Repression, radicalization and delegitimation: opposition to autocratization in Southeast Asia

Two hypotheses explaining the strength of opposition against autocratization have become influential: the degree of remaining political space and the adoption of moderate goals and strategies. Yet opposition to autocratization in seven Southeast Asian countries demonstrates these generalizations do not “travel” well. Despite greater remaining checks on and cautious claims against executive aggrandizement in Indonesia and the Philippines, protest movements were weaker and electoral challenges more limited than “radicalized” pushback against repressive military rule in Thailand and, particularly, Myanmar. There was also stronger, more transgressive pushback in Cambodia in and after the 2013 elections, and in Malaysia though to the 2018 electoral breakthrough, despite less remaining political space than in similarly electoral authoritarian Singapore with its “self-limiting” opposition. These Southeast Asian countries show that in the face of arbitrary regime crackdowns and electoral manipulation, opposition claims-making has tended to radicalize, creating synergies between protest mobilization and election campaigns and strengthening pushback by effectively contesting regime efforts to legitimize illiberalism. By contrast, opposition against rulers employing selective or carefully calibrated repression and not overtly manipulating voting has tended to remain moderate, with few synergy effects between parties and social movement activists, enabling regimes to assert their rule remains “democratic” despite autocratization.
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