Perilous presidentialism in Southeast Asia?

ABSTRACT

Regional patterns have long been crucial to debates about presidentialism starting with the Latin American cases in which presidential systems were seen to have contributed to political instability. This special issue examines four cases of presidentialism in Southeast Asia. Both the ‘first’ wave of the presidentialism literature which focuses on ‘pure’ cases of presidentialism, and the ‘second’ wave, which concentrates on a complex mixture of presidentialism and other institutions, are relevant to Southeast Asia. Among ‘pure’ presidential systems, the Philippines appears to provide support to ‘the perils of presidentialism’ thesis given the collapse of democracy there several decades ago and periodic instability since then. But Indonesia, despite ostensibly having the additional institutional perils of multipartism, has proved stable. Among the hybrid cases of presidentialism, both Myanmar and Timor Leste have forged elite accommodation through creating presidential-style institutions, including one considered particularly unpromising for achieving political stability in the literature. Because presidentialism has been associated both with elite accommodation and stability as well as political conflict and instability, the Southeast Asia cases do not clearly demonstrate the dangers of presidentialism. They point instead to the relative lack of explanatory power of this institutional arrangement in understanding political stability.

KEYWORDS:

• Presidentialism
• multi-partyism
• power-sharing

José Antonio Cheibub (2014) points out that regional patterns have long been crucial to debates about the relative merits of presidentialism despite recent attempts to compile data sets to provide quantitative answers to these disputes. In particular, Juan J. Linz (1990a), who renewed¹ the debate about the relative ‘virtues’ or ‘vices’ of presidentialism, was motivated by a concern about presidentialism prompted by the breakdown of democracy in many Latin American countries in the 1960s and 1970s and, in particular, the example of Chile in 1973. Criticising Linz for drawing on a regionally skewed, Latin America-centric sample, Donald Horowitz (1990) showed how parliamentary institutions can create instability in multi-ethnic societies, primarily drawing on examples from sub-Saharan Africa. Horowitz argued that presidential systems may perform better in such a context because they provide greater reassure to those ethnic groups not currently in power. Using cross-regional evidence from Latin American, the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa, Paul Chaisty, Nic Cheesman, and Timothy Power (2014) argue that presidents can manage fragmented legislatures and build workable coalitions with a variety of strategies drawn from the ‘executive toolbox’. Recently, evidence from problems facing post-communist central and eastern European parliamentary systems has thrown new light on the debate about the relative merits/dangers of presidential and parliamentary rule (Cheibub, 2014).

The performance of the four Southeast Asian cases analyzed in this special issue thus contributes important additional country data and a further regional pattern to this discussion. While there is a somewhat dated literature about several of the cases of presidentialism in the region (Fukuyama, Dressel, & Chang, 2005; Rüland, Jurgenmeyer, Nelson, & Ziegenhain, 2005), there has been very little recent discussion besides that of Yuko Kasuya (2013) and her collaborators while newer comparative of studies of presidentialism have continued to exclude the Southeast Asian cases (e.g. Chaisty, Cheesman, & Power, 2014).

This special issue offers case study analysis of the four neglected but significant cases of presidentialism in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Timor Leste. Indonesia is the world's second most populous country with a presidential democratic system (and the largest in the developing world). It has also been a stable electoral democracy – the sturdiest in the Southeast – since it was established after the end of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998 (there had only been a very brief period of relatively democratic presidential rule in the 1950s). The Philippines, by contrast, is more similar to many of the Latin American cases being an older presidential system (with roots extending back to the late nineteenth century during revolutionary struggle against the Spanish and under U.S. ‘colonial democracy’). It has also been an unstable electoral democracy – martial law was declared in 1972. After free and fair elections were restored following the fall of dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986, there were several periods of instability and the Philippine democracy again faces a major challenge under the current strongman leadership of president Rodrigo R. Duterte.

The region also has two of the most recent cases of hybrid presidentialism in the world, Myanmar and Timor Leste. While Timor Leste can be seen as having established a form of semi-presidentialism, the case of Myanmar goes beyond even the complex categories of semi-presidential systems fashioned by Elgie (2011). The military in Myanmar created a hybrid presidential system that allowing power sharing with a popular opposition party. Timor Leste adopted a ‘president-parliamentary’ semi-presidential model which, despite being regarded in the literature as particularly prone to instability, has proved relatively resilient largely due to it being designed to accommodate competing elite groups.

In order to add to our cumulative and analytical understanding of presidentialism through an analysis of these Southeast Asian cases, it is vital that there be a clear understanding of the nature of presidentialism research and its relevance to this region. We then offer a brief examination of each case before concluding with a discussion about the relative lack of explanatory power presidentialist institutional arrangements have in regard to political instability in the region.

