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Southeast Asia's Political Systems: An Overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Robert E. Gamer
Affiliation:
University of Singapore
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Extract

It is a crime of political science that its creations of the post World War II decades — the area specialist and the model builder — so seldom communicate with one another. Professor Harry Eckstein has lamented that theory building sometimes serves as a vicarious substitute for research;1 in the same way, comments about local politics by area specialists sometimes seem to serve as a vicarious substitute for a study of the political process.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1967

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References

1. Eckstein, Harry, “A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present”. in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E. (eds). Comparative Politics: A Reader, Glencoe Free Press. New York, 1963, p. 5.Google Scholar

2. Apter, David E., The Politics of Modernization, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1965, p. 422.Google Scholar

3. For instance, Shils, Edward (Political Development in the New States, 1962. Mouton, The Hague)Google Scholar, sees systems moving toward “political democracy”; Riggs, Fred (esp. Administration in the Developing Countries: Houghton-Miflin, Boston, 1964)Google Scholar, toward “universalism”, achievement criteria, functional specificity, and structural differentiation; Lerner, Daniel (The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe Free Press, Glencoe, 1958)Google Scholar, toward empathy; Halpern, Manfred (“The Rate and Costs of Political Development,” The Annals, Vol. 358, 03, 1965, pp. 2028)Google Scholar, and Huntington, Samuel P. (“Political Development and Political Decay”. World Politics, 04, 1965, pp. 393427)Google Scholar, toward autonomy of the political sphere and its increasing ability to affect the society; Karl Marx, toward the socialist man and Communist society; Sombart, Werner (“Die Gewer bliche Arbeit Und Hire Organization,” Archiv fur Soziale und Statistik, XIV, 1899)Google Scholar, toward the “capitalist spirit” and the “principle of acquisition”; List, Friedrich (National System of Political Economy, Philadelphia, 1856)Google Scholar, “a free, inventive forward looking population”; Apter, David (The Politics of Modernization, 1965)Google Scholar, toward the “libertarian-secular system.”

4. Almond, Gabriel and Coleman, James (eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1963)Google Scholar emphasize the socialization process; Hagen, E.E. (On the Theory of Social Change, Dorsey Press, Homewood, 1962)Google Scholar and McClelland, David C. (The Archieving Society, Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the creation of innovators; Etzioni, Amitai (Political Unification, Holt, Rinehart, New York, 1965)Google Scholar, the utilization of assets; Lerner, Daniel, op. cit.Google Scholar, mass media, literacy, and mobility; Shils, Edward (“The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States”, World Politics XII, 04, 1960)Google Scholar, the participation of intellectuals; Deutsch, Karl (Nationalism and Social Communication, MIT & Wiley, New York, 1953)Google Scholar, communications patterns; Pye, Lucian (Guerilla Communism in Malaya, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956Google Scholar; Personality, Politics, and Nation Building, Yale University, New Haven, 1962)Google Scholar, transitional man and diffusion of world culture; Eisenstaedt, S.N. (Political Systems of Empire, Glencoe Free Press, Glencoe, 1963)Google Scholar, bureacratic complexity; Huntington, political institutionalization; Marx, the forces of production; and Apter, the balance between coercion and information.

5. Cf. Huntington, , op. cit.Google Scholar

6. Cf. Riggs, , op. cit.Google Scholar

7. Simmel, Georg, Conflict, Glencoe Free Press, Glencoe, 1955Google Scholar, warns against mistaking calm appearances for unity, as well as against confusing conflict with disunity.

8. Almond, and Coleman, , op. cit.Google Scholar, argue that input functions such as socialization, articulation, and aggregation might take place effectively even in the absence of formalized structures to support them.

