenders as well. Numerous studies have shown that an active, resourceful, united, and resilient civil society sector can indeed act as a bulwark against autocratization through protest mobilization and civic education.³⁶ Where and when civil society is split or co-opted, however, autocratization is more likely to occur.³⁷ Populists and autocrats are likely to prey on ideological or partisan divisions in civil society to deepen societal discontent and legitimize their autocratizing actions.³⁸

In this special issue, however, we do not make any assumptions about who exactly is resisting and what regime type they are resisting against. We simply allow for the idea that “agents of resistance” who organize and mobilize against autocratization – actual and/or perceived – may be found anywhere and everywhere, potentially in unexpected places beyond simple categories of opposition parties and civil society. These agents, as conceptualized in this special issue, can include everyday citizens, communal activists, youth activists, as well as those constantly traversing the boundaries between regime support and anti-regime movements. As far as possible, we let the agents define their own narratives and explain their own motives. In this sense, we widen our empirical scope of inquiry to reflect everyday sentiments and perceptions of the processes of autocratization and its resistance more accurately.

Our proposed conceptualization reflects the complex reality of resistance under both authoritarian and democratic regimes. In autocracies, agents of resistance face extra barriers to organize and mobilize and thus exhibit decentralized, polycentric and reticulate features. The Thai youth movement,³⁹ civil society organizations in Malaysia,⁴⁰ and the anti-military factions in Myanmar⁴¹ all to a large extent operate via decentralized, but still collaborative, networks. Many participate in the resistance not because of rank-and-file mobilization but rather in a self-initiative manner, and through their connections with like-minded groups physically and virtually.

In democracies, however, broader freedoms of expression and assembly make it much easier for illiberal groups to legitimately organize and mobilize. But insofar as these illiberal groups are oftentimes viewed as dangerous to democracy, the Indonesian and South Korean cases suggest that these groups organize and mobilize because of their grievances against what they perceive as the autocratizing actions of the regime, regardless of whether the regime is actually substantively autocratizing or not. The case of Indonesia illustrates well how illiberal anti-pluralist Islamist groups became at the forefront of the fight against what they perceive as an illiberal turn in Indonesia as the Jokowi administration implemented a series of repressive measures to target and cripple Islamist opposition.⁴² Similarly, the elderly participants in the Taegukgi rallies in South Korea, a constituency with links to the country’s authoritarian legacy, mobilized to preserve what they perceive to be injustice and their shrinking civic space.⁴³

Mundane and cumulative resistance repertoires

We simultaneously undertake a nuanced reexamination of the forms of resistance in this special issue. In his classic study of resistance repertoires, Tilly conceptualizes the modern protest repertoire as moderate, public claim-making using symbolic demonstration of worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment.⁴⁴ This perspective is also reflected in conventional surveys such as the Asian Barometer, which only provide collective action options based on modern repertoires such as attending protests, signing petitions, and contacting politicians. However, the “classic social movement agenda” relies on the existence of autonomous social movements to organize, frame, and direct contention, and subsequent research contains “built-in affinities with relatively democratic social movement politics” that has limited explanatory power in non-democratic context.⁴⁵

As James Scott underscores in Weapons of the Weak, subordinate groups throughout history have seldom been afforded the luxury of open and organized political activity, such as mass protest, occupying public spaces, or signing petitions.⁴⁶ Agents of resistance that lack open, recognized political channels to process their demands are often likely to resort to indirect actions and attempts at moral shaming. This is especially critical for resistance movements under authoritarianism where political and societal space is tightly monitored and guarded by the ruling regimes. Under these circumstances, resistance movements often have to craft out nooks and crannies before engaging in collective actions or other resistance repertoires.

The articles in this special issue therefore push the boundary and discussion of resistance repertoires that agents of resistance undertake by (1) widening the scope of resistance repertoires beyond the conventional ones, and (2) highlighting the cumulative interactions from which particular repertoires emerge.

Moving beyond the dramatic display of collective actions, the collection of articles in this special issue brings forth the less glamorous and sometimes almost mundane activities. They include sharing a residency with fellow activists, coordinating volunteer development camps among Thailand’s youth activists, navigating a community’s administrative issues, and organizing to distribute food. The articles reveal how these seemingly mundane or routine activities are actually platforms for building networks and communities, which become potential sources and reservoirs of trust to engage in resistance against autocratization over time.

