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Strategies of authoritarian survival and dissensus in Southeast Asia: weak men versus strongmen: by Sokphea Young, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 261 pp., US $119.99 (hardback)
Strategies of Authoritarian Survival and Dissensus in Southeast Asia: Weak Men versus Strongmen addresses the relationship between authoritarian governments, civil society organisations and business in Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia. The book is economically based, but it is more than that. Its economically grounded multidisciplinary approach weaves together considerations of political economy, internal politics, economics, military concerns, commerce and indigenous peoples’ rights into a single cohesive narrative. While the work falls under the umbrella of subaltern studies, it is difficult to categorise it within any single theoretical academic tradition. The book speaks against the mistreatment of the weak, indigenous and disadvantaged peoples with academic rigour, and is informed by both the author’s personal background (as stated in the preface) and the facts at hand. The book is based on three asymmetric case studies, as well as an additional five chapters that examine civil society groups’ success or failure in achieving their objectives. The author centres his work on Cambodia, and then tests his conclusions using Suharto’s Indonesia and Mahathir’s Malaysia. Notably, the author uses historical instances as a means of putting what he gleaned from Cambodia to the test. These three countries, as compared to democracies, have both democratic and authoritarian systems, earning them the moniker ‘hybrid political systems’ (2). The author claims that the success or failure of subaltern indigenous movements is determined by government policy, which in turn is affected by the government’s rural-based political economy and patronage networks. Civil society organisations’ techniques had little influence on the outcomes. In the context of economic liberalisation and globalisation, rulers, individual businesspeople and the private sector all have a vested interest in the outcomes of subaltern protest movements. However, the author contends that outcomes are mostly determined by the government (4). All three countries are politically ‘rentier’ states, in which the government uses economics to reward loyalists through patronage and clientelism. Rulers choose the level of security provided to the regime’s networked clientele in the face of more globalised social movements. The concept of ‘protection’ is deeply ingrained in Southeast Asia’s political culture. The rulers, Hun Sen, Suharto and Mahathir, as well as their subordinates, are sheltered from the third players – in this case, the civil society movements (219). Young emphasises that the desire to remain in power is the key to understanding the motivations of these rulers. It determines whether they will support their clients or the opposing social movements. When their current aims call for inclusive development rather than resource commodification, they may choose to co-opt social movements by agreeing to some of their demands rather than defending their clients (220). The rulers’ calculus can therefore explain several problems arising from examples of civil society success and failure, such as the European Company and Sugar Baron cases discussed in the book. The former was confronted with a weak civil society effort that was eventually successful, whereas the latter was confronted with a robust civil society social movement that failed. The fundamental difference between the two cases was the ruler’s political choice (123).