Journal of East Asian Studies 5 (2005), 215–237

Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes:

When Do Voters Change Them?

William Case

Today many governments that seek to perpetuate their power operate hybrid
regimes, manipulating institutions yet holding regular elections. In this way,
governments gain some legitimacy for their extended incumbency through the
residual competitiveness that this regime type allows. However, recent studies
show that voters may sometimes grow so activated that they make new use of
this competitiveness, however limited, and turn elections into the means by
which they can finally change the regime and the government that operates it.
This article examines this thesis in Southeast Asia, a region in which hybrid
politics have long been practiced. Its main finding is that while change has
sometimes taken place, voters—participating only as voters—have never been
central.
KEYWORDS: political regimes, authoritarianism, democracy, hybrid politics,
elites, mass publics, civil liberties, elections, voters, transitions, Southeast Asia

I n the aftermath of the Cold War, few cases remain of what Guillermo
O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter once called dictadura—a “hard”
authoritarianism run brusquely by dictators or generals.1 Instead, across
Latin America, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia,
many governments that seek perennially to rule have scaled back their
coercion and its costly inefficiencies. They have learned to leaven their
strategies with elections, even reasonably competitive ones, that are
framed in ways that earn some legitimacy but that are in fact meant to
ensure their iterated return to power. Hard authoritarianism has thus
steadily given way to what analysts variously conceptualize as “semi”
or “competitive” authoritarianism, “pseudo” or “illiberal” democracy,
or (more neutrally perhaps) as “hybrid regimes.”2
This spread of hybrid regimes has frustrated democracy promoters,
with the third wave falling short of its full promise. It has also come
under scrutiny from transitions theorists, intrigued by the debut of a

215
216 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

new kind of politics. Thus, Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endow-

ment laments that in “going through the motions of holding elections
and building institutions [these regimes] stubbornly resist real change
… [posing] the major challenge to democracy around the world.”3
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way concur, arguing that in light of this
persistence it may “be time to stop thinking about these cases in terms
of transitions to democracy.”4 Both the promoters and the theorists of
democratic transitions, then, acknowledge the resilience that hybrid
regimes can attain.
But Ottaway also contends that in contrast to the hard authoritari-
anism and full democracy that bracket it, hybrid regimes are seldom
well institutionalized. Rather, through “endless” manipulations, govern-
ments that practice political hybridity “constantly undermine their own
institutions.”5 Levitsky and Way warn similarly of “inherent tensions,”
“contradictions,” and “serious dilemmas,” with institutions diminished
by gross arbitrariness.6 Furthermore, unlike hard authoritarianism—
wherein elections either fail to take place or lack any meaningful con-
testation—the competitiveness that occurs under hybrid regimes some-
times enables mass publics, participating concertedly as voters, to
declare their preferences for change. On this count, Levitsky and Way
record the thin pluralities eked out by Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kuchma,
and Daniel arap Moi in elections held during the 1990s. And in
Nicaragua, Albania, Ukraine, and several African countries, incumbent
leaders or handpicked successors were defeated outright. Hence, in
these cases, hybrid regimes appear to be brittle, corroded by the cyni-
cism borne of institutional manipulations, then swept away by the com-
petitive elections that they allow.
So, which is it? Are hybrid regimes resilient, balancing open com-
petitiveness with sly manipulations in ways that provide legitimacy for a
government’s interminable tenure? Or are they so weakened by base
manipulations and inherent tensions that they only inflame mass publics,
finally precipitating the government’s ouster? And where changes in gov-
ernment and regime take place, when do voters perform a pivotal role,
cumulating in democratization-by-election?
In addressing these questions, especially over the role of voters,
analysis focuses on Southeast Asia, a part of the world that offers a
great storehouse of historical and contemporary hybrid regimes. As
Carl Trocki observes, “Democratic forms, including elected legislative
bodies and executives, regular elections, political parties, written con-
stitutions, and formal guarantees of political and individual human lib-
erties have become part of the legitimizing apparatus of most Southeast
 William Case 217

Asia nations.”7 But through sundry manipulations, the competitiveness

of elections has also been curbed, with politics cumulating less readily
in full democracy than in stunted hybrid regimes. Indeed, these regimes
constitute the modal type in Southeast Asia, having been introduced in
Singapore during the late 1960s; in Malaysia, the Philippines, and
Indonesia during the 1970s; in Thailand during the early 1980s; in
Burma, at least briefly, in 1990; and in Cambodia shortly thereafter.
However, while hybrid regimes may form frequently in Southeast
Asia, their persistence varies, turning contingently on the artfulness with
which governments carry out their manipulations, especially when tested
by declining economies. Thus, in parallel with the ambiguous assess-
ments made by Ottaway, Levitsky, and Way, we find that in Southeast
Asia some hybrid regimes have persisted for long periods, others have
come under strain then reequilibrated, and still others have finally unrav-
eled, tipping back into hard authoritarianism or lurching ahead into
democracy.
In trying to explain these variable outcomes, I begin by enumerat-
ing some of the manipulations to which governments in Southeast Asia,
in operating their hybrid regimes, have regularly resorted. These
manipulations are collated in terms of a “menu of manipulation,” use-
fully compiled by Andreas Schedler.8 The section that follows sketches
briefly the ways in which political hybridity, when confronted by
declining economies, may come under pressure. The last section con-
tains some comparative exercises. Attention is given to five country
cases—Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines, and Indonesia—
chosen because of important similarities in their hybrid regimes, as
well as the ways in which their regimes have later been tested by eco-
nomic crises or long periods of stagnancy. The aim is to discover the
conditions in which, amid declining economies, voters have grown so
alienated by the government’s manipulations that they have tried to
turn out the government and change the regime, using such limited
electoral outlets as are on hand.
To preview, this analysis finds that where governments respond to
economic pressures artfully—manipulating institutions in new ways,
while mitigating new social inequalities—they can tide over their
regimes until the economy recovers and societal grievances abate. But
where manipulations are unskillful and inequalities are ignored, voters
may sweep over the curbs on electoral competitiveness, dealing the
government a great setback. However, we will see too that while vot-
ing in hybrid regimes is not inconsequential for bringing about change,
it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient factor in the Southeast Asian
218 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

setting. Where change has occurred, voters have had to supplement

their participation with popular upsurge—or they have taken directly to
the streets without troubling to vote beforehand.

