The Political Economy of New Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia

Over the past years, the deterioration of democracy and the rise of authoritarian forms of governance have been a growing global phenomenon. In the Global North, this became painfully clear not least since the establishment of right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland, or the election victory of Donald Trump in November 2016. Southeast Asia is certainly no exception to this trend (Chacko & Jayasuriya, 2018; Docena, 2018; Kurlantzick, 2014). With General Prayuth Chan-o-cha in Thailand (2014) and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines (2016), two more ‘strongmen’ joined the ranks of authoritarian leaders in a region that is departing fast from democratic pathways. They follow a law and order attitude reflected in statements such as that of General Prayuth who warned of “obsession with rights” which could “lead to anarchy” (“Obsession With rights”, 2017). Duterte's central message is that the Philippines suffer from elites who care too much about Western notions of human rights and Western democracy (Bello, this volume; Focus on the Global South, 2017; Juego, 2017). Several recent surveys confirm the authoritarian trend in Southeast Asia. The Democracy Index 2017, for example, listed six out of ten nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) as unfree, two (Indonesia and Malaysia) as largely free and only TimorLeste as partly free (Brunei not included). None of the countries was considered as fully free (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2018). Meanwhile, research on new authoritarianism has emerged as a dynamic field in different disciplinary and regional epistemic communities. Due to the global scope of the issue, its political relevance and its highly contested nature, emerging debates are very vibrant, and yet fragmented. This fragmentation is mirrored, firstly, in the variety of concepts which are being used – the most prominent being authoritarianism, populism, and fascism – sometimes in combinations or with specifying adjectives (authoritarian populism, populist authoritarianism, right-wing populism, right-wing authoritarianism, authoritarian neo-liberalism, etc.). For this special issue, we will use new authoritarianism as an umbrella term – in singular, without suggesting that it denotes a single well-defined homogeneous concept or regime type (for a different approach see Docena, 2018). Secondly, the dynamism and fragmentation of the debate on new authoritarianism is mirrored in the highly controversial debate about the actors and the social Editorial