Organizer: Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University

Type/Location: In-Person / New Haven, Connecticut

Description:

The existing literature on democratization frequently views the defeat of dominant autocratic incumbents as democratization’s single biggest challenge. What happens in the period after the dictator is displaced and the opposition comes to power is generally overlooked theoretically and empirically. In this paper, I argue that what happens after the opposition victory is at least equally, if not more, challenging for democratization than plotting for autocratic defeat. Specifically, newly victorious opposition parties tremble under the weight of euphoric expectations from their partisan supporters baying for transitional justice, demanding radical institutional change, and impatient for immediate results. Governance inexperience, intra-governmental conflicts, and counter-mobilization by supporters of the defeated incumbents further threaten to push newly victorious governments over the edge of the precipice. Drawing from interview data with insider elites of Malaysia’s short-lived Pakatan Harapan alliance government (2018-2020), Elvin Ong will demonstrate how governments formed after an autocrat’s defeat are almost always set up for governance failure, political instability, and institutional stasis. Preliminary comparisons of autocratic electoral turnover episodes in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Myanmar reveal particular similarities and differences with Malaysia’s tumultuous experience. 

Speaker:

Elvin Ong is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.

Register:

To register, click here.