Southeast Asia’s Menu of Manipulation

Under cover of their hybrid regimes, governments try to calibrate elec-

toral competitiveness, fostering some plausible uncertainty and hence a
patina of legitimacy for what they hope will be their lengthy incum-
bency. Let us turn now to the sundry manipulations that governments
in Southeast Asia typically carry out, categorizing them in terms of the
menu of manipulation.

Limiting Civil Liberties

Schedler observes that in calibrating electoral competitiveness, govern-
ments start early, shaping the formation of preferences by limiting civil
liberties.9 Thus, under hybrid regimes in Southeast Asia, print and elec-
tronic media have been muted by ownership patterns, licensing require-
ments, and other controls. In Singapore, for example, local newspapers
are owned by Singapore Press Holdings, which in turn is controlled by
nominees of the Ministry of Information and the Arts.10 Further, all for-
eign publications that circulate in the city-state are scrutinized and
licensed. Similarly, in Malaysia, major newspapers are owned either by
New Straits Times Press Holdings, long linked to the country’s domi-
nant political party, United Malays National Organization (UMNO), or
by one of UMNO’s lesser partners in its ruling Barisan Nasional
(National Front) coalition. In Burma, more drastically, only one news-
paper is permitted to circulate today, the government-owned New Light
of Myanmar. And any unregulated use of the Internet, photocopiers, and
fax machines is harshly punished.
The compliance of editors and reporters has also been encouraged
in less formal ways. In Singapore, proscribed topics are demarcated by
“OB” (out-of-bounds) markers,11 sometimes enforced through crip-
pling lawsuits. In New Order Indonesia, a “telephone culture” (budaya
telepon) prevailed wherein security officials phoned “advice” to editors
about news items that were best omitted. In Malaysia, editors who have
displeased the prime minister have been summarily purged. And in
Marcos’s Philippines, media companies that criticized the president
were seized outright, even when owned by prominent families.12
 William Case 219

Throughout the region, freedom of assembly has also been limited,

with civil society organizations and social movements tightly con-
trolled. Under their respective Societies Acts, the governments of Sin-
gapore and Malaysia bar nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from
engaging in any political activities for which they have not been offi-
cially registered. They also make use of their Internal Security Acts,
enshrining a colonial-era principle whereby dissidents can be held indef-
initely in detention camps without trial. In New Order Indonesia, the
Ormas (mass organizations) law of 1985 required all civil society orga-
nizations to subscribe to a hazy mentality of Pancasila (Five Principles),
incorporating it into their constitutions or bylaws as their “sole ideolog-
ical foundation” (asas tunggal). In this way, apart from campaign peri-
ods, mass publics remained politically inert, suspended in an official
doctrine known as the “floating mass.” Finally, in the Philippines under
Marcos, left-wing leaders and labor organizers were simply liquidated
by security agencies, a process know curiously as “salvaging.”

Reserved Positions and Domains

While constraining the formation of preferences, governments may
also place key nodes of state power beyond the reach of voters, thereby
establishing “reserved” positions and domains.13 As one example, in
New Order Indonesia, Suharto fixed even his presidential office as a
reserved position, rendering it unaccountable to either parliament or
voters. As head of the Control Board of Golkar (Functional Groups),
the government’s electoral vehicle, Suharto personally selected his
candidates for the country’s parliament, the People’s Representative
Council (DPR). In the year after elections were won by Golkar, those
in the DPR doubled as members of the People’s Consultative Assem-
bly (MPR), which, in functioning as an electoral college and padded
with additional Suharto appointees, duly reappointed Suharto as presi-
dent, usually by acclamation. One gets a sense of the extent to which
Suharto thus avoided accountability by the way he then set policy
directions, frequently though “presidential instructions” (inpres) and
“presidential decrees” (keppres).
After furbishing his reserved position, Suharto ranged widely
across reserved domains in bureaucratic and military apparatuses. In
particular, he presided over extensive military secondments to posts in
state agencies and enterprises, a practice sanctioned by the doctrine of
“dual function” (dwi-fungsi), traceable to the struggle for independence
against the Dutch, in which nationalist politicians were seen to have
220 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

wavered. In turn, civilian elements of the bureaucracy were bound to

the government through their compulsory membership in KORPRI
(Civil Servants Corps of the Republic of Indonesia), encouraging an
explicit ethos of “monoloyalty.”
In Singapore and Malaysia, prime ministerial posts have been less
flagrantly manipulated as reserved positions, with their constitutions
requiring that national leaders win parliamentary elections, however
calibrated their competitiveness. Even so, Singapore’s former prime
minister, Lee Kuan Yew, served after his retirement as the unelected,
but influential, “senior minister,” then more recently as “mentor minis-
ter.” And in Malaysia, persons favored by the prime minister who have
lost their electoral bids have ascended to ministerial posts through
executive appointments to an otherwise vacuous senate.
Moreover, as in New Order Indonesia, the governments of these
countries have established reserved domains. Indeed, in Singapore, the
ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has nearly merged with the bureau-
cratic and military apparatuses, with elites circulating unaccountably
across topmost positions in state agencies, government-linked corpora-
tions (GLCs), and the security forces. In Malaysia too, boundaries
between UMNO and the bureaucracy have been blurred, with party
members regularly appropriating state contracts, loans, and privatized
assets.