Presidentialism scholarship ‘waves’ and the Southeast Asian cases

The last three decades have witnessed several ‘waves’ of scholarship debating the effects of various regime types on democratic survival (Elgie, 2005, 2011). With the rapid political transitions in central and eastern European countries as well as those of the former Soviet Union, there was a growing demand for advice on the suitability of certain government systems. Driven by an institutional turn in political science, research revolved around the possible ‘perils’ of presidential and the ‘virtues’ of parliamentary institutions. While the first research wave debated the effects of ‘pure’ presidential or parliamentary regime types on democratic consolidation, the second research wave focused on the interplay of presidentialism and other institutions. Moreover, the dependent variables were also broadened to include good governance, effectiveness and conflict management as well (Elgie, 2005). At the same time, a research debate started about the effects of semi-presidentialism.²

The initial trigger of current debate about presidential systems was Linz's famous claim that parliamentarism was superior to presidentialism in maintaining political stability (Linz, 1990a, 1990b, 1994). Assessing the suitability of diverse systems of government for the consolidation of third wave's democracies, Linz (1994, pp. 6–8) put forward a number of arguments against presidential systems. He lamented the ‘dual legitimacy’ of presidentialism, referring to the fact that both president and legislatures enjoy electoral support and, consequently, neither can claim to the sole representative of the people. Institutional conflicts are also often exacerbated by the winner-take-all nature of presidential elections, which leaves the losers without any representation. Linz was also concerned with the rigidity of presidentialism and the lack of proper institutional mechanisms to overcome gridlock situations. In order to solve these conflicts, either the legislature may resort to impeaching the president, thus intensifying the constitutional crisis, or presidents may use their powers to govern over and above the legislature, thereby threatening the rule of law. In the midst of such confrontations, the military may be more willing to intervene. In short, presidentialism is seen to be far less conducive to democratic consolidation than parliamentarism. The latter provides more flexible solutions for young democracies, such as votes of no-confidence to remove leaders who have lost support among legislators. A number of critics raised objections, particularly due to Linz's case selection and implicit focus on Latin American presidentialism. Horowitz (1990), for instance, argued that in Africa parliamentary institutions create instability, while presidentialism with its checks and balances is often a better system in ethnically diverse societies (also see Stepan & Skach, 1993).

The second research wave resulted in a minimal consensus in favour of Linz's thesis (Elgie, 2005, p. 109), although the research focus shifted from the effect of ‘pure’ regime types to the effects of additional institutional configurations. In particular, examining the fundamental institutional variables of regime types in conjunction with other institutional variables – such as the election or party systems – scholars criticised the combination of fractionalised multi-party systems and presidentialism. Supporting Linz's general argument, Scott Mainwaring (1993, p. 199) demonstrates that in the period from 1967 to 1992 only very few stable democracies had presidential systems. He finds a correlation between stable presidential democracies and two-party systems and concludes that when multipartism and presidentialism are linked together the risks of political stability increase. According to Mainwaring, multipartism increases the likelihood of gridlock situations and ideological polarisation and makes inter-party coalition building more difficult. Mainwaring and Matthew Shugart (1997, p. 466) argue that presidentialism with a multi-party system ‘increases the likelihood of executive-legislative deadlock’. Providing another second wave institutional argument, Thomas Sedelius and Jonas Linde (2018) have shown in a large-N analysis that the ‘premier-presidential’ type of semi-presidentialism performs almost as well as parliamentary ones.

In Southeast Asia, the Indonesian and Philippine cases appear to offer promising insights to the first and second wave of debates about presidentialism as they are relatively ‘pure’ cases of this form of electoral democracy but, in the case of Indonesia, also have an institutional feature considered particularly problematic when part of a presidential system as discussed above: multipartism. Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach (1993, pp. 17–18) argue that the ‘essence of pure presidentialism is mutual independence’ of the chief executive and legislature. Proponents of this perilous presidentialism view suggest that gridlock between the two branches of government more likely to cause instability than in a unitary parliamentary system where no such potential conflict exists. Yet this has rarely been the case in Southeast Asia were ‘promiscuous power sharing’ between the chief executive and the legislature has prevailed (Slater, 2004; also see Case, 2011).

