Politics in Southeast Asia

This book provides an introduction to the politics of the five key Southeast Asian states - Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines - and is intended as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students taking courses on this subject. Using a comparative politics and political economy perspective, the author focuses in particular on the degree of democracy in the five countries, arguing that in all the countries considered democracy is, to varying degrees, imperfect. The book synthesises a wide range of scholarship, and presents the material in a concise and accessible way.
The five regime types are analysed in terms of two main variables, the extent to which they are stable and the extent to which they are democratic. Where democracies are shown to exist, questions about procedural quality are addressed. Country chapters are presented sequentially, beginning with pseudo-democratic stability and change in Indonesia, moving to stable semi-democracies in Singapore and Malaysia, then concluding with the region's new democracies in Thailand and the Philippines. In explaining these diverse outcomes and the prospects for change, this volume acknowledges the importance of historical, cultural, and structural factors, while adhering rigorously to a framework that gives most attention to political and business elites, focusing on the nature of their relations and their social constituencies.
This book offers a theoretical coherence that is rarely found in edited works. It demonstrates that the politics of important Southeast Asian countries, while usually regarded by analysts as highly diverse, can be compared in meaningful ways. Subsidiary questions involve the conditions under which business elites in the region favour authoritarian or democratic rule, as well as the ways they practice democracy once it has been introduced. This discussion provides insights into the impact on regime types of rapid industrialization, the recent economic crisis in the region, and uneven recovery today.