Consequently, the emergence and sustainability of a resistance repertoire depends on the given social or political context, on the form of resistance already known in a population, and on the grievances a given form is appropriate to express.⁴⁷ Our articles in this special issue particularly highlight the cumulative interactions among agents of resistance to underscore the historical and sequential development of resistance repertoires. In the authoritarian context where civic space is highly constricted, repeated interactions over time among agents of resistance especially play a pivotal role in building trust and crafting out a space where sustainable networks can weather the regime’s repressive tactics.⁴⁸ This is the case of the youth network in Thailand, and CSO leaders in Malaysia.

To be sure, some repertoires can also be the outcome of cumulative interactions between agents of resistance and the state. For instance, in confronting the repressive state, activists in Dong Tam, Vietnam learn to exploit the institutionalized framework established by the government. State agents also learn to extract lessons from fierce and even lethal pushbacks from agents of resistance to device counter-resistance tactics. Dong Tam authority leveraged prerogatives within the authoritarian framework to further quell resistance. Meanwhile, local administrators in Myanmar avoided becoming the “soft” target of assassinations by building working relationships with the local community, which to some extent secured some breathing room for the resistance movement.

Methodological complications in studying resistance

There are at least two methodological features about the political science literature surrounding resistance. In the first instance, studies are typically divided on whether they undertake cross-country comparisons or are single-country case studies. Cross-country comparisons usually utilize the “controlled comparison” research design, where variation in resistance against autocratization is compared across two or three most similar countries. This type of research design balances demands for internal validity against insights for external validity through process tracing within cases and comparing representative variation across cases.⁴⁹ For example, Thompson compared the different trajectories of contested autocratization in Thailand versus successful autocratization in the Philippines.⁵⁰ Other notable studies by Laebens and Lührmann,⁵¹ which compares Benin, Ecuador, and South Korea, Gamboa,⁵² which compares Venezuela and Columbia, alongside Croissant and Kim⁵³ comparing South Korea and Taiwan, and many others,⁵⁴ also use this “controlled comparison” research design. Of course, while there are some cross-country studies that use large N cross-national statistical analyses, they are relatively much fewer.⁵⁵

By contrast, most other studies of resistance against autocratization undertake single-country case studies. Such case studies are reflective of the recent rise of single-country case studies in political science, which privilege internal validity and causal inference when they are embedded with complementary qualitative or quantitative research designs.⁵⁶ Most notably, the headline grabbing Donald Trump presidency between 2017 and 2021 has motivated a number of prominent studies analysing the possibilities and potential of societal resistance against autocratization in the United States alone. Other similar single-country studies include Carey et al.⁵⁷ in the United States, Tung and Kasuya⁵⁸ in Hong Kong, Svolik⁵⁹ in Venezuela, and Aspinall et al.⁶⁰ and Metzner⁶¹ in Indonesia, alongside many other studies.⁶²

Regardless of whether studies of resistance are cross-national comparisons or single-country case studies, the existing literature generally combines semi-structured interviews of key actors with process tracing of proposed causal theories and counterfactuals. The typical goal is threefold: (a) to describe in detail the key actions that actors undertook in resisting autocratization from their perspective, (b) to gain primary evidence to clarify what the motivations of these actors were, and, in so doing, (c) verify or falsify the proposed theoretical arguments. Take Gamboa’s study for instance.⁶³ Her eighty-eight interviews with key political elites, including judges, journalists, and politicians, concluded that variation in opposition resistance strategies against democratic erosion in Colombia and Venezuela lead to divergent autocratization outcomes.

The articles in this special issue generally reflect the methodological inclinations of the existing literature in their focus on single country case studies, or cross-national controlled comparisons of a few countries, deployed in combination with field interviews and process tracing. Heeding the calls of some political scientists to get description right in the first place,⁶⁴ the articles do not necessarily privilege internal or external validity in a quest to uncover causality. Instead, the articles have focused on clarifying accurately who the agents of resistance are, what they believe in and perceive their empirical realities to be, and why they are motivated to act in certain ways to resist perceived regime autocratization. By letting the actors speak for themselves, we are able to consider and generate alternative theoretical perspectives of resistance.

Crucially, the articles in this special issue also demonstrate another important methodological point – how crucial contextual knowledge and long-term fieldwork are in motivating and substantiating both quantitative and qualitative research, especially when studying agents of resistance.