Excluding and Fragmenting Opposition Parties

Seeking to narrow what Schedler conceptualizes as the “range of
choice,”14 governments that operate hybrid regimes may exclude or
fragment opposition parties. In Southeast Asia, then, governments have
arbitrarily deposed opposition leaders, disqualified candidates, or even
abolished opposition parties outright, actions given meek sanction by
flaccid election commissions. In Singapore, the government has also
excluded the opposition by manipulating electoral districts in particular,
designating most districts as multimember Group Representation Con-
stituencies (GRCs). In this arrangement, competing political parties are
required to assemble complex slates of as many as six candidates drawn
from all of the country’s major ethnic communities, hence straining the
opposition’s scant resources. But with the government then typically
claiming at least 90 percent of the seats in parliament, it finds that its
exclusionary strategies have worked too well, prompting it to fabricate
some opposition in hopes of animating dull parliamentary debates.
Small numbers of “nonconstituency MPs” are thus recruited from the
 William Case 221

opposition’s best-performing, though housebroken, losers, while “nom-

inated MPs” are drafted from staid business firms and pliable NGOs.
Electoral districts have also been skewed in Malaysia, although
through more orthodox practices of malapportionment and gerryman-
dering. Historically, UMNO has found most of its support among
Malays in rural parts of the country. Accordingly, the government has
long perpetuated imbalances whereby rural districts have averaged half
as many voters as the urban ones, where ethnic Chinese support for
opposition parties has been strong.15 However, with the opposition Pan-
Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) making deep inroads during the late
1990s into the rural heartland, and Chinese voters recoiling propor-
tionately toward the government, UMNO has resorted to ever more
intricate forms of gerrymandering, diluting many heavily Malay dis-
tricts with ethnic Chinese.
At the same time, in deploying fragmenting techniques, Malaysia’s
government has tried to fuel suspicions between the Islamist PAS and
the Democratic Action Party (DAP), a mostly ethnic Chinese grouping,
precipitating three-way contests that enable the government to snatch
pluralities through a first-past-the-post system. In other cases, the gov-
ernment has instigated party hopping, persuading opposition figures
who have still managed to win office to defect to the Barisan. Indeed,
UMNO has acquired enough patronage resources that it can absorb
whole parties into its coalition, revealing a capacity for cooptation and
rapid adaptation that James V. Jesudason describes as an unshakeable
“syncretic state.”16
In the Philippines under Marcos, the New Society Party (Kilusang
Bagong Lipunan, KBL) absorbed the venerable Nacionalistas. At the
same time, “nuisance candidates” were routinely put up against genuine
ones, confusing voters “in order to decimate the ranks of the opposi-
tion.”17 In New Order Indonesia in 1973, the government invoked the
“fusion” (fusi) law, whereby only two opposition parties were permitted
to operate—the first uncomfortably aggregating nationalist and Chris-
tian groups, the second comprising discordant streams of Islam—then
intervened deeply in their leadership choices and candidate selection.
What is more, these groupings were pressed to label themselves publicly
not as opposition parties, but more vapidly as “electoral participant
organizations” (organisasi peserta pemilu, OPPs). And while Golkar
was then free to use the bureaucratic apparatus to penetrate villages
across the vast archipelago, OPPs were prohibited from forming branch
structures beneath the district level, which denied them the rural pres-
ence through which most votes in Indonesia are to be gained.
222 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

Disenfranchisement, Vote Buying,

Intimidation, and Fraudulence
While excluding and fragmenting the leaders and candidates of oppo-
sition parties, governments may seek also to disenfranchise these par-
ties’ supporters. To be sure, in calibrating but not extinguishing elec-
toral competitiveness, governments in Southeast Asia have stopped
short of formally excluding whole ethnic communities, classes, and
genders. But they nonetheless make use of incisive techniques—for
example, the malapportionment of districts in Malaysia, discussed
above, nearly halved the weight of votes cast historically for the oppo-
sition by town-dwelling Chinese. Finer-grained disenfranchisement
appears also to have been carried out in Malaysia through manipula-
tions of the electoral roll, with voters often arriving at polling stations
and enduring long lines only to find that their names have been inex-
plicably shifted to other districts or dropped from the roll altogether. At
the same time, “phantom” and “transfer voters” appear, equipped with
aliases, fake identity cards, and false addresses. Similarly, in the Philip-
pines, officials have manipulated residence-based rosters, secretly
shifting voters across district boundaries or even “deliberately striking
out . . . names from the official list [that had been] identified with the
opposition.”18
Mass publics that avoid disenfranchisement may find next that
government operatives try to buy their votes. In the Philippines, prac-
ticed canvassers have distributed payments, then enforced their terms
by insisting that voters trace their completed ballots onto carbon paper
that could afterward be checked. In Malaysia, government candidates
typically approach villagers with gifts that range from T-shirts and toys
to small appliances. In more challenging districts, candidates may even
offer land titles or on-the-spot “development grants” for new clinics,
mosques, roads, even university campuses. A less sophisticated version
of this approach was taken in New Order Indonesia where, during a
three-week election campaign, the floating mass was treated to a pesta
demokrasi (festival of democracy), a form of vote buying through
which the government dispensed musical entertainments, celebrity
appearances, and cheap giveaways.
Where vote buying fails sufficiently to sway mass-level senti-
ments, governments operating hybrid regimes may turn to various
types of intimidation. In Singapore and Malaysia, ballots are numbered
and contain counterfoils, raising suspicions among mass publics that
their votes may not be secret.19 The use of ever smaller counting cen-
 William Case 223

