https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8618-5629
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ABSTRACT
When individual civil society organizations (CSOs) in autocracies act collectively to campaign for a particular cause, they are more likely to succeed in pressuring an incumbent autocrat enact liberalizing reforms or resist democratic erosion. Under what conditions do CSOs engage in collective action for political reform in autocracies? The article argues that CSOs are more likely to act collectively for political reform when public interest in political reform and public support for CSOs is high. High public interest and support provides psychological motivation for collective action, psychological immunity from autocratic repression, and material immunity from a reliance on state funding. Increased salience and publicity from collective action further generates greater public interest and support. A positive collaborative equilibrium among CSOs ensues. However, when public interest and support is low, CSO leaders demur from collective action for fear of provoking the authoritarian state. A disinterested public demotivates CSO leaders, resulting in a negative collaborative equilibrium. We demonstrate this argument through a controlled comparison of divergent collaborative equilibriums for political reform in Malaysia and Singapore, utilizing original interviews with civil society activists in the two countries supported by public opinion data from the Asian Barometer and the World Values Survey.
Acknowledgments
The research was undertaken with approval from the Department Ethics Review Committee of the Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore. We would like to thank discussants and participants at the NUS Workshop on “Resistance and Opposition Repertoires under Authoritarianism in East and Southeast Asia”, at the Tohoku Workshop on “Authoritarianism and Historical Political Economy”, and at the APSA 2022 Annual Conference in Montreal Canada for their various comments. They include Tom Pepinsky, Paul Hutchcroft, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, Ellen Lust, Erik Kuhonta, Masaaki Higashijima, Yujin Woo, Wen-Chin Wu, Jean Hong, Erik Wang, Naosuke Mukoyama, and Austin Mitchell. All errors are ours.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See conference website at https://cpd.malaysianbar.org.my/product/joint-conference-gearing-up-for-ge-15-what-reforms-do-voters-want/ last accessed on 28 February 2023.
2 Throughout the paper, I use the terms “collaboration”, “collective action”, “cooperation” interchangeably. Conceptually, they all refer to the same idea of joint work to accomplish a specific goal.
3 See GMI’s description at https://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerakan_Mansuhkan_ISA last accessed on 28 February 2023.
4 See CSO Platform for Reform’s website at http://csoplatform.com/ last accessed on 28 February 2023.
5 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a process of reviewing human rights records of United Nations member states. See the 2020 report at https://www.aware.org.sg/2020/10/civil-society-groups-submit-universal-periodic-review-joint-report-2021-session/, and the 2010 report at https://maruah.org/2010/11/01/coalition-of-singapore-ngos-cosingo-submission-to-universal-periodic-review/ last accessed 28 February 2023.
6 See description of joint collaboration here https://pinkdot.sg/2021/06/upr/ last accessed on 28 February 2023.
7 Slater, Ordering Power.
8 Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation; Kydd, “Trust, Reassurance, and Cooperation.”
9 Deckers, Motivation.
10 Lorch, “Elite Capture, Civil Society and Democratic Backsliding”; Sinpeng, Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age.
11 Snow et al., “Introduction: Mapping and Opening Up the Terrain,” 1.
12 “Coalitions and the Organization of Collective Action,” 253.
13 Alagappa, Civil Society and Political Change in Asia, 9.
14 Bernhard et al., “Parties, Civil Society, and the Deterrence of Democratic Defection”; Merkel and Lührmann, “Resilience of Democracies”; Way, “Civil Society and Democratization.”
15 Snow and Soule, A Primer on Social Movements, 23.
16 Meyer, “Protest and Political Opportunities”; Van Dyke and Amos, “Social Movement Coalitions.”
17 Jiménez, “Contesting Autocracy.”
18 Edwards, McCarthy, and Mataic, “The Resource Context of Social Movements”; Opp, Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements.
19 Weiss, Protest and Possibilities.
20 Ong, “Electoral Manipulation, Opposition Power, and Institutional Change.”
21 Carey et al., “Who Will Defend Democracy?”; Graham and Svolik, “Democracy in America?”; Somer, McCoy, and Luke, “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies”; Svolik, “Polarization versus Democracy”; Svolik, “When Polarization Trumps Civic Virtue.”
22 Aspinall and Weiss, “The Limits of Civil Society.”
23 Slater, Ordering Power.
24 Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies.
25 Barr, “Beyond Technocracy”; Tan, “Meritocracy and Elitism in a Global City.”
26 George, Freedom from the Press; Ostwald, “Malaysia’s Electoral Process”; Tan, “Manipulating Electoral Laws in Singapore.”
27 The index is formed from the point estimates from a Bayesian factor analysis model of the indicators for the degree of government control over the CSO landscape (v2cseeorgs), the degree of government repression of CSOs (v2csreprss), and the degree of involvement of people in CSOs (v2csprtcpt).