In the first instance, immersive and rigorous fieldwork helps scholars develop historical and contextual knowledge about their empirical cases, which further informs their theoretical analyses. For instance, it is only through understanding the historical and democratic contexts of contemporary South Korea and Indonesia that one can reflect on the democratically legitimate, yet illiberal roots of conservative right-wing South Korean elderly and Indonesian Islamists. Ditto for explaining the long-term historical divergence of civil society collective action in Malaysia and Singapore. Likewise, the authoritarian feedback and paradox of Vietnam’s responsiveness as well as the unparallel repression by the Duterte regime on the community pantries could only be properly understood and theorized with contextual knowledge and fine-grained grassroots accounts.

Secondarily, agents of resistance are unlikely to trust political scientists and reveal important information in a single interview, especially in authoritarian contexts. The repressive environments in which many operate make agents of resistance wary of the consequences of revealing sensitive information to strangers.⁶⁵ Reciprocal trust can only be generated through repeated interactions over time when the agents of resistance gain confidence and assurance that there will be no harm in the research procedures. The articles by Thawnghmung and Paw on Myanmar and Horatanakun on Thailand, for example, are impossible without deep reciprocal trust between the researchers and their interlocutors. For these reasons, tremendous efforts and time need to be invested in either long periods in the field or repeated short-term visits to field sites in order to cultivate trust and networks amongst key actors.⁶⁶ While fieldwork might be a lengthy and toiling process, studying agents of resistance especially requires such fieldwork, to say the least.

Contributions to the special issue

The articles in this special issue showcase our endeavour to study societal agents of resistance and their various repertoires regardless of regime types. The contributions uncover how and why these agents react to autocratization, the resolve and cumulation of their repertoires, and the liberal and illiberal bases of social resistance. The studies in this special issue further display the methodological rigour of immersive fieldwork and contextual knowledge required for providing fine-grained accounts of grassroots mobilization, and tracing the linkages within and across resistance and time.

The first group of articles fit in a more conventional view, in which the explicit goals of the agents of resistance concern slowing down and halting deepening autocratization, and even pushing for democratization. For instance, Horatanakun documents how the Thai youth movement formed underground youth activist networks as a rejection of the military-monarchy establishment and state repressions via legal and extra-institutional means.⁶⁷ Their years of cultivating friendships in underground spaces from the mid-2000s onwards sowed the seeds of the rise of the Future Forward Party in 2018, the youth protests in 2020 and 2021, and the Move Forward Party’s emergence as the largest elected political party in Thailand’s recently concluded 2023 general elections. Arguably, Thailand’s youths played a pivotal role in rescuing Thailand from the depths of authoritarianism partly back into democracy’s embrace.

Similarly, Ong and Syazwi document how and why civil society organizations (CSOs) in Malaysia engaged in collective action to pressure the government to engage in political reform for over two decades since the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s.⁶⁸ Psychologically motivated by high public interest in political reform and high public support for Malaysian CSOs, they become immune to repeated state autocratization and repression. Malaysia’s slow, but nevertheless upward trajectory towards liberalization and democratization is thus maintained. In stark contrast, Singaporean CSOs demur from engaging in collective action to pursue political reform due to a lack of public interest and support. Singapore’s status as an electoral authoritarian regime has thus persisted over the decades.

In Myanmar, the anti-military opposition resisted the return of authoritarianism when the military removed Aung San Suu Kyi with a coup. For them, especially in areas where anti-military residents are subjugated under the pro-military administration, resistance takes the form of assassination of local administrators who are non-military personnel and are considered an easy “soft” target. What Thawnghmung and Paw’s study especially elucidates is the ambiguous identity of these local administrators as both “agents of the state” and “agents of the revolution” under civil war and authoritarian settings.⁶⁹ Their responses to the military coup and administering of local governance structures depend on the strength of anti-military resistance movements as well as the specific authorities controlling the areas – be it the State Administrative Council the (SAC), non-state armed groups hostile to SAC, non-state armed groups not hostile to the SAC, or ethnic armed groups.

Through a granular account of the violent clash between villagers and authorities in the Dong Tam land conflict, the deadliest in Vietnam’s contemporary history, Truong and Trinh develop a feedback theory that explains why and how authoritarian responsiveness can subsequently heighten, rather than diminish, contentiousness between citizens and authorities.⁷⁰ Notably, Dong Tam villagers faced with the government’s land seizures acted as agents of their own resistance by appropriating the institutionalized framework established by the government as their own public transcript of resistance for pressing and making their claims more explosive. By contrast, authorities also show agency in asserting their domination by exploiting the existing legal framework as an authoritarian playbook to limit their accommodations, dismiss citizens’ claims, and repress social resistance. The fact that violence remains the ultimate arbiter of state-society conflicts in the Dong Tam case ultimately attests to Vietnam’s authoritarian recalcitrance and the very limitations of its selective responsiveness.