9. Cf. esp. Lewis, W. Arthur, Politics of West Africa, Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1965.Google Scholar

10. Cf. Lipset, Seymour M., Political Man, Doubleday, Garden City, 1960, Chapter 2.Google Scholar

11. Cf. Jacob, Philip E. and Teune, Henry, “The Integrative Process: Guidelines for Analysis of the Basis of Political Community,”Google Scholar in Jacob, Philip E. and Toscano, James V., The Integration of Political Communities, Lippincott, New York, 1964, pp. 145.Google Scholar

12. Eckstein, Idem., p. 28: “Precisely these two characteristics of structural-functional analysis — that it leads to a conception of social changes as a process from static states to other static states and offers the possibilities of explaining very broad and rapid changes — make it attractive to those concerned with contemporary non-Western political systems.”

13. Cf. esp. the section on political parties in Eckstein and Apter, op. cit.

14. Cf. Idem., pp. 327–332; Almond and Coleman, op. cit.

15. Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties, Wiley, New York, 1954.Google Scholar

16. Ibid.

17. Cf. Apter, , op. cit., p. 2Google Scholar: “Almost all [the new states] are populist and, in a real sense, mainly predemocratic rather than antidemocratic.”

18. It is instructive, for instance, to match this data against Apter, 's (op. cit., pp. 455456)Google Scholar definition of democracy as a system of government placing high value on privacy; regularized procedures for solving equity problems; accountability registered through parliament and legislative bodies, and obtaining information through communications media, and opposition parties. It will have “practical realism,” “the constant translation of value conflict into interest conflict,” “conciliar control over the executive”, “legal and formalized opposition secured through a representative principle,” and universal suffrage and periodic elections expressing “public sovereignty.”

19. Apter, , op. cit., p. 133. Apter contends that this recruitment pattern is a characteristic of “mobilization systems.”Google Scholar

20. William Kornhauser suggests conditions necessary for a totalitarian state (Eckstein, and Apter, , pp. 225226).Google Scholar

21. Sigmund Neumann points to five conditions needed for a two party state. (Eckstein, and Apter, , p. 354).Google Scholar

22. I wonder, for instance, about the antecedent of the word “relationship” in this assertion by Apter, (op. cit., p. 181)Google Scholar: “…a primary function of parties is to organize public opinion and test attitudes and to transmit these to government officials and leaders so that the ruled and rulers, public and government, are in reasonably close accord. The entire representative principle of government rests on this relationship.” Must parties do the representing?

23. Jacob, Philip E., “The Influence of Values in Political Integration”Google Scholar, in Jacob, and Toscano, , op. cit.Google Scholar, makes some constructive observations on this, pp. 221–225.

24. To an adult it seems reasonable to note similarities between Liverpool and Calcutta, and draw the conclusion that similar causal forces are at work both places and that they are pushing in basically similar directions. A child may be dubious about this reasoning process. Adults will say that he “does not yet understand complexity.” Perhaps he is more sensitive to complexity and the limits it places upon generalization than is an adult.

25. Those of his articles developing the model discussed here probably began with his “The Role of Traditionalism in the Political Modernization of Ghana and Uganda,” World Politics, Vol. XIII (10, 1960)Google Scholar. The model is further developed in The Political Kingdom of Uganda, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1961Google Scholar; “Political Religion in the New Nations,” in Geertz, Clifford, Old Societies and New States, Glencoe Free Press, London, 1963, pp. 57104Google Scholar; “System, Process, and the Politics of Economic Development,” in Hoselitz, Bert J. and Moore, Wilbert E., Industrialization and Society, UNESCO, Mouton, The Hague, 1963, pp. 135173Google Scholar; and The Politics of Modernization, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1965.Google Scholar

26. In the Politics of Modernization (cf. pp. 22–38) he also develops typologies for several systems not currently in existence (or rarely so): secular-libertarian, sacred-collectivity, feudal, traditional, military oligarchy and theocratic systems. In this book he for the first time decided that most modernizing autocracies are now becoming neo-mercantilist systems. His definitions of modernizing autocracy still remain more thorough, and so are used here.