ters intimates also that the preferences of particular residential areas

can readily be learned, with opposition victories inviting government
retaliation. On this count, as is revealed in our case study, the govern-
ment of Singapore once threatened to deny funding for upgrading pub-
lic housing in any districts where the opposition won. In Malaysia,
fears arose in Terengganu that if PAS came to power in the state assem-
bly, the UMNO-led federal government would rescind the petroleum
royalties on which Terengganu had come to depend—a fear that was
indeed borne out after PAS’s triumph in 1999.
In taking a more aggressive approach, governments may menace
opposition candidates and their supporters by unleashing intelligence
agencies or auxiliary thugs. In Malaysia, the feared Police Special
Branch monitors voter attitudes closely, while members of UMNO’s
youth wing have sometimes harassed opposition candidates and cam-
paign workers. In the last years of New Order Indonesia, the military
special forces (Kopassus) abducted key members of a small but potent
opposition party, while Pancasila Youth, affiliated with Golkar, clashed
regularly with rival student groups. And in Burma, “fear of military
intelligence is pervasive and effectively intimidates all who care for the
wellbeing of their families . . . nobody dares to support any opposition
parties openly.”20
Finally, governments may seek to control elections through out-
right fraudulence, which, as Schedler notes, can take place at any stage
in the electoral process, “from voter registration to the tally of bal-
lots.”21 But in the last stages of casting and tallying ballots, fraudulence
has perhaps been most fully articulated in the Philippines. Here, one
finds the hakot or “flying voter,” moving stealthily from one precinct
to another in order to cast multiple ballots. Through “chains” of voters
known as lanzadera, members deposit a ballot paper that has been pre-
pared for them in advance, then leave the booth with their fresh one in
order that it too might be prepared and passed to the next link. And at
the end of the process, dagdag-bawas (add-subtract) may occur, with
election officials engaging blatantly in padding and shaving the totals
in order to produce designated outcomes.
In Malaysia, as we have seen, what is locally cast as phantom and
transfer voting has regularly taken place. And in New Order Indonesia,
the final vote count was performed by the secretive General Election
Committee, located within the Interior Ministry and watched over by
Suharto.22 With no independent poll monitoring permitted, speculation
abounded that the committee sought to forge government margins of
65–70 percent, heavy majorities yet reasonably discrete and plausible.
224 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

And in the Philippines, as we will see, Marcos capped an electoral

process riddled with abuses by trying crassly to “steal” a presidential
contest, pressuring election commission workers not merely to adjust,
but to overturn the tally in order once more to claim victory.

Changing Hybrid Regimes

In recognizing that hybrid regimes can gain more resilience today than
hard authoritarianism can, we avoid the assumption once implicit in
transitions theory that these regimes are intrinsically unstable, even
poised for democracy.23 However, as John Harbeson observes, correct-
ing “this teleological fallacy [of instability] should not necessarily lead
to an opposite, and perhaps equally false, presumption that [these
regimes are never] subject to replacement or transformation.”24 Thus, in
some cases the equilibrium gained through political hybridity may dis-
solve in the frailties and tensions cited by Ottaway, Levitsky, and Way,
seemingly bolstering the prospects for democratization-by-election.
In shifting attention from persistence to change, we particularly
focus on short-term contingent factors, a causal sequence that may
begin with economies that slip into crisis or stagnation. However, more
than a univariate economic argument must be made, one wherein poli-
tics are changed simply by crisis and societal grievances. As Michael
Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle have demonstrated, economic crises
can cut in a number of ways, one of which may even involve mass
publics redoubling their support for a government’s authoritarian con-
trols in hopes of restarting growth.25 Accordingly, key intervening vari-
ables must be present if declining economies are to bring mass publics
to the boil, perhaps to participate concertedly as voters.
More finely, then, in the Southeast Asia setting, it is when declin-
ing economies are marked by inversely varying fortunes between elites
and mass publics—with elites vigorously preserving their assets while
mass publics are left to confront uncertainties and hardships—that soci-
etal grievances intensify. The high-level patronage that amid the
region’s rapid industrialization had seemed so benign begins now to
grate.26 Further, these discontents may find resonance with deeper per-
ceptions of social injustice. And, as Asian democracy and values ring
increasingly hollow, they may be galvanized too by the availability of
competing mentalities and appeals—not least in the Southeast Asian
setting. Islamism’s promise of greater probity in public life and neolib-
eralism’s insistence on fuller transparency, both of which, though from
 William Case 225

different angles, challenge hybrid regimes with calls for good gover-
nance. Finally—and most crucially—where governments react to these
pressures by drawing more deeply, but unskillfully, on the menu of
manipulation charted above, societal grievances may cohere in new
opposition sentiments.
Nonetheless, in Southeast Asia, even where aroused mass publics
have participated concertedly as voters, their behaviors have been nei-
ther necessary nor sufficient to bring about changes in the government
or regime. Governments have too stoutly resisted their ouster by voters,
even when stricken with declining economies, inverse distributions,
and unskillful manipulations. Grasping at the authoritarian strands in
the political hybridity within which they nest, governments have often
tried sooner to revert, sometimes successfully, from the hybrid regimes
through which they are now threatened to hard authoritarianism, what-
ever its costs. Thus, the electoral defeats that have turned out incum-
bent governments in Nicaragua, Albania, Ukraine, and several African
countries—places in which hybrid politics had only recently been
tried—have never occurred in the more practiced milieu of Southeast
Asia.
Yet the region has also been home to some of the third wave’s most
startling democratic transitions. Indeed, perhaps more than anywhere
else, the pathway to change in Southeast Asia has involved what Hunt-
ington once labeled bottom-up “replacement,”27 delivered not by vot-
ing but through street actions, sometimes quite violent. But even this
may be understood in terms of the resilience that hybrid regimes can
attain. Impermeable to the mere bargaining by which hard authoritari-
anism was transformed in the classic cases of Southern Europe and
South America, political hybridity in Southeast Asia has only been
replaced by stark confrontation and force. In these transitions, voters
have sometimes had a part. But only where they have grown so agitated
by the government’s distorting their electoral preferences they have
turned finally to popular upsurge. These contingent sequences are dia-
grammed in Figure 1.
In Southeast Asia, then, though bottom-up replacement articulates
the route by which politics have almost always been democratized, the
role of voters in this process has been secondary or nonexistent. Rather,
where democratic transitions have taken place, they have depended less
on voters than on street protesters, sometimes rioters and looters,
widening the elite-level divisions through which governments and
regimes can be changed. And where this process takes place, it may
yield replacements that, amid the third wave, stand in contrast to bet-
 226

Figure 1 Hybrid Persistence and Replacement

 William Case 227

ter-known, more sequenced pathways that commence in elite-level bar-

gaining and finish with electoral transfers of power, demarcating
phases that may be followed by ones of consolidation and deepening.
In sum, hybrid regimes, while sturdier than hard authoritarianism, may
nonetheless unravel. But at most, aroused voters, even when making
concerted use of electoral outlets, only initiate the transformative blow,
rather than seeing it through.

