Dynasties, Oligarchies, Cartels: Barriers to Democratic Competition in Southeast Asia

Much as capitalism is defined by free market competition, democracy is defined by free electoral competition. Yet while economists have long recognized that violations of free market competition do not mean the end of capitalism, political scientists have struggled to theorize barriers to free electoral competition that do not amount to outright authoritarianism or even democratic backsliding.

In this presentations, Prof Dan Slater pursues this capitalism/democracy analogy to analyze three barriers to electoral competition that have afflicted democratic politics in Southeast Asia and elsewhere: 1) dynasties, 2) oligarchies, and 3) cartels. While Southeast Asian democracies have been chronically and similarly stricken by family dynasties and oligarchic money politics, only Indonesia has seen cartelization take deep root. Attempts to restrict democratic competition through elite cartelization have contrarily either failed or proven far more fragile in the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia, while more limited recent experiments with elite cooperation have collapsed back into full autocratic closure in Cambodia and Myanmar. This presentation traces this divergence – and Indonesia’s apparent elite-collusion exceptionalism – to patterns of political violence and authoritarian powersharing during the Cold War era.

Speaker & chair biographies

Prof. Dan Slater is the James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Emerging Democracies (@umichDemocracy) at the University of Michigan. He specializes in the politics and history of democracy and authoritarianism, especially in Southeast Asia. His books include From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia (Princeton 2022, with Joseph Wong) and Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge 2010).

Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

*Banner photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash

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