On the flip side, the other contributions in this special issue demonstrate how and why agents of resistance in democracies mobilize against perceived autocratization to defend their political space and the status of their affiliated groups. Most significantly, with close attention to historical and empirical contexts, two studies reveal how these agents legitimately exercise their rights in pursuit of anti-pluralist illiberal causes under democracy.

Indonesia’s anti-pluralist extremist Islamist opposition is a clear example. Fossati’s article begins by recounting how extremist Islamist groups have organized and mobilized ahead of and in response to Indonesian President Jokowi’s repressive exclusion.⁷¹ Consequently, Fossati’s analysis of his original survey in Indonesia reveals that the more Islamist respondents are, the more likely they are to perceive that Indonesia is undergoing democratic backsliding. They are also less likely to believe that their views are represented by Indonesian politicians and political parties. Ultimately, Fossati’s findings suggest that anti-pluralist forces cannot be simplistically labelled as antidemocratic as they often channel legitimate demands, and are mobilizing against what they themselves perceive as the autocratizing actions of the state.

Similarly, Lee analyse the organization and mobilization of another illiberal conservative right-wing social force – the South Korean elderly. Socialized in conservative ideologies with memories rooted in the country’s authoritarian past, the elderly participants of the Taegukgi rallies in South Korea collectively organized and mobilized in one of the country’s largest street protests between 2016 and 2019.⁷² Lee’s numerous interviews with rally participants revealed that they perceived the impeachment of conservative President Park Geun Hye were unjust, and that the new liberal President Moon Jae In’s policies to be repressive and exclusionary, much like Jokowi’s policies in Indonesia. In other words, they perceived that the state was autocratizing against their own causes. Given these dynamics, the intense polarization between the conservatives and liberals seems destined to be entrenched in the near future.

Finally, Lero’s account of the community pantry movement in the Philippines demonstrates an example of elusive resistance against autocratization in a democracy.⁷³ Devoid of any explicit political affiliation, the community pantries were organized with the sole intention to offset the economic hardship brought on by Duterte’s harsh Covid pandemic policies. Yet, Lero’s analysis illustrated that even apolitical civic engagement can be reflective of some underlying form of resistance in a democratic but autocratizing setting. Barangays (districts) with high community pantries per capita are associated with stronger support for the pro-democracy opposition candidate Leni Robredo as compared to Marcos Jr., the namesake son of the former dictator of the Philippines. Although ultimately Marcos Jr. won the election, Lero’s work reveals the crucial and often overlooked dynamics in which apolitical civic engagement could be activated and translated to electoral outcomes.

With such a broad range of perspectives about the agency of societal actors and their iterated, cumulative repertoires of resistance in different regime types in East and Southeast Asia, this special issue thus contributes to a wider recognition of the nuanced complexities of resistance against autocratization. It is our aim that insights from the studies will facilitate further scholarship on these dynamics and enrich these fields of studies. Importantly, scholarship on democratization should be keenly cognizant of both liberal and illiberal agents and their repertoires of resistance, if only to be more theoretically and empirically precise about their subsequent impacts on the global future of democracy.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for comments and feedback from the editors of Democratization Aurel Croissant and Jeffrey Haynes. We would also like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the participants and discussants at the special issue workshop, particularly, Aries Arugay, Aurel Croissant, Jean Hong, Paul Hutchcroft, Steven Oliver, Tom Pepinsky, Ho Ming Sho, Ardeth Thawnghmung, and Forrest Zhang.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Contributions to this special issue were discussed at a workshop hosted by the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. The workshop was jointly funded by the American Political Science Association Asia Workshop Alumni Professional Development Grant and the Singapore Ministry of Education AcRF Tier 1 Grant FY2021-FRC3-005.

Notes on contributors

Nhu Truong

Nhu Truong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Affairs at Denison University, and is a Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholars Network Fellow and a Rosenberg Institute Scholar. Truong specializes in the study of authoritarian politics and social resistance in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. Her research maps the shifting parameters of repressiveness-responsiveness in authoritarian regimes and illuminates the contentious dynamics of people's resistance particularly in Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. Truong has published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and with Cambridge University Press, and is a co-editor of The Dragon's Underbelly: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Vietnam's Economy and Politics.

