Terence Lee's Defect or defend takes on the difficult question of why some popular uprisings against authoritarian rule succeed and some don't. It is an ambitious undertaking in both breadth and depth. In terms of depth, Lee turns to the experience of Asia in a detailed examination of: The People Power revolution of 1986 in the Philippines; the 1998 protests against the New Order regime in Indonesia; the Tiananmen Incident of June 1989 in China, and the 2007 suppression of the Buddhist monks in Burma. Although the focus of the book is on Asia, Lee also broadens the inquiry by positing the key question in terms of a causal logic that is not geographically bound — but possibly applicable in understanding the 2011 mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
Lee argues that the main factor determining the success or failure of popular revolts is the military's response — whether the armed forces defect and side with the protesters or suppress the mass demonstrations and uphold authoritarian rule. In deciphering the military's probable response to ‘defect’ or to ‘defend’, the type of institutions underpinning the regime are significant. Lee's central argument is that whereas personalism within the armed forces creates apt conditions for the defection of disaffected senior officers, military defection is unlikely to occur in nonpersonalistic authoritarian regimes where the armed forces are more likely to put down popular demonstrations.
Drawing from the experience of Indonesia and the Philippines, Lee makes the case that highly personalistic dictatorial rule in these two countries resulted in disaffection within the military and set favourable conditions for military defections from authoritarian rule. Thus when mass protests occurred, the armed forces refused to fire on the protestors. On the other hand, in China and Burma, nonpersonalistic authoritarian rule organised around power-sharing institutions mitigated personalism and created favourable conditions for military loyalty and the military's use of force against the demonstrators in defence of authoritarian governments.
The focus of Lee's book is primarily on civil–military relations in authoritarian Asian regimes — namely the interactions between the military, autocratic leadership and governments of the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and China. In particular, it is a book on the ‘how’ and ‘what’ conditions under which the military will defect from autocratic rule in the face of popular protests. If dictatorial regimes have power-sharing institutions, the ruling elite, including the armed forces, are invested in the continuation of the regime and consequently help protect authoritarian rule when the regime is threatened. On the other hand, if authoritarian institutions are personalistic, elite defections are more likely to take place when popular challengers emerge.
Beyond the civil–military relations sphere, Lee's work is also a significant contribution to the study of ‘People Power’ revolts in Asia where thousands of people from cross-class backgrounds take to the streets in the name of political liberalisation. From the case studies, one can draw on the empirical and theoretical explanations for the success and failure of ‘People Power’ transitions in the context of the Philippines, Indonesia, China and Burma. Lee's work does not displace current theories of democratisation or authoritarian transition, but it does give new insights into how autocratic rule can break down in Asia or in certain cases, continue to be upheld by the incumbent regime.
One question that remains unanswered is whether the argument presented by Lee can travel beyond the geographical boundaries of East Asia — particularly when compared with cases such as the Arab Spring? Lee admits that the personalism-power-sharing heuristic does not quite stand up to the test in Libya, Syria and Bahrain, but evidence of personalised dictatorial rule in Tunisia and Egypt could explain the defections of the armed forces in those cases. It is noteworthy that even in the case of Egypt, military support for the initial popular uprising did not prevent a subsequent coup d’état and installation of a military-backed interim government. Perhaps the ethnic and sectarian diversity of the Middle East does require a different explanation that is more historically contingent than Lee's personalism-power-sharing framework.
Overall, Lee's Defect or defend is a seminal contribution to the study of civil–military relations in Asia. By analysing the interactions between the military, autocratic leadership and ruling government of the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and China, Lee provides a useful theoretical take on the big questions of ‘how’ and ‘what’ the military will do in the face of popular protests in authoritarian regimes. As a work of serious scholarship, Lee's work would appeal to the academic community of political scientists and Asianists interested in political transitions in Asia.