This is why the opposite scenario of a president overpowering other institutions, undermining horizontal accountability and leading to ‘delegative democracy’ (O’Donnell, 1994), has become more influential. Given her/his national mandate, a president is likely to claim to speak for all of the people as opposed to the portion of the electorate that voted for individual legislators (although taken as a whole of course, the legislature is equally national in character). This is conducive to a political style which O’Donnell (1994) has called delegative: in which a president attempts to subordinate the other branches of government. O’Donnell does not equate delegative democracy with presidentialism. But he does often cite examples of presidential regimes in Latin America. He argues that there victorious ‘presidential candidates in DDs [delegative democracies] present themselves as above both political parties and organised interests’ (O’Donnell, 1994, p. 60) meaning that ‘whoever wins the presidency’ claims entitlement ‘to govern as he or she sees fit’ (O’Donnell, 1994, p. 59). This is why he concludes presidentialism ‘has more affinity with DD than parliamentarianism’ (O’Donnell, 1994, p. 67, n. 11).³ He elaborates (1994, p. 60):

How could it be otherwise for somebody who claims to embody the whole of the nation? In this view, other institutions-----courts and legislatures, for instance--are nuisances that come attached to the domestic and international advantages of being a democratically elected president. Accountability to such institutions appears as a mere impediment to the full authority that the president has been delegated to exercise.

This is reminiscent of another one of Linz's key arguments against presidentialism: the de-stabilizing political style of presidential politics in which the president claims to represent the whole country, leading to intolerance of any opposition and rejection of institutional restraints (Mainwaring & Shugart, 1997, p. 14). In this sense, O’Donnell sees delegative democracy as a sub-set of presidentialism. Presidents consider themselves entitled to rule as they see fit, constrained only by their term of office. Horizontal accountability is severely weakened or undermined by a hegemonic president.

This does not necessarily mean that presidents will take advantage of weak checks and balances to abuse power. But if presidents prove to be ‘transgressive’ toward the political system they will seize the opportunity to make full use of their informal authority in an attempt to override any remain attempts to limit their authority. But presidents who do go beyond even the wide bounds of delegative democracy often face a showdown with the legislature and the courts. The result is political instability and often a major constitutional crisis (Mainwaring & Shugart, 1997; Shugart & Carey, 1992). Electoral democracy is likely to be threatened either by a ‘defensive’ coup of the president's enemies or by an autogolpe by the president himself.⁴

This transgressive variation of O’Donnell's ‘delegative democracy’ is similar to Fareed Zakaria's (1997) concept of ‘illiberal democracy’. The latter concept suggested that Western democracy involves not just free and fair elections but also constitutional checks and balances. Presidents who have hallowed out liberal restraints through their transgressive use of their delegative powers while continuing to be democratically legitimated can be understood as ‘illiberal democrats’, however much an oxymoron this may appear. A conceptual justification for this awkward pairing of apparent opposites is that illiberal democracy still falls short of ‘electoral authoritarianism’ in which not just civil liberties are threatened and constitutional restraints removed, but manipulation of the popular vote is so extensive that elections become mere ‘instruments of authoritarian rule’ (Schedler, 2006, p. 3).

At first glance the Philippines appears to be an apt case study for ‘first wave’ presidentialism theory which claims presidential electoral democracy to be more destabilising than its parliamentary counterpart. A relatively pure case of presidentialism (Rose-Ackerman & Desierto, 2011 have even dubbed it ‘hyper-presidentialism’ given the enormous powers of the president), its political system has gone through several cycles of instability since independence in 1946. Mark Thompson in this special issue argues that in the Philippine case one finds both the dangers of deadlock between the president and the legislature that resulted in the overthrow of a sitting president and that of powerful presidents overriding any potential checks to their power, leading to a 15 year dictatorship and the country's current illiberal rule. Yet these dual dangers are not necessarily attributable to the particular perils of presidentialism as similar difficulties faced by parliamentary Thailand over the last two decades in which a leader and his designated successors, accused of ruling imperiously, were toppled in several military coups.

Furthermore, another relatively pure case of presidentialism, Indonesia, has thus far has faced neither of these supposed dangers of presidentialism despite adopting a multi-party system which has been identified as a particularly unstable form of presidentialism (Mainwaring, 1993). One president in the world's largest archipelago was removed constitutionally while none of the others to date has seriously challenged the prevailing electoral democratic order. But that does not mean Indonesia has not faced challenges of its own. It has faced democratic stagnation given the prevalence of patronage and corruption (Dirk Tomsa in this special issue). Increasingly, as Andreas Ufen in this special issue argues, parties have been ‘presidentialised’, thus weakening the links between parties and social cleavages in the country although this is due to money politics and powerful oligarchs than to the nature of presidentialism itself.

