Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia by Dan Slater (review)

Why did a strong, unified authoritarian state supported by ethnic and religious leaders, government officials, students, and trade unions evolve in Malaysia but not in the Philippines? More generally, why are some authoritarian states able to dominate society with the consent of factionalized elites for a long period of time while others are not? Political scientist Dan Slater addresses this question in his fascinating book Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. Beginning with the assertion that no country can be ruled by a single, unified political elite, he argues that any regime hoping to stay in power requires support from the various influential upper classes. Despite wide-ranging interests, these groups will sometimes surrender considerable amounts of their autonomy to support an authoritarian regime while in other cases they will not. Slater proposes a set of conditions that produce cross-elite coalitions and then tests his theory by conducting detailed historical case studies of post-colonial Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. It is this linking of theory and empirical evidence that differentiates this book from standard historical accounts of the development of states in Southeast Asia.

Slater proposes a Hobbesian explanation for cooperation. Elites are more likely to cooperate with one another and surrender some of their autonomy to the state when they fear that failing to do so will result in the loss of their property, privileges, and/or life. The more that political elites fear social and political disorder, the more likely they will band together and support an authoritarian state that can guarantee order.

The most serious threat likely to unite the divergent interests of business leaders, religious leaders, the well-educated middle classes, and the military in post-colonial states is "contentious politics". Slater defines this as events where significant numbers of people challenge the state simultaneously through actions like strikes, ethnic riots, rural rebellions, protests, and social revolutions. The variation in elite response (cooperate with one another/do not cooperate with one another) comes down to whether they perceive such events as "episodic" and "manageable", in which case cooperation with other elites will not be necessary, or "endemic" and "unmanageable", in which case they will work together. Elites fear most those events that affect urban centres, that mobilize radical leftist demands for income and land redistribution, and/or that exacerbate communal tensions between different religious or ethnic groups. This explains why the years of contentious politics and the violence targeting ethnic Chinese in Malaysia in 1969 and PKI supporters in Indonesia in 1965 convinced local elites that the costs of cooperation would be lower than the benefits.

The cross-elite alliances that emerge as responses to contentious politics are "protection pacts". Elites conclude that a democratic government is unable to handle the potentially destabilizing mass movements facing the country and so lend their support to increasing state power and authoritarian control in an attempt to decrease uncertainty.

Over time, a protection pact may evolve into a set of political institutions granting the state strong coercive power that it can then use to dominate society resulting in regimes known as "authoritarian leviathans". Elites will supply resources, such as tax revenues by economic elites, or ideational legitimacy, such as statements of support from religious leaders, to an authoritarian regime so long as they perceive these costs lower than those of living in a society where the masses consistently threaten violent action. It is therefore more likely that a strong, unified state will rise from a post-colonial society wracked by societal divisions and violent conflict than in one that is more peaceful and homogeneous.

The most endemic and unmanageable cases of contentious politics that also involve urban social movements can produce an authoritarian state marked by "domination". Elites in these societies face the constant uncertainty that violence may erupt at any time so they are willing to sacrifice political pluralism in the name of maintaining order. The constant and unmanageable nature of Malaysia...