The Paradoxes of “Vernacularised” Liberalism in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

In response to “indigenous” justifications of illiberalism (e.g., “Asian values”) and the cronyism of electoral authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia, some pro-democracy activists constructed a “vernacularised” liberal discourse that framed demands for human rights and “good governance” in religious-communalist terms. This countered charges that activists were overly Westernised and supported their calls for ethical rule. Yet, after authoritarian rule gave way to democratic transition, liberals often turned against elected governments or were reluctant to challenge extremists who targeted ethno-religious minorities. In analysing these paradoxes, this article uses a contextualist rather than a stipulative, benchmarking approach that ignores contradictions in Western liberalism. Anti-majoritarianism in the Philippines and Thailand was driven by the fear that corrupt populists threatened religious-communalist values, with liberals ultimately turning against democracy. Another paradox is that in Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar liberals first used culturalist arguments to justify upholding civil liberties, but later became reluctant to criticise exclusivist forms of ethno-nationalism that endangered human rights. In the face of democratic backsliding in Southeast Asia, liberalism is being reconfigured, for instance through resistance by a middle-class youth movement against military-monarchical rule in Thailand, through multi-ethnic resistance to the 2021 coup in Myanmar, and by traditionalist Islamic groups in Indonesia.

KEYWORDS:

• Liberalism
• authoritarianism
• democracy
• culturalism
• majoritarianism
• minority rights
• Southeast Asia

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the editor, David Hundt, and the regional editor, Patrick Jory, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments, criticisms, questions, and suggestions for revisions. The author also wishes to express appreciation to Michael Connors who co-organised the workshop “Localizing Liberalisms in Southeast Asia” on 16 May 2019 at the Southeast Asia Research Centre, City University of Hong Kong where this article and others, including those in this Special Issue, were first presented.

Notes

1. These labels are a mixture of self-named alliances (the Philippines’ Bishop-Businessmen’s Conference), political expressions used by leaders themselves (Aung San Suu Kyi’s invocation of Buddhist-style democracy in Myanmar), and those given by scholars: Thailand’s “royal liberalism” (Connors, 2008) and Indonesia’s “civil Islam” (Hefner, 2000). The point here is to illustrate the religious-communalist character of these hybrid alliances that conjoined political activists, businesspeople and religious leaders.

2. Combining the concepts of liberal democracy with good governance is also common in many variations of Western liberalism, which despite differences, share a concern with limited and accountable government alongside liberty and freedom (Freeden, 2015, p. 15).

3. William Gladstone, four-time British prime minister, can be described as a reluctant abolitionist who worked assiduously, both in politics and privately, to ensure slave owners, particularly his father, one of the country’s largest owners of slaves in the Caribbean, were generously compensated when slavery was finally abolished. This appeared paradoxical given Gladstone’s advocacy of Irish self-rule and concern for the average working man: his nickname was the “People’s William” and Acton called him one of Britain’s greatest liberals. As Quinault (2009) delicately put it: “His passionate commitment to liberty for oppressed peoples was seldom evident in his attitude to slavery”.

4. The term “sultanism”, coined by Max Weber to describe an extreme form of patrimonialism, was revived by Juan J. Linz. Criticised by some as orientalist, Chehabi and Linz (1998) used it in a nominalist sense in the interest of preserving continuity in social science terminology in understanding highly personalistic rule, which in Southeast Asia has been applied to the Marcos rule in the Philippines (Thompson, 1995) as well as Suharto’s in Indonesia.

5. The arrest of Catholic Church social activists critical of the government in “Operation Spectrum” in 1987 showed the PAP government’s sensitivity to criticism by religious organisations. But the Catholic Church, to which less than 6 per cent of Singaporeans belong, “lost both its independence and a vibrant element of its social conscience” after the arrests involving a supposed “Marxist conspiracy” and has since been largely apolitical (Barr, 2010).

6. It may be objected that this term hardly applies to a tycoon such as Thaksin with his union-busting ways. Estrada was close to several former Marcos cronies and thus also hardly a plausible advocate for the poor. The point here is that whatever the reality, in the context of the failure of neo-liberal economic reforms to improve the lot of the worst off in society, both politicians were perceived as champions of the disadvantaged.

7. Ironically, Anek (1996), who had once argued for a relativist view that in Thailand there were “two tales of democracy” – a middle-class “good governance”-influenced one and another in which the poor looked to politicians who would help them – changed his mind when Thaksin came to power. He accepted the narrative of bought voters and corrupted politicians. This led him to apocalyptic conclusions: “We must deal quickly with Thaksin-style populism before it destroys the nation completely” (Anek, 2006).

8. It is questionable whether there has ever been a “Catholic vote” in the Philippines. Estrada easily won the presidency in 1998 despite criticism from the country’s leading clerics and Fidel Ramos was elected president in 1992 despite being a Protestant. Duterte’s attacks on the Church have not had any noticeable political consequences. But the Church had emerged from the anti-Marcos struggle as a powerful actor that was also instrumental in the overthrow of Estrada (Barry, 2006; Hedman, 2001).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [11608917].