Elvin Ong

Elvin Ong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore, and is a Singapore SSRC Social Science and Humanities Research Fellow. He researches democratization in East and Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on the role of opposition parties. His first monograph, Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies, was published by the University of Michigan Press, Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies book series in 2022.

Maggie Shum

Maggie Shum is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Penn State Erie, the Behrend College. Her research interests include transnational contentious politics, social movement, and diasporas politics. Her works focus on how diasporas (re)construct their collective identity abroad, and how they navigate the dual loyalty - concerns for the homeland and their well-being in the host country, with a focus on Hong Kong diasporas in the US. Her academic works were published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Japanese Journal of Political Science, and Local Development and Society.

Notes

1 Croissant and Haynes, “Democratic Regression in Asia,” 3; Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century.

2 Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, 31.

3 Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding.”

4 Ding and Slater, “Democratic Decoupling.”

5 Cleary and Öztürk, “When Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown?”

6 Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding”; Coppedge, “Eroding Regimes”; Waldner and Lust, “Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding.”

7 Gerschewski, “Erosion or Decay?”

8 Diamond, “Democratic Regression in Comparative Perspective.”

9 Lührmann and Lindberg, “A Third Wave of Autocratization is Here,” 1096.

10 Cassani and Tomini, “Reversing Regimes and Concepts,” 277.

11 Diamond, “Democratic Regression in Comparative Perspective,” 39.

12 Yew and Zhu, “Innovative Autocrats?”; Ding and Slater, “Democratic Decoupling.”

13 Glasius, “What Authoritarianism Is … and Is Not,” 523.

14 Curato and Fossati, “Authoritarian Innovations,” 1012.

15 See the American Political Science Association Annual Conference 2023 Panel on “PS Roundtable on Democratic Backsliding” at https://tinyurl.com/2aes9s2n, last accessed on September 25, 2023. This roundtable is motivated by the paper by Little and Meng, “Measuring Democratic Backsliding,” which argues that there is no global trend of democratic backsliding.

16 Truong and Vu, The Dragon’s Underbelly.

17 Ricks, “Thailand’s 2019 Vote,” 444.

18 Tan and Preece, “Democratic Backsliding in Illiberal Singapore”; Abdullah, “‘New Normal’ No More.”

19 Weiss, “Is Malaysian Democracy Backsliding or Merely Staying Put?”

20 Cruz, “Duterte Bowing out with High Ratings.”

21 Garrido, “The Ground for the Illiberal Turn in the Philippines”; Kasuya and Calimbahin, “Democratic Backsliding in the Philippines”

22 Power and Warburton, Democracy in Indonesia: From Stagnation to Regression?

23 Shin and Moon, “South Korea After Impeachment”; Shin, “Korean Democracy is Sinking under the Guise of the Rule of Law.”

24 Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding”; Gandhi, “The Institutional Roots of Democratic Backsliding”; Hunter, “Social Media, Disinformation, and Democracy”; Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die; Mietzner, “Sources of Resistance to Democratic Decline”; Pepinsky, “Southeast Asia”; Somer, McCoy, and Luke, “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies”; Svolik, “Polarization versus Democracy”; Svolik, “When Polarization Trumps Civic Virtue”; Waldner and Lust, “Unwelcome Change.”

25 O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule; Reuter and Gandhi, “Economic Performance and Elite Defection from Hegemonic Parties”; Reuter and Szakonyi, “Elite Defection under Autocracy.”

26 Bhasin and Gandhi, “Timing and Targeting of State Repression in Authoritarian Elections”; Lee, Defect or Defend; Shen-Bayh, “Strategies of Repression.”

27 Riedl et al., “Authoritarian-Led Democratization”; Slater and Wong, “The Strength to Concede.”

28 Tomini, Gibril, and Bochev, “Standing up Against Autocratization Across Political Regimes.”

29 Ibid.

30 Cleary and Öztürk, “When Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown?”; Gamboa, “Opposition at the Margins”; Laebens and Lührmann, “What Halts Democratic Erosion?”; Lührmann, “Disrupting the Autocratization Sequence”; Thompson, “Pushback after Backsliding?”

31 Gamboa, “Opposition at the Margins”; Trantidis, “Building an Authoritarian Regime”; Cleary and Öztürk, “When Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown?”; Lührmann, “Disrupting the Autocratization Sequence”; Bernhard et al., “Parties, Civil Society, and the Deterrence of Democratic Defection”; Somer, McCoy, and Luke, “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies.”