28 Michael Coppedge et al., “V-Dem Dataset V13.”
29 Yue, “The Asian Financial Crisis.”
30 Peh, Standing Tall, 133–46.
31 Huxley, “Singapore in 2000,” 201.
32 Lee, “The Politics of Civil Society in Singapore”; Tan, “Democracy and the Grassroots Sector in Singapore.”
33 Chong, “Civil Society in Singapore”; Chua, “Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements.”
34 Ortmann, “Policy Advocacy in a Competitive Authoritarian Regime The Growth of Civil Society”; Ortmann, “Political Change and Civil Society Coalitions in Singapore.”
35 Chua, “Rights Mobilization”; Abdullah, “The Politics of Compromise.”
36 Yeoh and Huang, “Spaces at the Margins.”
37 Mutalib, “The Singapore Minority Dilemma”; Abdullah, “Managing Minorities in Competitive Authoritarian States.”
38 Slater, “Maladjustment,” 173.
39 Pepinsky, “Crises, Coalitions, and Change in Indonesia and Malaysia,” 123.
40 Felker, “Malaysia in 1998.”
41 Felker, “Malaysia in 1999”; Slater, “Maladjustment.”
42 Pepinsky, Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes.
43 Weiss, Protest and Possibilities.
44 Ong, Opposing Power.
45 Weiss, Protest and Possibilities, Chapter 6.
46 Khoo, The Bersih Movement and Democratisation in Malaysia.
47 Lim, “Engendering Civil Resistance.”
48 Lim, We Are Marching Now.
49 Ibid., 141.
50 Chan, “Democratic Breakthrough in Malaysia”; Khoo, The Bersih Movement and Democratisation in Malaysia.
51 Adcock and Collier, “Measurement Validity.”
52 Ong, “Electoral Manipulation, Opposition Power, and Institutional Change”; Ostwald, “How to Win a Lost Election”; Ostwald, “Malaysia’s Electoral Process”; Tan, “Manipulating Electoral Laws in Singapore”; Tan, “Ethnic Quotas and Unintended Effects.”
53 Singapore’s Asian Barometer survey does not report respondent trust in the election commission.
54 This is likely due to a recoding of the scale of trust. In the first three waves, trust was coded on a 4 point scale. In the last wave, trust was coded on a 6 point scale.
55 Informant E from Bersih. Interviewed on 26 February 2021. The 1MDB scandal involved the then-Prime Minister Najib Razak receiving monies into his personal bank account that were siphoned away from the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia. These monies were then used for electoral campaigning, amongst other purposes. For more details, see https://graphics.wsj.com/1mdb-decoded/.
56 Informant B from Maroon. Interviewed on 15 March 2021.
57 Informant A from organization Pink. Interviewed on 25 February 2021.
58 Informant E from Bersih. Interviewed on 26 February 2021.
59 Informant A from organization Pink. Interviewed on 25 February 2021.
60 Informant J from organization Blue. Interviewed on 18 February 2021.
61 Informant H from organization Orange. Interviewed on 12 February 2021.
62 Informant K from organization Red. Interviewed on 20 February 2021. Informant I from organization Yellow. Interviewed on 16 February 2021.
63 Informant F from organization Green. Interviewed on 9 February 2021.
64 Informant I from organization Yellow. Interviewed on 16 February 2021. Informant G from organization Green. Interviewed on 9 February 2021.
65 Ibid.
66 Weiss, Protest and Possibilities.
67 Informant A from organization Pink. Interviewed on 25 February 2021. Informant B from organization Maroon. Interviewed on 15 March 2021.
68 Informant E from Bersih. Interviewed on 26 March 2021.
69 Informant H from organization Orange. Interviewed on 12 February 2021.
70 Informant G from organization Green. Interviewed on 9 February 2021.
71 Informant I from organization Yellow. Interviewed on 16 February 2021.
72 Informant L from organization Purple. Interviewed on 24 February 2021.
73 Informant C from organization Grey. Interviewed on 17 March 2021.
74 Informant G from organization Green. Interviewed on 9 February 2021.
75 Ibid.
76 Author’s photo. Taken on 6 July 2022. From left to right, Tricia Yeoh (CEO of IDEAS think tank), Anthony Loke (Secretary-General of the Democratic Action Party), Ngeow Chow Ying (BERSIH Treasurer), and YB Dato Mohd Imran Tamrin (UMNO Selangor State Assemblyman for Sungai Panjang).
77 The bars in this graph do not add up to 100% because the proportion of non-response has been omitted from the graph for ease of interpretation. The percentages are calculated as a proportion of the entire sample.
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Elvin Ong
Elvin Ong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. He researches democratization in East and Southeast Asia, specifically focusing on the role of opposition parties. His first monograph, “Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies” was published in 2022 by the University of Michigan Press, Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies book series.
Syazwi Bin Rahmad
Syazwi Rahmad received his Bachelor's degree in Political Science with Highest Distinction from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2021. His research interest is in civil society, social movement, comparative politics and trade unionism. He is currently working in the non-profit sector with a focus on advocacy.