The two other cases in Southeast Asia show a similar defiance of theoretical expectations, in this case regarding apparently perilous hybrid forms of presidentialism. But clearly these cases take us beyond the dichotomy of ‘pure’ forms of presidentialism and parliamentarianism that characterised the first and second wave debates about presidentialism To understand these hybrid cases, insights drawn from differentiating varying institutional aspects within ‘presidential’ systems are useful, particularly the those about semi-preisidentialism (Elgie, 2011) and about various aspects of presidentialism in Shugart and Carey (1992) that may exist in even unusual hybrid forms. Between the main poles of ‘pure’ presidentialism (mutual independence of the executive and legislative) and parliamentarism (executive-legislative power-sharing) are many hybrid presidential systems, with semi-presidentialism (an independent president alongside a prime minister sharing power with the legislation) being the most prominent. Yet there are other cases that do not fit even within this middle category, with Myanmar a prominent example. There, a supposedly crucial element of presidentialism, the separate popular election of chief executive, is missing. Yet an indirectly elected president is quite powerful and largely independent of the legislature, maintaining a strong presidential element in the political system.

There is a considerable disagreement in the literature on how to correctly classify Timor Leste's system of government. Although the majority of scholars agree on a form of semi-presidentialism, most of them differ whether the system follows a ‘president-parliamentary’ or ‘premier-presidential’ logic. According to Rui Graça Feijó in this volume it is at the borderline between these two, and the lines are particularly blurred due to the ambiguous relations between President and Prime Ministers. Feijó points out that uniquely in Southeast Asia semi-presidentialism was chosen in Timor Leste with the hope that it would create a form of government that would stabilise democracy. The drafting of the constitution by the Timorese Constituent Assembly was influenced by its judgements about the character of Timorese society which it believed semi-presidentialism could best navigate.

While Timor Leste is a case of quasi-decolonisation, having won its independence from Indonesia in 1999 after a long independence struggle and brutal repression, Myanmar is an example of presidentialism evolving out of military rule. Its presidential form of government has been adapted to preserve important military prerogatives through reserve domains of power (Linz & Stepan, 1996, p. 67). As Marco Bünte (in this special issue) shows, the military-drafted constitution created an unusual hybrid between presidentialism and parliamentarism with provisions for a powerful president elected only indirectly by both houses of parliament and the military. But the constitution provides for a very powerful position of the president and of the armed forces, who act as guardian of the political order and share power with civilian politicians in executive and legislative affairs. The first ‘civilian’ president and house speaker were actually ex-generals who, while jockeying for power, maintained largely cooperative form of executive-legislative relations. Although this elite arrangement seemed to be endangered by the overwhelming electoral victory by the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) in 2015, a power-sharing arrangement was sustained by inserting a semi-presidential element in the form of a state counsellor law establishing a unique semi-presidential system. This provision had to be inserted, since NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi was formally barred from the presidency. In this new quasi-semi-presidential order, the indirectly elected president stands next to a powerful state counsellor, who is formally responsible to parliament. Yet, as Bünte shows, the law is only valid for this legislative period and reflects how fragile the military-civilian consensus is.

How perilous presidentialism been in Southeast Asia?

In the following section, we examine, case by case, the potential perils of presidentialism for political stability in Southeast Asia. We begin with the more conventional cases of presidentialism in the Philippines and Indonesia, before turning to the hybrid types presidential systems have taken in Myanmar and Timor Leste. The authors in this special issue examine episodes of political instability and potential dangers posed to democracy within a larger context of both institutions and powerful stakeholders. Their conclusions differ according to the specifics of each case, but also reveal larger patterns. ‘Pure’ presidential systems have faced grave challenges (the Philippines) and looming threats (Indonesia), but these have come largely from outsider elites who challenge the cartelisation of politics by status quo powerholders. Hybrid systems in Myanmar and Timor Leste were both created to accommodate potentially competing elites and due to sufficient consensus to date they have survived, although their institutional design sometimes appeared unpromising.

The Philippines

Presidentialism has been ‘perilous’ to the Philippines’ democratic stability in two ways. On the one hand, there has been an important case of confrontation between the lower house and the chief executive that contributed to a political crisis that resulted in the extra-constitutional removal of a sitting president, Joseph Estrada in 2001. Yet such an impasse between the legislative and executive branches has been the exception in the Philippine context where patronage controlled by the president usually insures strong congressional majorities for the incumbent with mass defections from ‘opposition’ parties. Philippine parties are quite ‘weak’ and under-institutionalized as they lack strong societal roots or clear party platforms (Hicken, forthcoming; Manasca & Tan, 2005). Parties are dependent on oligarchs’ financial support and built around personalities not platforms (Quimpo, 2008, p. 277). Lacking internal discipline, parties are electoral vehicles which employ clientelist ties not programmatic appeals to win voters’ support. Although generally seen as harmful to the quality of Philippine democracy due to the lack of electoral accountability, weak parties help avoid the gridlock which Linz warned often made presidentialism perilous. Instead, the fluid party system explains why every post-Marcos president has been able to, at least initially, put together a clear large legislative majority through offers of patronage.