27. “Political Religion …”, p. 63.Google Scholar

28. “System, Process…”, p. 140Google Scholar. “The essence of freedom” is “realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose.” “Political Religion …”, p. 79Google Scholar. “Economic development becomes the rationele for demanding total allegiance.” “System Process …” p. 153.Google Scholar

29. “System Process…”, p: 140Google Scholar: This conflicts in emphasis, perhaps, with (Idem., p. 142): “Although the mechanisms of political and economic growth may seem very similar in all three types, each shows a different focus and emphasis. In the mobilization system, the problem of control is central; in its efforts to transform society in order to attain economic objectives, it drives opposition underground.” Is it growth mechanisms, economic indices, or values that are chiefly being altered?

30. “System, Process…”, p. 142Google Scholar. Yet (Politics of Modernization, p. 163Google Scholar) “identity is located in the work place, and solidarity in the social unit and intermediate affiliations comprise the society as a whole”. However (p. 210) “the party becomes the central force in the life of the individual around which his intellectual perspective, occupation, and service to the community revolve”. In a single party state, party structure (p. 189) “helps create many intermediate groupings in the society and binds them together, even those parts that are likely to be hostile to each other”; yet, the “ultimate difference” (p. 215) between parties of solidarity and others is that the former “emphasizes an organic society, communalistic perhaps”. Is the society being promoted here plural or organic, and does it consist of interests that must be accommodated, or that will dissolve in the face of symbolic loyalty to the leaders?

31. “System, Process…”, p. 146.Google Scholar

32. Idem., p. 149. “Hierarchical authority eeks not only to maintain itself but to intervene in all aspects of social life.” Whereas distinguishing features of the reconciliation system “are its participation in different aspects of group life and its stimulation of the public to participate fully in economic processes.” “System, Process …” p. 153.Google Scholar

33. Idem., p. 140. “Traditional values are not destroyed; rather, they are modified and extended.” p. 143.Google Scholar

34. Idem., p. 145.

35. “System, Process…”, p. 140Google Scholar. The system “derives its morality from gaining some agreement among its constituent parts,” “Political Religion…” p. 73.Google Scholar

36. “Political Religion …”, p. 76Google Scholar. “All values can change except … the dignity of the individual … and representative government”, p. 63Google Scholar. “Society is conceived of as a summation of individual values help together by a framework of law that is itself highly valued.”

37. “System, Process…”, p. 141Google Scholar: “Political and economic decision making is more widespread throughout the society.”

38. Ibid.

39. Idem., p. 143.

40. Idem., p. 149.

41. Idem., p. 145. “Just as political authority is widely dispursed there is greater reliance on private enterprise.” Idem., p. 147.

42. Idem., p. 149. “… the government, by catering to opposition and separatist points of view, is profoundly affected and shaped in its goals and in its methods of fulfilling those goals.” Idem., p. 143.

43. The Politics of Modernization, p. 423.Google Scholar

44. Idem., p. 85.

45. Idem., p. 98.

46. Idem., p. 430.

47. Idem., p. 238.

49. Cf. Section III of this article. Perhaps the distinction Apter is raising Here is that between organic pluralism and Kornhauser's meaning of pluralism as implying overlapping memberships. If this is his meaning, then his distinction is one between urban and rural, and between occupational groupings, more than it is one between systems of government. All societies must create new plural associations to replace old ones; perhaps his distinction is between those systems where the party takes this function upon itself and those where it does not (“Role of Traditionalism,” p. 56ffGoogle Scholar. implies this). This does not necessary prove centralized control (cf. footnote 50) or that loyalty to the state is higher than that to plural associations. Pp. 163–164 he implies that in mobilization systems there is greater discipline since “identity is located in the work place, and solidarity in the social unit”, and these are subject to greater political control than “non-careerist” identifications. Modernization, however, would seem to be the chief determinant of this shift in loyalties; once it is made, labor discipline in any state would naturally be greater, as would the possibilities for centralized control of production.

50. Of interest is this statement (The Politics of Modernization, p. 383Google Scholar): “Indeed, evidence of a country's mobilization system and party of solidarity is less visible the farther away from the capital or main town one gets.”