Persistence, Change, and the Role of Voters

While hybrid regimes have become Southeast Asia’s modal type, they
may be tested contingently by declining economies and inverse distribu-
tions between elites and mass publics. And it is on the artfulness with
which governments then draw more deeply on the menu of manipula-
tion—variously assuaging or alienating mass publics—that the fate of
hybrid politics then turns. The case studies presented in this section
reveal the conditions in which hybrid regimes persist or change and,
where change takes place, the extent to which voters have been involved.

Perpetuating Hybrid Politics: Singapore

While the PAP government in Singapore has been episodically con-
fronted by slight electoral challenges, it has mostly responded with art-
ful manipulations of institutions and procedures. During the 1980s,
with inequalities mounting between the city-state’s English-educated
Chinese (generally enjoying middle-class employment in the state
bureaucracy, professions, or foreign-owned firms) and vernacular-edu-
cated Chinese (mired typically in small business, factory employment,
and low-grade services), a few opposition candidates, led by the Work-
ers’ Party, were elected to parliament. The government responded
swiftly by publicly valorizing Chinese education and Confucian ethics,
while introducing libel suits as a means by which to force opposition
candidates into bankruptcy, which is grounds for their disqualification.
It made fuller use too of redistricting—tightly gerrymandering or even
disbanding districts that it assessed as recalcitrant—while gradually
introducing GRCs. And as opposition was commensurately diminished,
the government began now to replace it with the nominated members
of parliament (MPs) and “feedback units.”
But during the early to mid-1990s, societal grievances began to roil
once more over the government’s inflexible commitments to globaliza-
228 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

tion and “meritocracy,” made manifest in richly rewarded cohorts of

foreign and local executives alongside local workers facing spiraling
transport and medical costs. Opposition parties, then, in calculating that
many voters were irked by, yet still valued, the government, encour-
aged a safe protest vote, adopting a “by-election” strategy wherein they
contested in just under half of the country’s electoral districts. In this
way, during the 1991 election, the opposition made its best showing
ever by ensuring beforehand that it could not win. However, the prime
minister, Goh Chok Tong, responded innovatively, giving parliamen-
tarians additional responsibilities as town councillors, directly oversee-
ing in their districts the public housing blocks where most Singapore-
ans live. Then, in campaigning for the next election, held in 1997, Goh
warned that where opposition candidates won, the government would
withhold funding for upgrading, ensuring that the housing stock under
the care of these candidates “will become slums.” Accordingly, with
scope for even a safe protest vote now negated, the government
regained in the 1997 election the victory margins that it had tradition-
ally garnered.
Shortly afterward, though, Singapore was buffeted by the economic
crisis of 1997–1998, interrupting more than a decade of rapid industri-
alization. In this situation, mass publics faced mounting hardships, with
the government lowering wages and employer contributions to the
national superannuation scheme. However, the government also reduced
the salaries of its ministers—a measure unveiled with much fanfare—
shrewdly avoiding societal grievances over inverse distributions. And it
pledged to restore citizens’ retirement benefits as soon as the economy
had recovered. Hence, much in contrast to other countries in the region
where elections were held during this period, Singapore’s government
again increased its majorities when calling an election in 2001, with
“voters . . . [choosing] to stick with the [PAP] that had brought them
prosperity and security.”28 Hybrid politics have thus persisted in the
city-state, with demands for change blunted by artful manipulations and
by the careful management of inversely varying fortunes between elites
and mass publics.

Reequilibrating Hybrid Politics: Malaysia

In Malaysia, the UMNO-centered government has encountered com-
plex societal grievances, involving, first, ethnic rivalries between the
Malays and Chinese, then, more recently, religious differences between
moderate and revivalist Muslims. And in reacting, the government has
 William Case 229

sometimes manipulated institutions unskillfully but later regained its

artfulness. A general election held in 1990 was conducted in the wake
of an economic recession that had eroded patronage flows, sparking
factional battles in UMNO; the emergence of a new Malay splinter
party; and defections from the Barisan. The opposition was galvanized
by this new party, mediating electoral agreements between the Islamist
PAS on one side and the mostly Chinese DAP on the other. The gov-
ernment soon stemmed defections from UMNO, however, by more
fully exploiting its strategic domains in the bureaucracy, canceling the
state contracts and calling in the bank loans of those politicians who
had abandoned it. The government also reenergized broader Malay loy-
alties through fraudulence, the most memorable instance of which
involved its portraying the leader of the splinter party as a secret Chris-
tian, falsely portraying the Sabahan headgear he had donned while
campaigning as bearing the sign of the cross.29 Thus, by supplementing
their existing techniques with tactical use of reserved domains and
fraudulence, the government won the 1990 election at the federal level,
even if it won by a reduced majority and lost the Kelantan state assem-
bly to PAS.
In the aftermath of the economic crisis of 1997–1998, however, the
government was confronted once more by similar though more serious
societal grievances, renewed factionalism in UMNO, the emergence of
yet another splinter party, and deeper cooperation between PAS and the
DAP. In brief, after a decade in which rapid industrialization had
enabled the government again to nurture a coterie of Malay tycoons
atop a broad community of small contractors, patronage resources sud-
denly evaporated. And in rushing to prop up some of the tycoons it
most favored, the government arranged bailouts, with the prime minis-
ter’s son appearing as one of its most conspicuous beneficiaries.30 What
is more, in scouring for funds, the government drew heavily on the
national superannuation scheme, a program to which all Malaysian
workers are obliged to contribute. In this way, the fortunes of favored
elites and hard-pressed mass publics varied inversely, catalyzing socie-
tal grievances into demands for political reform.
Thus, when elections were held in 1999, the opposition parties,
their cooperation encouraged by a range of activists and civil society
organizations, displayed new potency.31 The government responded by
making fuller use of its reserved domains, purging the media and cen-
tral bank of those whose loyalties it doubted, while arranging a gener-
ous pay raise for civil servants. It also resorted to intimidation, warning
through a media blitz that the opposition parties were incapable of
230 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

