Polarisation a Pre-Existing Condition in Asia’s Troubled Democracies

COVID-19 has unleashed a new wave of democratic erosion across South and Southeast Asia. In India, the government arrested activists who protested against a discriminatory citizenship law and in August 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi furthered his Hindu nationalist vision by laying the cornerstone for a Hindu temple on the site of a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya. In neighbouring Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is on the cusp of passing a constitutional amendment to expand his executive powers after his party clinched a two-thirds supermajority in parliament. The Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai governments have all clamped down hard on critics during the pandemic.

An influential narrative diagnoses the coronavirus as the impetus for these illiberal actions, battering democracies that were already vulnerable. Yet commentators rarely diagnose exactly what the underlying vulnerability was. Our research finds that recent political developments across South and Southeast Asia should be understood as an intensification of a deeper and longer-term trend toward rising political polarisation. In many countries throughout these regions — including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand — deep-seated sociopolitical divides are fuelling democratic erosion and will continue to strain democracies long after a COVID-19 vaccine is found.

Click here to keep reading. Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment, and Andrew O’Donohue, Harvard University, write for East Asia Forum.

This article draws on the authors’ recent report, “Political Polarization in South and Southeast Asia: Old Divisions, New Dangers” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020). Read the original report here.