51. Cf. Burns, James MacGregor, The Deadlock of Democracy, Prentice Hall, New York, 1963Google Scholar; Grodzins, M., “American Political Parties and the American System,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. XIII, 1960, pp. 974–98.Google Scholar

52. Cf. review of Tinder, Glenn, The Crisis of Political Imagination in American Political Science Review, Vol. LIX (06, 1965), pp. 460462Google Scholar, and “Communications to the Editor.” APSR, Vol. LIX (09, 1965), pp. 691692.Google Scholar

53. Politics of Modernization, p. 63Google Scholar. Parties of solidarity “desire to change the community, to restructure social relationships,” p. 210, and “transform the entire stratification heirarchy, whereas parties of representation seek to widen, modify, or preserve the existing one”, p. 213Google Scholar. Yet (p. 213) both types of parties are “promoting mobility” and “providing an overarching system of social interrelationships that cuts across different and otherwise conflicting hierarchies.” Cf. also pp. 129, 132–133.

54. “System, Process …”, p. 140Google Scholar. “The party or the state will act on grounds of expediency and necessity, using ideology to give perspective and justify what appears necessary.”

55. “Political Religion…”, p. 63Google Scholar; Politics of Modernization, p. 359.Google Scholar

56. “System, Process …”, p. 142.Google Scholar

57. Politics of Modernization, p. 303Google Scholar: “modernization, and development, industrialization and science … are elevated to the status of transcendental beliefs.” Cf. p. 359. In “Political Religion …”, p. 78Google Scholar: “Industrialization is its vision. Harmony is its goal.”

58. Politics of Modernization, p. 359.Google Scholar

59. “System, Process…”, p. 141Google Scholar. Yet he claims that mobilization systems are the most efficient ones for nations which want to modernize rapidly.

60. Idem., W 144.

61. “System, Process …”, p. 142.Google Scholar

62. Idem., p. 145.

63. Idem., p. 143.

64. “System, Process …”, p. 141.Google Scholar

65. “System, Process. …”, p. 143Google Scholar: “In this sense they are far less flexible tactically than the mobilization system, while also being less doctrinaire.” “Extensive planning agencies are part of their governments.”

66. Ibid.

67. Idem., p. 148.

68. “System, Process”, p. 142.Google Scholar

69. Idem., p. 149. Yet: “It cannot utilize much coercion – if it does, it will be tranformed into a mobilization type of system.”

70. “System, Process…”, p. 141.Google Scholar

71. “Political Religion …”, p. 67.Google Scholar

72. Ibid.

73. “Political Religion …”, p. 63.Google Scholar

93. The struggles of traditional rulers like Ashanti chiefs was originally a struggle against assimilation into any kind of larger political unit. In order to become sovereign, any such larger political unit would have to demand higher allegiance, whether from recalcitrant or cooperative chiefs, via some combination of coercion and accommodation. Any state would then, if it planned to modernize, need to “alter the relationships of power and prestige between roles” (p. 387 on mobilization system), accommodate new roles to tradition (129, modernizing autocracy,), and work out a division of labor between political and technical entrepreneurs (132, 134; this is presumably easier under a mobilization system). Whether it is cooperative or not, the political and social roles of the traditional elite are bound to be affected drastically. The question of whether the support of the traditional rulers can be enlisted for the new regime may have more affect upon its legitimacy, and recruitment patterns, than upon its formal structure.

94. Idem., p. 392–393.

95. Idem., p. 245.

96. Idem., p. 395.

97. “System, Process…”, p. 146148Google Scholar. “High coercion results in low information, and high information exists when there is low coercion”. Politics of Modernization, p. 238. Cf. also p. 386.Google Scholar

98. Idem., pp. 245–246: “The structure of accountability reveals the responsiveness of the system to various reference groups in the community. Some may be, in effect, veto groups (as in the case of a legislature); others may be interest and influence groups, such as trade unions, businesss organizations, or professional bodies”. Apter implies here and elsewhere (cf. esp. p. 130, 244–245) that governments are accountable to citizens only through reference groups. Policies which happen to benefit latent or currently hostile people cannot be considered a part of accountability under this typology; yet they may be an important part of accountability or representation. P. 395 he also indicates that there is great variety in the types of information needed, which makes the meaning of “informational check” (p. 130) uncertain.

