FES International Policy Analysis Unit

THE SOUTHEAST ASIA ELECTION YEAR 2004/05 PROJECT

The last twenty years can be considered an era of democratic development in Asia. Since the mid-80’s nine countries embraced transition to democracy, at last Indonesia in 1999. However, the process of consolidation towards liberal democracy remains weak throughout most of the young Asian democracies and three Asian countries faced the breakdown of democracy during the same period of time: In 1997 a military putsch ended the transition process in Cambodia. Even though parliamentary elections were held in 2003 the progress towards a democratic form of government is deadlocked. The first Cambodian Senate elections, which were scheduled for 2004, have recently been canceled, because of rising political violence and political instability after the murder of union leader Chea Vichea.

In 2004/05 five of the ten ASEAN member-countries are supposed to hold parliamentary elections: The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Thailand. The Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand can be considered democratic countries, even though they remain weakly institutionalized. These “defect” or illiberal democracies are able to hold sufficiently free and fair or meaningful elections, while they are confronted with distinct problems in the dimensions of political rights, e.g. factual exclusion of segments of the population or unfair competition, in the dimension of effective government control, e.g. lack of civil control over the military or local warlords, or the dimension of civil rights and the rule of law. Furthermore the weak institutionalization of formal procedures and a widespread disregard for these ‘rules of the game’ often favors strong executives and a decline of legislative competencies.
However, in Malaysia and Cambodia the extend of those defects is that far reaching, that they cannot be considered democratic anymore even though they hold elections regularly.

The goal of the South-East-Asian Election Year 2004/05 Project is to analyze the elections in the five ASEAN member states mentioned above in a comparative framework, with the underlying perspective of if and how the parliamentary elections contribute to the solutions of these problems elemental to democratic development in the region. The leading questions of the project are:

For this purpose the project at first analyzes the prelude, conduct and results of the elections in the different countries.

Then, the first question will be addressed in terms of three democratic tensions that have to be solved by all democracies: The tensions of conflict vs. compromise, representativeness vs. governability and integration vs. effectiveness. At the core of these problems rests the institutional design of the political system, especially the electoral system, and the way political actors cope with these “rules of the game” of their countries.

The second question will be addressed in terms of a contextual analysis in the areas of modernization and economic development, civil society and culture, gender relations, state and nation, and the international environment.

In a last step conclusions will be drawn and Policy Recommendations will be given for the further strengthening of democratic practice in the analyzed countries.

The final goal of the project is to compare the country studies to find out if there are common and shared problems throughout the analyzed countries and which problems have to be addressed specifically. Therefore the findings of the project should be useful for policy makers in the specific countries as much as for the purpose of establishing regional cooperation in certain areas of policy guidance.