Executive Accountability under Authoritarian Rule: The Role of Southeast Asia's Legislatures

In many new democracies, scholarly attention has addressed the ways in which the executive may be held accountable, especially by elected legislatures. New democracies, however, have been shadowed by the rise of new kinds of authoritarian rule. Moreover, in its new form, this contemporary authoritarianism has also featured legislatures and reasonably competitive elections, helping distinguish it from traditional harder modes. Even so, the extent to which legislatures in these conditions may impose accountability has been ignored.In filling this lacuna, the aim of this project is to compare the performance of legislatures under contemporary authoritarianism with that of their counterparts in new democracies. It may be that in possessing different motivations, legislatures operating under new authoritarian regimes can impose accountability more effectively. But it may be too that this activity, like reasonably competitive elections, sooner strengthens these regimes than readies them for democratic change.Executive behaviors that demand accountability are conceptualized in terms of extralegal power abuses and corrupt practices. The accountability that may then be imposed by legislatures is operationalized in terms of 'horizontal' activities (anti-corruption investigations, audit committees, and budgetary oversight) and 'vertical' links (legislators engaging the media, civil society organizations, and citizens more generally through political party activities, meetings, and electoral campaigning). New research will be carried out in Southeast Asia. Focusing on a single region enables this project to control for a variety of causal factors. At the same time, in its rich diversity of regime types, Southeast Asia features some exemplary cases of new authoritarian and democratic politics. Across these two regime types, then, patterns of legislative activity and executive accountability can be clearly distinguished.Analysis of legislative performance begins with three cases of contemporary authoritarianism: Malaysia, Cambodia, and, it is anticipated, Thailand (after 'limited' elections have been held by the military in late-2007). It will compare the performance of these legislatures with that of their counterparts in three new democracies: the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand (prior to the military coup in late-2006).Three main hypotheses will be tested:under contemporary authoritarianism, legislatures hold the executive accountable in innovative ways;these legislatures may impose accountability more effectively than their counterparts in new democracies;owing to its resilient dynamics, contemporary authoritarianism may sooner be strengthened than challenged by any accountability that legislatures impose.