99. Cf. Durkheim, Emil, The Division of Labor, Glencoe Free Press, Glencoe, 1949Google Scholar, on the role of repressive law in modern society.

100. Politics of Modernization, p. 444Google Scholar: “The long-run need of the scientific elite is to reduce coercion and to increase information in order to take advantage of the modern advances of science and the social sciences. To reduce coercion, there must be decentralization in economic controls, wider opportunities for local entrepreneurship, and social mobility”. Fred W. Riggs, in op. cit., provides some discussion relevant to this point, pp. 365–398.

101. Politics of Modernization, p. 244Google Scholar: “A high coercion situation will show itself in heirarchical authority and low accountability. A high information situation will show itself in high accountability and pyramidal or segmental authority”.

102. Idem., pp. 390, 421. His argument here seems to parallel that of Organski, A.F.K. in The Stages of Political Development, Knopf, New York, 1965Google Scholar. Organski's argument contains contradictions similar to Apter's. This comment by Apter (p. 416) strikingly paraphrases Organski's theme: “It would be wrong to conclude from these remarks that the mobilization system is Communist and the neomercantilist society is fascist. Such a characterization is a plausible and likely one, but not inevitable”. Organski argues that at any phase in the industrialization of a modern nation several alternative systems of government are possible, but the relative power of labour, agrarians, and industrialists will determine the outcome.

103. Likewise, in his discussion (pp. 169–172) of career norms and functions, he indicates potential relationships between various types of role quadrants, and between roles and levels of modernization, and between political and career attitudes. But he does not specify how these relate to various types of political organization. Mobilization systems, he says (“Structure, Process …”, p. 141) emphasize discipline and “this emphasis implies that economic development will re-structure society so that those roles and tasks which are functional to the establishment of a modern economic order will become the dominant ones, while older roles will be obliterated”. Ties between political organization discipline, and economic development are implied but not specified.

104. Politics of Modernization, p. 252Google Scholar Cf. pp. 181–182 for further subtlety in these distinctions.

105. Idem., p. 256. Cf. p. 235 on industrialized societies.

106. Idem., p. 248.

107. Idem., p. 247.

108. Idem., p. 38.

109. Idem., pp. 450, 460.

110. Idem., p. 25: “Each of the political systems defines the conditions of choice differently”; p. 16Google Scholar: “Politics is peculiar insofar as principles of legitimacy are normative first and structural second”.

111. Idem., p. 10. “Societies are now able to choose a direction and means of change”.

112. Idem., p. 179: “The particular pattern of modernization adopted by each [society] is quite often determined by its parties”.

113. Fritz Morstein Marx, Eisenstaedt, Riggs, J.J. Spengler and others discuss with some clarity the limits which this permanent machinery places upon the actions of those in power. Karl Marx, and Lenin in State and Revolution, saw little distinction between “State” and “bureaucracy”. It is essential that leaders in any state attain the support of their bureaucracy. After revolutions it sometimes takes many years to accomplish this end. But, as Lenin discovered, the question of systemic change goes far beyond the queston of how the bureaucracy is organized. Apter, it would seem, carries this further to a realization that it also goes beyond the question of how political parties and constitutional arrangements are organized.

114. Politics of Modernization, p. 246Google Scholar Cf. Easton, David, The Political System, Knopf, New York, 1959Google Scholar, and A Systems Analysis of Political Life, Wiley, New York, 1965, for a similar emphasis.Google Scholar

115. Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society, Routledge, London, 1960.Google Scholar

116. “…the atomized society…the family becomes an isolated conjugal unit…interconnected only by virtue of their common ties to national centers of communication and organization… The centralization of communication and decision-making means that to the extent people do participate in the larger society, they must do so through the state, and other inclusive [nation-wide] structures”.