This points to another aspect of Philippines presidentialism to be found at what appears to be the opposite end of the spectrum of ‘perilousness’. Rather than being stymied by the legislature with competing legitimacy claims leading to deadlock and political crisis, presidents in the Philippines’ ‘hyper-presidential’ system (Rose-Ackerman & Desierto, 2011) are equipped with massive formal and informal powers. This lack of horizontal accountability is characteristic of ‘delegative democracy’ as discussed above (O’Donnell, 1994, 1998). The concept of ‘delegative democracy’ helps elucidate the hegemonic position of Philippine presidents generally while revealing the political opportunity that exists for power hungry chief executives, Marcos and Duterte, to undermine even these weakened checks and balances in particular. Marcos declared martial law in 1972 with authoritarian rule lasting until his overthrow in 1986. Although only in power for a little over a year as of this writing, Rodrigo Duterte has already proved to be transgressive of the country's liberal political order by undermining remaining checks and balances while waging a bloody drug war that has killed thousands without any form of due process.

The two perils discussed in the Philippine case – confrontation and crisis, on the one hand, and a transgressive leader who attempts to override remaining checks and balances, on the other – are related. Strong presidents are more likely to come into conflict with independent state institutions and powerful societal actors (Thompson, 2017). In the Philippines, but also often more generally in presidential systems, confrontations between presidents and their opponents, on the one hand, and a delegative presidency, on the other, have been two sides of the same coin in the sense that a powerful chief executive often finds her or himself in a Machtkampf, a fight for political dominance with autonomous agencies and elite strategic groups.

A unitary parliamentary political system with prime ministers easily removed if the ruling party/coalition turns against them appears to be a much flexible political system and thus, potentially, a more stable form of electoral democracy. But as Thompson argues from a Southeast Asian comparative perspective, the fact that Philippine national political leaders have sometimes been ‘imperiled’ but also often ‘imperious’ is not a distinct feature of presidentialism when compared with parliamentary Thailand. There, Thaksin Shinawatra's rule was ‘delegative’ with few horizontal checks to his power. This, however, antagonised his opponents who used judicial institutions and traditional elite-led protests backed by the military to overthrow Thaksin in 2006 in a manner quite similar to the way Estrada was toppled in the Philippines in 2001 (Thaksin's first anointed successors as prime minister were removed from power in 2008 and then overthrown in another military coup in 2014). Like in the presidential system in the Philippines, in parliamentary Thailand, a confrontation occurred between a seemingly hegemonic national leader and his powerful societal opponents, undermining political stability.

Indonesia

In contrast to the Philippine case, presidentialism in Indonesia has not kept the country from having the most stable electoral democracy in Southeast Asia over the past fifteen years. One reason for this stability has been the ‘promiscuous power-sharing’ between party elites (Slater, 2004). Most post-Suharto governments have included coalitions of all political forces of the country, leading to cartelisation and resulting in a lack of accountability. Yet, this collusion has been a double-edged sword. Like in the Philippines, it has also meant that there has been little danger of gridlock between the president and the legislature, although observers see that the price paid for this stability has been a prolonged period of political stagnation (Aspinall, Mietzner, & Tomsa, 2015). The greater danger, again like in the Philippines, has been the risk posed by the rise imperious populist leaders who use ‘delegative’ powers to undermine liberal norms and the rule of law. Yet while Indonesia has had one leader constitutionally removed (Wahid Abdurrahman) after a corruption scandal, no president has been obviously transgressive of the rules of liberal democracy, including the country's current president, an outsider but relative moderate, Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi).

As Dirk Tomsa shows in his article in this special issue, for the past two decades Indonesia has consistently beat low expectations about its prospects for democratic survival, much less stability. This has been the case despite a clash between advocates of democratic pluralism and key elite groups with predatory interests. The multi-party system is also, according to theories of presidentialism, another factor likely to destabilise presidential democracy in the country. Mainwaring (1993, p. 98) goes so far as to claim it is ‘inimical to stable democracy’. Tomsa argues that the case of Indonesia demonstrates that ‘an electoral democratic regime based on the institutional format of multi-party presidentialism can be sustained even if vertical accountability is weak and political institutions are captured by predatory interests.’