managing the country’s delicate communal balance, hence risking

social upheavals. It portrayed the activists who supported these parties
as expressly committed to violence. Finally, for good measure, the gov-
ernment again deployed dirty tricks, involving, for example, the furtive
distribution around Kuala Lumpur of videotapes meant to corroborate
its claims that the country’s former deputy prime minister, Anwar
Ibrahim, jailed after emerging as a key opposition figure, was guilty of
sexual misconduct. So by drawing recklessly upon the menu of manip-
ulation, the government retained its extraordinary parliamentary major-
ity in the 1999 election. But its popular vote total fell from roughly 65
to 55 percent, its worse electoral showing in three decades.
However, as the government prepared for Malaysia’s most recent
election, in 2004, the inverse distributions between elites and mass
publics were softened. Briefly, the economy gathered pace, while the
prime minister, Mahathir, forced his controversial finance minister from
office, effectively pulling the carpet from under the many tycoons the
latter had favored. Mahathir then retired too, giving way to his deputy,
Abdullah Badawi, who swiftly canceled some dubious megaprojects
while ordering a few high-profile arrests for corruption. But taking no
chances, the government also calibrated electoral competitiveness more
tightly through yet another redistricting exercise, then imposed more
stringent controls on campaigning. Thus, as the opposition assumed an
increasingly Islamist fervor, moderate Muslims and ethnic Chinese
redoubled their support for the government. In these circumstances, the
government won the 2004 election with vastly increased majorities,
firmly signaling the reequilibration of its hybrid politics.

“Hardening” Hybrid Politics: Burma

In Burma during the 1980s, the military government worsened the coun-
try’s economic stagnation when, through inept agricultural reforms and
a “sweeping demonetization” of the national currency, it triggered infla-
tion and widespread unemployment. In these conditions, the high living
enjoyed by generals and top bureaucrats, sustained through “special
shops, rations, [and] corruption,”32 which involved extensive black mar-
kets and drug trading, contrasted sharply with the hardships faced by
mass publics. Demonstrations took place around the country, cumulat-
ing in popular upsurge—a “people’s revolution”33—in 1988.
Confronted fully by the inefficiencies of hard authoritarianism, the
military prepared to hold elections, marking a sudden swing from hard
authoritarianism to hybrid politics. Its motivations, however, were to
 William Case 231

replicate the strategies that it observed in New Order Indonesia, “where

electoral politics . . . supported, rather than undermined, a leading role
for the military in government.”34 But untrained in this regime type, the
government proved unskillful in its manipulations. It clamped down
tightly on the opposition’s media access and campaign activities. It also
disqualified as a candidate Aung Sang Suu Kyi, leader of the strongest
opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). But it
then waged elections that were otherwise remarkably fair, calculating
that the formation of its own vehicle, the National Unity Party (NUP),
abetted by a single member district system, would produce the many
pluralities across the country that would refresh its incumbency.
However, despite its ceaseless efforts to gather intelligence, the
military remained unaware of the depth of societal grievances. Thus,
with opposition sentiments inflamed and electoral competitiveness
uncorked, the military’s “plan backfired.”35 The NUP captured only 10
percent of the popular vote, while the NLD gained 60 percent, with the
latter winning even in districts that contained military cantonments. In
this way, the first-past-the-post system, far from benefiting the govern-
ment, magnified the opposition NLD’s totals into more than 80 percent
of the assembly seats. However, rather than acquiescing in any democ-
ratization-by-election, the military retained enough internal unity that it
was able to revert swiftly to hard authoritarianism, repudiating the
results and jailing NLD members. Nonetheless, the fact that the mili-
tary finds itself challenged once more by the inefficiencies of this
regime type is shown by its recently unveiling, however disingenu-
ously, a new consultative convention and democracy roadmap.36

Democratizing Hybrid Politics: The Philippines and Indonesia

The Philippines. In the Philippines, Marcos declared martial law in
1972, dismantling the country’s two-party system and shutting down
congress. But during this period, Marcos also held a number of elec-
tions and referenda: two elections for a substitute assembly he set up
(the Batasang Pambansa), a presidential election in 1981, two rounds of
local elections, and five national referenda.37 He tried also to forge a
dominant party, the KBL, through which to wage these contests, while
centralizing patronage resources in his presidential office in ways that
nearly established it as a reserved position, fully equipped with sup-
portive domains.
But Marcos appeared to practice hybrid politics only grudgingly,
more at the behest of U.S. diplomats than out of any real estimation of
232 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

this regime type’s legitimating capacities. Thus, his manipulations

grew careless, with elections scheduled irregularly, opposition candi-
dates capriciously removed, officials and voters threatened, and vote
counts flagrantly distorted. During the 1978 Batasang election, for
example, in countering a challenge led by Senator Benigno Aquino, the
government “resort[ed] to clumsy illegal methods, like literally threat-
ening to shoot [election commission] pollwatchers.”38 And in an
extraordinarily inept action, Aquino was himself assassinated in 1983,
apparently by military agents.
At the same time, Marcos’s gross corruption, vastly enriching his
family members and companions, began to vary inversely with the
declining fortunes of Philippine mass publics. Briefly, the economy suc-
cumbed to the oil shock of 1979, a financial crisis triggered by cronyist
dealings during the early 1980s, and the government’s hurriedly print-
ing money with which to sway the Batasang election in 1984. Amid this
economic stagnancy, hardship grew steadily worse among the urban
poor and in coconut-, rice-, and sugar-growing areas.39
Thus, in a snap presidential election held in 1986, one that Marcos
had been pressed by the United States to call, mass publics voted con-
certedly against him. Stunned by this outcome, Marcos worked reck-
lessly to steal the election but was this time exposed by election com-
mission workers. In this situation, mass publics grew so inflamed that
they evolved swiftly from voters to protesters, cumulating in a popular
upsurge known widely as “People Power.” Marcos tried next to revert
to hard authoritarianism, issuing an order over television that the mili-
tary “attack, demolish and exterminate ‘the rebels.’”40 But unlike in
Burma, military elites were divided. And thus, with the military unable
to heed his call, Marcos was forced to cede power to his opponent,
Aquino’s widow, Corazón. Among our Southeast Asian case studies,
then, this change of government and regime in the Philippines comes
closest to a pattern of democratization-by-election. But even here, with
the national leader falling back on the authoritarian elements of the
hybrid regime, popular upsurge remained necessary for completing
replacement.