117. Cf. Liefer, Michael, “The Cambodian Elections”, Asian Survey, Vol. II, No. 7. (09, 1962), pp. 2024.Google Scholar

118. “The structures, narrowly local in extent and interest, and held together not by the common categorical identification of their members but by networks of personal ties and shared emnities, are better suited for the satisfaction of the concrete, short-run wants of their individual members than for the championship of policies”. But when it comes to policy making, “there are fairly narrow limits set by the expectations of various organized and unorganized interests which no President can ignore”. (Landé).

119. E.g. cf. Swisher, Carl B., Roger B. Taney, Macmillan, New York, 1935.Google Scholar

120. Lazarsfeld, Paul, The People's Choice, Columbia University Press, 1960Google Scholar, and Voting, University of Chicago Press, 1954; Durkheim, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Festinger, Leon, Schacher, S., and Boek, K., Social Pressure in Informal Groups, Harpers, New York, 1950Google Scholar; McWilliams, R.O., A Study of the Relationship of Political Behavior to Social Group Membership, (University of Michigan, Ph. D. dissertation, 1953)Google Scholar; Simmel, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Park, R.E., Society: Collective Behavior.Google Scholar

121. Brezezinski, Zbigniew K., The Permanent Purge, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

122. The best-selling version came with Lindbergh, Ann Morrow, The Wave of the Future, Harcourt-Brace, New York, 1940.Google Scholar

123. Apter's theory seems to imply this disability on the part of parliamentary systems: e.g. “The rate of capital investment” in a “reconciliation system” is lower than that in the mobilization system. “System, Process…”, p. 149.Google Scholar

124. Jacob, , op. cit., pp. 229239Google Scholar, analyzes some of the limitations on this.

125. At one point in The Politics of Modernization (pp. 391–392) Apter says: “changes in the fundamental requisites, coercion and information, result in changes in the structural requisites, that is, in the way in which authority and consent operate vis a vis one another. Such alteration marks the transition from of type of political system to another because a change in the proportions of coercion and information also alters decision-making and accountability. The different arrangement of these developments may be called political systems” ranging from reconciliation to mobilization. The index I am suggesting here may be a sort of deontologized version of this.

126. “Political Religion…”, p. 78.Google Scholar

127. Cf. Journal of Housing (Chicago), 10, 1959, pp. 311314Google Scholar re: the “social anarchy” reported by international specialists investigating the Caracas public housing. On their recommendation, building was suspended until a plan had been drawn up relating housing to both the rural and urban economic development of the country.

128. Cf. Meier, Richard L., Development Planning, McGraw-Hill, 1965Google Scholar; Ellefsen, Richard A., “City-Hinterland Relationships in India”, in Turner, Roy (ed.) India's Urban Future, University of California Press, 1962Google Scholar; Pred, Allan, “The External Relations of Cities during ‘Industrial Revolution’”Google Scholar, University of Chicago, Dept. of Geography, Research Paper, No. 76, Chicago, 1962Google Scholar; Saville, John, Rural Depopulation in England and Wales, 1851–1951, London, 1957Google Scholar; Thomas, D. S., Social and Economic Aspects of Swedish Population Movements 1750–1933, New York, 1941Google Scholar; Whigley, E. A., Industrial Growth and Population, Cambridge, 1961Google Scholar; Hoselitz, B. F., “Generative and Parasitic Cities”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. III, No. 3, 1955.Google Scholar

129. McClelland, , op. cit.Google Scholar

130. Cf. Clinard, Marshall B., Anomic and Deviant Behavior, Glencoe Free Press, London, 1964Google Scholar; Almond, and Verba, , op. cit.Google ScholarDurkheim, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Simmel, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Korbrin, S., “The Conflict of Values in Delinquency Areas”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 16, 1951, pp. 653661CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spratt, W.J.H., Science and Social Action, Glencoe Free Press, New York, 1954Google Scholar; Lane, R. E., Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does, Glencoe Free Press, New York, 1962Google Scholar; Stouffer, Samuel, Communism, Conformity, and Civil LibertiesGoogle Scholar, for research relevant to this hypothesis.

131. Almond, & Verba, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Teune, H., “The Learning of Integrative Habits”Google Scholar, in Jacob, & Toscano, , op. cit.; pp. 247282.Google Scholar