Unlike in the Philippines where the strongman Duterte was elected, in Indonesia, Jokowi narrowly defeated a would-be authoritarian leader Prabowo Subianto in the 2014 presidential election. But different from president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who won legislative support by giving parties the opportunity to exploit patronage resources which undermined his ability to introduce major reforms, Jokowi has taken a more hands on approach to coalition building, even intervening in opposition party affairs helping a pro-government faction to victory in internal balloting, making him less reliant on his coalition partners (Mietzner, 2016).

Opinion polls show Jokowi's ratings have remained relatively high, which can be read as indicating popular satisfaction with a stable political system. Even if a neo-authoritarian challenge emerges in the next presidential elections in 2019 it is not primarily the institutions of presidentialism that are major issue, but rather the political narrative of reform that came out of the ‘reformasi’ protests that led to Suharto's downfall two decades ago. But as Tomsa writes ‘the close result of the 2014 presidential election also indicated that both members of the elite as well as a sizeable number of ordinary voters were actually willing to embrace an alternative to the existing regime.’ Buttressed by ‘oligarchic power [it] thrived on a powerful counter-narrative as espoused by Prabowo Subianto and his aggressive nationalist rhetoric.’

Andreas Ufen in this special issue takes a different approach in his contribution to the understanding of Indonesian presidentialism. Ufen argues that the model proposed by David Samuels and Matthew Shugart (2010) – that political parties are presidentialised by the separation of powers between the presidency and the legislature – elucidates a number of features of party politics in Indonesia. Tensions between the president and his party/coalition are one outcome of this tendency, with the strained relationship between Jokowi and his official party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, PDI-P), the most recent example. Yet Ufen also shows that the argument of Samuels and Shugart only goes so far in regards to the Indonesian case. He points out that the impact of oligarchisation of Indonesian parties is also of great importance. With campaign costs rising and elections increasingly ‘commercialised’, super rich politicians have become more important in a number of political parties. This has resulted in a trifurcation of the party system: there are large presidentialised parties but also smaller, weakly presidentialised parties as well as ‘vehicle’ parties which Ufen defines as ‘highly personalised ad hoc organisations with ready-made platforms and are usually financially dependent on a charismatic leader or his/her financial backers.’ Ufen argues only when presidentialisation and oligarchic commercialisation are combined can the emergence and success of vehicle parties be explained.

From Ufen's standpoint, explanations of Jokowi's victory in the 2014 presidential polls have to be put in this context of the personalisation of elections. Jokowi enjoyed the backing of several important oligarchs, but due to his party, the PDI-P, being socially rooted in certain milieus (known as aliran in Indonesia), he has been relatively immune from oligarchic manipulation. Yet the future of the country's party system is in doubt if the older parties continue to dealign from the electorate in their traditional social milieus, and vehicle parties lacking such linkages or meaningful platforms continue to grow in influence. Ufen argues ‘populists-cum-oligarchs’ like Prabowo use the generally low party identification and the dissatisfaction of many voters to seize the opportunity.’ Yet in Ufen's argument the key to understanding potential dangers facing the Indonesian political system cannot be explained solely from within the logic of presidentialism and the rise of presidentialised parties. One must also consider key societal factors, particularly the role of the oligarchy and the dealignment of the electorate from its traditional social links to older parties.

Timor Leste

In his paper on semi-presidentialism in Timor-Leste Rui Graça Feijó also cautions against reading too much in institutional arrangements that have been tagged as potentially destabilising. In his ground-breaking study of semi-presidentialism, Elgie's (2011, pp. 2–3) main thesis is that the design of executive-legislative relations is crucial to understanding the probability of achieving democratic stability in a semi-presidential regime form. He argues that what he calls ‘president-parliamentarism’ in which the government established by the legislature can be dismissed by the president, making the presidency relatively independent of the legislature, is more ‘likely to be associated with a poorer democratic performance’ that what he terms ‘premier-presidentialism’ in which the president cannot dismiss the government, making her or him dependent on legislative support to govern.

Feijó sees the dangers posed by the dual authority inherent in presidentialism that may lead to confrontation between the legislature and chief executive – as has indeed occurred in the East Timor case. But he argues that when confrontation between the president and the prime minister broke out, the political system's ‘stakeholders made a critical choice: to stick to the constitutional provisions and let fresh elections decide on the relative strength of each contender.’ After winning those elections, president Xanana Gusmão did not move to increase his presidential powers through constitutional amendment but rather chose to accept a balance of power between the chief executive and the legislature, which also decided to ‘play by the rules.’ In other words, there is much room for political agency within a potentially perilous political arrangement.