32 Svolik, “When Polarization Trumps Civic Virtue”; Graham and Svolik, “Democracy in America?”; Arbatli and Rosenberg, “United We Stand, Divided We Rule.”

33 Somer, McCoy, and Luke, “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies.”

34 Bolleyer, “Civil Society, Crisis Exposure, and Resistance Strategies.”

35 Alagappa, Civil Society and Political Change in Asia; Way, “Civil Society and Democratization.”

36 Bernhard et al., “Parties, Civil Society, and the Deterrence of Democratic Defection”; Rakner, “Don’t Touch My Constitution!”; Pospieszna and Pietrzyk-Reeves, “Responses of Polish NGOs Engaged in Democracy Promotion to Shrinking Civic Space”; VonDoepp, “Resisting Democratic Backsliding.”

37 Mietzner, “Sources of Resistance to Democratic Decline”; Jezierska, “Coming out of the Liberal Closet”; Lorch, “Elite Capture, Civil Society and Democratic Backsliding in Bangladesh, Thailand and the Philippines.”

38 Lührmann, “Disrupting the Autocratization Sequence.”

39 See Horatanakun, “The Network Origin of Thailand’s Youth Movement.”

40 See Ong and Syazwi. “Civil Society Collective Action Under Authoritarianism.”

41 See Thawnghmung and Paw, “‘Agents’ of the State or Society?”

42 See Fossati, “Illiberal Resistance to Democratic Backsliding.”

43 See Lee, Defect or Defend.

44 Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution.

45 McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, The Dynamics of Contention.

46 Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.

47 Stinchcombe, “Review of The Contentious French,” 1248.

48 Truong, “Opposition Repertoires Under Authoritarian Rule”; Shum, “When Voting Turnout Becomes Contentious Repertoire.”

49 Slater and Ziblatt, “The Enduring Indispensability of the Controlled Comparison.”

50 Thompson, “Pushback after Backsliding?”

51 Laebens and Lührmann, “What Halts Democratic Erosion?”

52 Gamboa, “Opposition at the Margins.”

53 Croissant and Kim, “Keeping Autocrats at Bay.”

54 Cleary and Öztürk, “When Does Backsliding Lead to Breakdown?”; Lorch, “Elite Capture, Civil Society and Democratic Backsliding in Bangladesh, Thailand and the Philippines”; Rakner, “Don’t Touch My Constitution!”; VonDoepp, “Resisting Democratic Backsliding”; Trantidis, “Building an Authoritarian Regime”; Thompson and Cheng, “Transgressing Taboos.”

55 Arbatli and Rosenberg, “United We Stand, Divided We Rule”; Grömping, “Agents of Resistance and Revival?”; Sato and Arce, “Resistance to Populism”; Somer, McCoy, and Luke, “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies”; Bernhard et al., “Parties, Civil Society, and the Deterrence of Democratic Defection.”

56 Pepinsky, “The Return of the Single-Country Study.”

57 Carey et al., “Who Will Defend Democracy?”

58 Tung and Kasuya, “Resisting Autocratization.”

59 Svolik, “When Polarization Trumps Civic Virtue.”

60 Aspinall et al., “Elites, Masses, and Democratic Decline in Indonesia.”

61 Mietzner, “Sources of Resistance to Democratic Decline.”

62 Ryan and Tran, “Democratic Backsliding Disrupted”; Tang and Cheng, “Affective Solidarity”; Bee, “The Civic and Political Participation of Young People in a Context of Heightened Authoritarianism”; Erçetin and Boyraz, “How to Struggle with Exclusionary Right-Wing Populism”; Jezierska, “Coming out of the Liberal Closet.”

63 Gamboa,“Opposition at the Margins.”

64 Gerring, “Mere Description.”

65 Morgenbesser and Weiss, “Survive and Thrive.”

66 Irgil et al., “Field Research”; Mosley, Interview Research in Political Science; Kapiszewski, MacLean, and Read, Field Research in Political Science.

67 Horatanakun, “The Network Origin of Thailand’s Youth Movement.”

68 Ong and Syazwi, “Civil Society Collective Action Under Authoritarianism.”

69 Thawnghmung and Paw, “‘Agents’ of the State or Society?”

70 Truong and Trinh, “Agrarian Agitations.”

71 Fossati, “Illiberal Resistance to Democratic Backsliding.”

72 Lee, “Protectors of Liberal Democracy or Defenders of Past Authoritarianism?”

73 Lero, “Is Community Service an Act of Political Resistance?”