Political party and party system institutionalization in Southeast Asia: lessons for democratic consolidation in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand

Abstract

Is a higher degree of party and party system institutionalization positively correlated with the consolidation of democracy, defined here as the prevention of democratic breakdown? In order to answer this question, it is useful to compare different levels and types of institutionalization in three Southeast Asian electoral democracies. Institutionalized party systems are characterized, according to Mainwaring and Torcal, by ‘stability of interparty competition.’ Moreover, the distinction made by Levitsky (‘value infusion’ versus ‘behavioural routinization’) with reference to the institutionalization of individual parties will be employed. The empirical research of this paper finds that most Indonesian parties are better institutionalized than those in the Philippines and Thailand with reference to ‘value infusion.’ In addition, the interparty competition is more stable in Indonesia. Therefore, the probability of a collapse of the party system in the Philippines and Thailand is much higher. This, in turn, renders the democracies in these countries more fragile and prone to political crises or even sudden breakdowns. The early organizational consolidation of social cleavages, such as in Indonesia, enhances institutionalization. A few of the most important parties are socially rooted and have strong linkages to civil and/or religious organizations. Furthermore, the relationship between central and local elites appears to be essential: strong bosses or cliques undermine institutionalization in the Philippines and in Thailand, respectively. However, in recent years there has also been a tendency towards convergence. There are signs of regression in Indonesia, such that the future of the party system is open to question. This article calls for caution with respect to the stated causal relation between institutionalization and democratic consolidation, and it questions some aspects of the concept.

Keywords:

• Political party institutionalization
• party system institutionalization
• democratization
• Southeast Asia
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Thailand

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). An earlier version of this paper was presented in Berlin on 7 June 2006 at the ‘Die Institutionalisierung politischer Parteien’ (The Institutionalization of Political Parties) workshop which was organized jointly by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the GIGA. The author would like to thank Patrick Köllner, Marco Bünte, Amanda Kovacs and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Andreas Ufen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Asian Studies, which is part of the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, Germany.

Notes

^a Partido Demokratiko Pilipino – Lakas ng Bayan (Philippines Democratic Party – National Struggle).

^b Lakas National Union of Christian Democrats; Lakas – Christian Muslim Democrats.

^c Laban ng Makabayang Masang Pilipino, Struggle of the Nationalist Filipino Masses, comprising the LDP, NPC and PMP (Partido ng Masang Pilipino, Party of the Philippine Masses).

^d Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino, Struggle for Democratic Filipinos.

^e Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino, Partner of the Free Filipino.

^a Fusion with Thai Rak Thai.

^b Thais United National Development Party: a merger of Thais United and the National Development Party.

1. Thailand has been categorized as an electoral democracy for most of the time since 1992 and can be classified as such after the elections in December 2007.

2. See Baswedan (2004); Johnson Tan (2006); King (2003); Sherlock (2005).

3. On the full names of political parties for all three countries see Tables 1, 2, 3.

4. Mainwaring and Zoco (2007: 171f.) also see timing and sequence of the formation of democratic regimes and parties as critical explanatory variables.

5. To be sure, the toppling of Abdurrahman Wahid in 2001 by the People's Congress also indicated major weaknesses of the political system. But since then impeachment procedures have been newly defined so that the once-volatile relation between the presidency and the legislature has been stabilized.