The literature depicts the specific form of semi-presidentialism chosen in Timor Leste – the ‘president-parliamentary’ model – as the most unstable (Elgie, 2011). But in the East Timorese case, despite critical junctures in which instability appeared to prevail, the country has taken important steps toward democratic stability. The government was even able to overcome brief periods of political violence (including assassination attempts against President Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana in 2008). Feijó argues this is primarily attributable to ‘independent’ presidents who practice power sharing and inclusive governance, thereby minimising potential societal conflicts. This form of inclusiveness helps to build an elite compromise necessary for democratic consolidation.

Myanmar

The Myanmar case, a highly unusual form of hybrid presidentialism (with a powerful but indirectly elected president), also demonstrates that is less the formal institutional framework established that counts than the way alliances of key political actors that can ignite or limit political conflict. It is striking that in the case of Myanmar, despite five decades of military rule and a crushing electoral victory by the opposition in 2015, the new system has not been imperilled despite its presidential character. One reason is certainly the role of the military as guardian of the institutional framework and their active participation in political affairs.

As Marco Bünte shows in his article in this special issue, the first years after the transition from military rule have seen hardly any disruptive conflicts between the president and the legislature. Executive-legislative relations have been tense at times, but because the president has only a suspensive veto power (meaning the chief executive can suspend legislation, but not halt it) it has not led to prolonged conflicts. Moreover, the polarisation associated with multipartism did not play out, since President Thein Sein used technocrats for ruling and distanced himself from his own party, enabling him to stand above diverse factions within it. In parliament, confrontation was avoided through the formation of a broad reformist coalition between the speaker of the House and the opposition. This is of course not to underplay the country's many problems and crises – most notably the violent expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya's to neighbouring Bangladesh after a crackdown on militants. But in the country's political system itself, there has been little conflict between executive and legislature, either during the transition period in which generals took on civilian roles or under the current government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Rather, the major cleavage remains between Suu Kyi's National League of Democracy, which dominates politics, and the military, which continues to assert its national guardianship role (holding veto power over constitutional change with reserved seats in the legislature and control of several major civilian bureaucratic ministries). Aung San Suu Kyi, who took over multiple roles in the new administration, has also accumulated considerable political power. As in the other Southeast Asian cases, powerful political actors still trump institutions.

Conclusion: the inutility of institutionalism in the Southeast Asian presidentialism cases

Linz used the recurring crises of Latin American presidential democracies in the 1960s and 1970s to illustrate the general dangers of presidentialism.⁵ While the Southeast Asian cases lead to less definitive conclusions, with some presidential systems relatively stable and others in a state of crisis or facing significant dangers, they do point to the limited explanatory power of presidentialist institutional arrangements in understanding political stability. The lessons from the region are that presidential institutions have been stable when they are created to accommodate competing elite interests and/or involve long-term power-sharing arrangements between influential groups. The price of this ‘promiscious power-sharing’, however, has been the weakening of horizontal accountability, particularly through limited legislative guardianship over the actions of the executive. In both Indonesia and the Philippines, the spoils of office have proved too tempting for a significant number of legislators to hold out against the offer to come inside the large political tent of the incumbent president.

Rather than gridlock, the chief danger facing conventional presidential systems in the region has been outsider presidential candidates who challenge the democratic order head on. In the Philippines, the already ‘delegative’ nature of presidentialism in O’Donnell's terms provided an opportunity for ‘transgressive’ presidents to overturn remaining weak checks and balances to establish a full-fledged dictatorship (Marcos) or an ‘illiberal democracy’ (Duterte). In Indonesia, an outsider oligarchic candidate (Prabowo) who threatened to dismantle the country's democracy was only narrowly defeated. The risk was due less to ‘presidentialised’ parties than to money politics and the rise of political oligarchs which provided more opportunities for anti-system politicians to win presidential elections.

In the cases of hybrid forms of presidentialism in Southeast Asia we also find political actors’ behaviour to be much more important than specific institutional arrangements. In Myanmar the military created a hybrid presidential system that has allowed power sharing with the popular opposition civilian party. Timor Leste adopted a ‘president-parliamentary’ semi-presidential model which, despite being regarded in the literature as particularly prone to instability, has proved relatively resilient largely due to it being designed to accommodate competing groups and the willingness of those groups to stick to that deal.