Indonesia. New Order Indonesia’s hybrid regime—the variant to which

Burma’s military government had aspired—appeared to be well insti-
tutionalized, having persisted for nearly three decades. But the stark
inequalities that had set in over time between elites and mass publics,
while tolerated in a context of rapid industrialization, gave rise finally
to opposition sentiments during the crisis of 1997–1998. Suharto’s fam-
 William Case 233

ily members and top cronies worked to preserve their corporate stakes,
while the subsidies on staples consumed by mass publics were sharply
reduced, in part at the urging of the International Monetary Fund. And
when student protesters were shot by security forces at Trisakti Uni-
versity, the notorious Jakarta riots erupted, swelling into murderous
attacks on the city’s Chinese community and widespread looting.
Suharto’s erstwhile visage as the “father of development” was thus
rudely peeled back, leaving him to stand as a lightning rod for societal
grievances, popular upsurge, and violence. Seeking to tame protesters
and rioters into voters, he pledged more competitive elections in the
future. But given his long record of utter inflexibility and his rigid
adherence to the framework of his hybrid regime, he failed to gain pub-
lic trust. Civil society organizations, especially student groups, thus
spurned his offer by continuing to mobilize against him, even occupy-
ing the DPR/MPR building. Confronted, then, by the brittleness of his
regime in a context of economic crisis and inverse distributions, he
refrained from Marcos’s last-ditch attempts to impose hard authoritari-
anism. Instead, he transferred executive power to his vice-president,
B. J. Habibie, who, in trying to win popular favor as a reformer, yielded
to democratic transition. Thus, a brief analysis of the Indonesian case
shows clearly that hybrid regimes can be democratized through bot-
tom-up replacement, even as mass publics eschew any concerted par-
ticipation as voters.
* * *
To summarize this section, when economies declined in Singapore and
Malaysia, governments responded with artful manipulations. Most cru-
cially, they maintained tight limits on civil liberties, then deftly reor-
ganized electoral districts. And they worked more deeply also to ease
inverse variations in elite and mass-level fortunes. In these cases, then,
societal grievances never flared into the concerted voter participation
or popular upsurges that can weaken hybrid regimes.
By contrast, in Burma and the Philippines, governments clamped
down hard on civil liberties, yet failed effectively to calibrate electoral
competitiveness. They neglected also to ease inverse distributions. Fur-
ther, in triggering strong electoral challenges, these governments
responded erratically, repudiating results in the first case and so dis-
torting the tally in the second that popular upsurge took place. In this
way, hybrid regimes were changed, albeit in different ways. In Burma,
where the military remained unified, politics tipped back into hard
authoritarianism. In the Philippines, where the military lost unity, poli-
234 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

tics advanced to fuller democracy. Finally, in New Order Indonesia, the

government erred the other way, responding not erratically, but inflex-
ibly. Belated promises of greater electoral competitiveness were thus
rejected, with mass publics moving directly to popular upsurge,
Suharto’s withdrawal, and democratic change. These different trajecto-
ries are charted in Table 1.

Table 1 Political Dynamics and Hybrid Regime Outcomes

Declining
Economies/ Concerted Hybrid
Inverse Artful Voter Popular Regime
Distributions Manipulations Opposition Upsurge Outcome

Singapore yes yes no no perpetuated

Malaysia yes yes limited no reequilibrated
Burma yes no (erratic) yes yes hardened
Philippines yes no (erratic) yes yes democratized
Indonesia yes no (inflexible) no yes democratized

Conclusion

In Southeast Asia, hybrid regimes began to emerge during the 1960s as

the region’s modal type. In many cases, they were later strengthened
also by records of rapid industrialization. And they have gained traction
too in today’s globalized setting, warding off Western criticisms and
sanctions more effectively than hard authoritarianism can. Accordingly,
hybrid regimes have often extended the incumbency of governments in
Southeast Asia with much efficiency, providing enough residual elec-
toral competitiveness that some legitimating cover is won, even as
prospects for turnover may be cunningly negated.
But despite their resilience, hybrid regimes can be changed. The
main aim of this article, then, has been to discover the contingent pat-
terns by which change might take place, especially as it involves con-
certed voter participation—amounting to the democratization-by-elec-
tion through which hybrid regimes have unraveled in Eastern Europe,
Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa. To do this, I recorded the
many manipulations to which governments resort in Southeast Asia
while operating hybrid regimes. And through the case studies that fol-
lowed, we learned that where governments, in a context of declining
economies and inverse distributions, made new manipulations unskill-
fully, mass publics might finally demand change.
 William Case 235

But in Southeast Asia, it has been no easy matter for mass publics
to deliver transformative impact as voters, using the electoral apertures
that hybrid regimes offer. Indeed, voters in the region, acting only as
voters, have never been able to turn the tables decisively. Even in those
few cases where voters have swept past authoritarian controls, govern-
ments remain encouraged by the structural grounding they still hold to
dig in their heels, seeking sooner to revert to hard authoritarianism than
to acquiesce in democratic transitions. Thus, while transitions to
democracy have surely taken place in the region, usually through bot-
tom-up replacements, they have been driven not by voters, but instead
more forcibly by protesters. Further, even after transitions have taken
place, the elements of earlier trajectories appear at some level to recon-
stitute themselves, with authoritarian strands restraining the quality of
the new democracies that emerge.
Of course, the lessons drawn about hybrid politics in Southeast
Asia may not apply readily to other parts of the world where voters
have indeed sometimes succeeded in ousting their governments and
democratizing politics. However, it may be that these latter cases are
not so different from those in Southeast Asia, but rather are set apart
mainly in time by the newness of their political hybridity, the inexpert-
ness with which manipulations are carried out, the inaccurate transmis-
sion of structural conditions into political practices, and the precari-
ousness of industrializing performance. Thus, in time, not only may
hybrid regimes grow more pervasive, but they may also gain more
immunity to voters where those regimes spread, further confounding
democracy’s promoters while intriguing the transitions theorists.

William Case is associate professor in the Department of International Business

and Asian Studies, Griffith University, Australia. He has held teaching or visiting
research positions at the MARA University Institute of Technology in Shah
Alam, Malaysia, the University of Malaya, and the National University of
Malaysia. His most recent book is Politics in Southeast Asia: Democracy or Less.

Notes

1. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, “Defining Some Con-

cepts (and Exposing Some Assumptions).” In Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe
C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian
Rule: Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1986), pp. 6–14.
236 Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes

2. See, for example, Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of

Semi-Authoritarianism (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for Peace,
2003); Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Rise of Competitive Author-
itarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 51–65; William Case,
“Can the ‘Halfway House’ Stand? Semidemocracy and Elite Theory in Three
Southeast Asian Countries,” Comparative Politics 28, no. 4 (1996): 37–64;
Daniel A. Bell, David Brown, Kanishka Jayasuriya, and David Martin Jones,
Towards Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan,
1995); and Terry Lynn Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,” Jour-
nal of Democracy 6, no. 3 (1995): 72–86.
3. Ottaway, Democracy Challenged, p. vi.
4. Levitsky and Way, “Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” p. 51.
5. Ottaway, Democracy Challenged, p. 16.
6. Levitsky and Way, “Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” pp. 58–59.
7. Carl A. Trocki, “Democracy and the State in Southeast Asia.” In Carl
A. Trocki, ed., Gangsters, Democracy, and the State in Southeast Asia (Ithaca:
Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1998), p. 8.
8. Andreas Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation,” Journal of Democ-
racy 13, no. 2 (2002): 36–50.
9. Schedler, “Menu of Manipulation,” pp. 43–44.
10. Ooi Can Seng, “Singapore” In Wolfgang Sachsenroder and Ulrike E.
Frings, eds., Political Party Systems and Democratic Development in East and
Southeast Asia, vol. 1: Southeast Asia (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1998), p.
392.
11. William Case, “Singapore in 2003: Another Tough Year,” Asian Sur-
vey 44, no. 2 (2004): 116–117.
12. David Wurfel, Filipino Politics: Development and Decay (Ithaca: Cor-
nell University Press, 1988), p. 123.
13. Schedler, “Menu of Manipulation,” p. 42.
14. Ibid., p. 43.
15. Terence Gomez, “Malaysia.” In Sachsenroder and Frings, Political
Party Systems, p. 267.
16. James V. Jesudason, “The Syncretic State and the Structuring of
Oppositional Politics in Malaysia.” In Garry Rodan, ed., Political Oppositions
in Industrialising Asia (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 128–160.
17. Errol B. Leones and Miel Moraleda, “Philippines.” In Sachsenroder
and Frings, Political Party Systems, p. 330.
18. Ibid., p. 330.
19. Ooi, “Singapore,” p. 384.
20. Khin Maung Win and Alan Smith, “Burma.” In Sachsenroder and
Frings, Political Party Systems, p. 120.
21. Schedler, “Menu of Manipulation,” p. 44.
22. Stephan Eklof, Indonesian Politics in Crisis: The Long Fall of Suharto,
1996–98 (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1999), pp. 92–93.
23. Samuel Huntington writes, for example, that “the experience of the
third wave strongly suggests that liberalized authoritarianism is not a stable
equilibrium; the halfway house does not stand.” Samuel Huntington, The Third
 William Case 237

Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1991), p. 137.
24. John W. Harbeson, “Hybrid Regimes and the Restoration of Civil Soci-
ety: Toward a New Paradigm,” paper delivered at the workshop “Democratiza-
tion by Elections? The Dynamics of Electoral Authoritarianism,” CIDE and
International Forum for Democratic Studies, Mexico City, April 2–3, 2004.
25. Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments
in Africa: Regime Transitins in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997), p. 36.
26. According to Bratton and van de Walle, this progression in which
“shrinking economic opportunities and exclusionary rewards [become] a volatile
recipe for social unrest” occurs even more readily in sub-Saharan Africa, with the
region’s neopatrimonialist politics never producing any industrialization at all.
Bratton and van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa, p. 83.
27. Huntington, The Third Wave, pp. 142–150. See also Bratton and van
de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa, especially pp. 83–84; Nancy
Bermeo, “Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict During Democra-
tic Transitions.” In Lisa Anderson, ed., Transitions to Democracy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 120–140; William Case, “Democracy in
Southeast Asia: What Does It Look Like and What Does It Matter?” In Mark
Beeson, ed., Contemporary Southeast Asia: Regional Dynamics, National Dif-
ferences (London: Palgrave, 2004), pp. 75–96.
28. Diane K. Mauzy and R. S. Milne, Singapore Politics Under the Peo-
ple’s Action Party (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 152.
29. William Case, “Semi-Democracy in Malaysia: Withstanding the Pres-
sures for Regime Change,” Pacific Affairs 66, no. 1 (1993): 200.
30. Stephan Haggard, The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Cri-
sis (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 2003), pp.
167–171.
31. William Case, “Malaysia’s General Elections in 1999: A Consolidated
and High-Quality Semi-Democracy,” Asian Studies Review 25, no. 1 (2001):
35–56.
32. David I. Steinberg, Burma: The State of Myanmar (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 2001), p. 24.
33. Ibid., p. 3.
34. R. H. Taylor, “Elections in Burma/Myanmar: For Whom and Why?”
In R. H. Taylor, ed., The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia (Cambridge:
Woodrow Wilson Center/Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 178.
35. Khin and Smith, “Burma,” p. 134.
36. “Myanmar Announces Democracy Roadmap, ‘Free, Fair’ Polls,”
Agence France-Presse, August 30, 2003, at http://www.inq7.net/brk/2003/aug/
30/brkafp_4-1.htm.
37. Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, “Contested Meanings of Elections in the
Philippines.” In Taylor, Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia, p. 157.
38. Ibid., p. 158.
39. Wurfel, Fililpino Politics, p. 292.
40. Quoted in ibid., p. 303.