Thus the examination of the potential perils of presidentialism in the four Southeast Asian cases has shown the necessity of viewing political instability and potential dangers posed to democracy within a wider perspective that incorporates not only institutions but also the short term behaviour of power elites to support or undermine them.⁶ Presidentialism in the Philippines is currently under severe threat while Indonesia faces serious hazards in the near future. But these have or are likely in the future to be due less to institutional shortcomings than to challenges by political outsiders who try to break up a cozy cartelised political arrangement. Whether it Estrada's populism that threatened conservative elites and Duterte's attack on the post-Marcos liberal order in the Philippines or Prabowo's challenge to democracy in the 2014 Indonesian election, it was not the presidential systems of the two countries that were primarily at fault but rather the breakdown of elite consensus. While weak in terms of horizontal accountability, the ‘delegative’ systems in these two island Southeast Asian countries were not been threatened by political instability as long as accommodative relations among the powerful prevailed.

The role populism played in the collapse of parliamentary democracy in Thailand is strikingly similar, also suggesting the key issue is not that specific nature of institutional arrangements. By concentrating power in his own hands thanks to a supermajority in parliament, Thaksin's rule quickly destabilised the country's democratic system. Like in the Philippines in the case of Estrada who was overthrown by elite-led protests backed by the military, Thaksin was seen to pose a major threat to Thailand's traditional elites, who mobilised repeatedly against him and his successors, leading to two coups and culminating in the establishment of authoritarian rule ongoing since 2014 (Ferrara, 2015; Hewison, 2017; Thompson, 2016).

Hybrid presidential systems in Myanmar and Timor Leste were both constructed around arrangements designed to defuse potential conflicts among key elite groups. As long as major political actors’ commitment to this power-sharing holds, the prospects of hybrid presidentialism in Southeast Asia seem reasonably rosy. But this provisional optimism is based not on institutional strength, but rather on potentially fragile elite consensus.

Acknowledgements

The papers in this special issue were originally presented to the panel ‘perilous presidentialism in Southeast Asia’ at the 8th EuroSEAS Conference, 11–14 August 2015 in Vienna. The authors wish to thank their co-authors/co-panelists, the audience for their feedback, and the EuroSEAS organisers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marco Bünte is Associate Professor at Monash University, Malaysia Campus. He has also published widely on Southeast Asian politics in international outlets such as Armed Forces and Society, Asian Survey, Journal of Contemporary Asia and Contemporary Southeast Asia. He is the editor of Politics and Constitutions in Southeast Asia (with Björn Dressel) and ‘The Crisis of Democratic Governance in Southeast Asia’ (with Aurel Croissant).

Mark R. Thompson is professor and head, Department of Asian and International Studies (AIS), as well as director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC) at the City University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Anti-Marcos Struggle (1995), Democratic Revolutions (2004), co-editor of Dynasties and Female Political Leaders in Asia (2013), and editor of/author in a 2016 special issue on the early Duterte presidency for the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs.

Additional information

Funding

Mark Thompson's research was supported by the Hong Kong Government, Research Grants Council University Grants Committee, Hong Kong [Grant Numbers 9042600 and 9041939].

Notes

1. It is often forgotten that this intellectual debate has considerable history (Elgie, 2011, p. 7). Walter Bagehot's ([1867] 2009) comparison of constitutional practice in the British and American political systems established the now well-known and widely accepted dichotomy between presidentialism and parliamentarism. Woodrow Wilson's (1884) praise for the virtues of the British parliamentary system over U.S. presidentialism began the (often polemical) debate about the relative virtues of each system. This was followed by a defence of the merits of the U.S. presidential system against British parliamentarianism (e.g. Price, 1943) but also to the argument that neither of these institutional arrangements was necessarily better than the other (e.g. Laski, 1944).

2. Elgie (2005) also identifies a ‘third’ wave of presidentialism research based on theories of veto players and actor-principal-agent analysis which is no longer centred on the supposed dangers of presidentialism. This is beyond the scope of this special issue which focuses on the potential institutional perils of presidential rule in Southeast Asia.

3. O’Donnell (1994, p. 16, n. 11) adds: ‘However, if delegative propensities are strong in a given country, the workings of a parliamentary system could be rather easily subverted or lead to impasses even worse than the ones discussed here.’ This is a point which will be discussed in regard to the Thai case.

4. A well-known example of an autogolpe (in fact the crisis which firmly established the term in the English speaking political science literature) is Alberto Fujimori's seizure of power in Peru in 1992 after congress resisted the enactment of his austerity policies.

5. The stability of many Latin America presidential democracies since the 1990s has softened scholars’ views about supposed perilousness of presidentialism in the region (Thiebault, 2017).

6. As such it is part of the general contestation of state elites that cannot only be found around state institutions, but also human rights, the role of the military and judicial institutions, which are in flux in Southeast Asia (see Dressel & Bünte, 2014; Bünte & Dressel, 2017).