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Since the Arab Spring, militaries have received renewed attention regarding their intervention into politics of Middle Eastern and South Asian states. This book examines the factors which influence military intervention and withdrawal from politics—namely, United States and Soviet/Russian economic and military aid—and how this affects democratic transitions and consolidation. The militaries of Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey, have used nationalism to justify their interventions into politics while ensuring that withdrawal would only occur if national identity were protected. This book examines important states in the Islamic World which have experienced similar historical trajectories, briefly experimented with democracy, and had the military become a dominant institution in the state. All four countries differ in their levels of ethnic conflict, importance placed on the country by the international community, and internal security concerns. The common result of international influence on political development, however, is that the military will take a keener interest in politics and be more reluctant to disengage.

In Transparency and Authoritarian Rule in Southeast Asia , Rodan rejects the notion that the 1997-98 Asian economic crisis was further evidence that ultimately capitalism can only develop within liberal social and political institutions, and that new technology necessarily undermines authoritarian control. Instead, Rodan argues that in Singapore and Malaysia external pressures for transparency reform were, and are, in many respects, being met without serious compromise to authoritarian rule or the sanctioning of media freedom. 1. Information Control and Authoritarian Rule in East and Southeast Asia: Under Challenge? 2. Bedding Down Media and Information Control in Singapore and Malaysia 3. Bureaucratic Authoritarianism and Transparency Reform in Singapore 4. Keeping Civil Society at Bay: Media in Singapore After the Crisis 5. Crony Capitalism and Transparency Reform in Malaysia 6. Challenges to Media Control in Malaysia Conclusion: Advanced Market Systems, Information Flows and Political Regimes Garry Rodan is Director of the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia. 'Readers committed to press freedom, justice and democracy will find Rodan's analysis compelling.' Mustafa K. Anuar, Aliran Monthly , Vol. 24 (6). 'Rodan has written an enlightening, challenging and provocative book in which he questions the assertion that greater financial and economic transparency leads to a more open society.' - Far Eastern Economic Review

Over the past quarter century new ideologies of participation and representation have proliferated across democratic and non-democratic regimes. In Participation without Democracy, Garry Rodan breaks new conceptual ground in examining the social forces that underpin the emergence of these innovations in Southeast Asia. Rodan explains that there is, however, a central paradox in this recalibration of politics: expanded political participation is serving to constrain contestation more than to enhance it. Participation without Democracyuses Rodan's long-term fieldwork in Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia to develop a modes of participation (MOP) framework that has general application across different regime types among both early-developing and late-developing capitalist societies. His MOP framework is a sophisticated, original, and universally relevant way of analyzing this phenomenon. Rodan uses MOP and his case studies to highlight important differences among social and political forces over the roles and forms of collective organization in political representation. In addition, he identifies and distinguishes hitherto neglected non-democratic ideologies of representation and their influence within both democratic and authoritarian regimes.Participation without Democracysuggests that to address the new politics that both provokes these institutional experiments and is affected by them we need to know who can participate, how, and on what issues, and we need to take the non-democratic institutions and ideologies as seriously as the democratic ones.

Authoritarian ruling parties are expected to be exceptionally resistant to democratization. Yet some of the strongest authoritarian parties in the world have not resisted democratization, but have embraced it. This is because their raison d'etre is to continue ruling, not necessarily to remain authoritarian. Democratization requires that ruling parties hold free and fair elections, but not that they lose them. Authoritarian ruling parties can thus be incentivized to concede democratization from a position of exceptional strength as well as extreme weakness. This “conceding-to-thrive” scenario is most likely to unfold when regimes (1) possess substantial antecedent political strengths and resource advantages, (2) suffer ominous setbacks signaling that they have passed their apex of domination, and (3) pursue new legitimation strategies to arrest their incipient decline. We illustrate this heretofore neglected alternative democratization pathway through a comparative-historical analysis of three Asian developmental states where ruling parties have democratized from varying positions of considerable strength: Taiwan, South Korea, and Indonesia. We then consider the implications of our analysis for three “candidate cases” in developmental Asia where ruling parties have not yet conceded democratization despite being well-positioned to thrive were they to do so: Singapore, Malaysia, and the world's most populous dictatorship, China.

Monarchical presidential regimes in the Arab world looked as though they would last indefinitely—until events in Tunisia and Egypt made clear their time was up. This is the first book to lay bare the dynamics of a governmental system that largely defined the Arab Middle East in the twentieth century, and the popular opposition they engendered.

Under what conditions do judiciaries act assertively against authoritarian regimes? I argue that the judiciary coalesces around institutional norms and preferences in response to the preferences of institutions and networks, or \"audiences,\" with which judges interact, and which shape the careers and reputations of judges. Proposing a typology of judicial-regime relations, I demonstrate that the judiciary's affinity to authoritarian regimes diminishes as these audiences grow independent from the regime. Using case law research, archival research, and interviews, I demonstrate the utility of the audiencebased framework for explaining judicial behavior in authoritarian regimes by exploring cross-temporal variation across authoritarian regimes in Pakistan. This study integrates ideas-based and interest-based explanations for judicial behavior in a generalizable framework for explaining variation in judicial assertiveness against authoritarian regimes.

This study examines democratic instability in Zimbabwe and Pakistan through a detailed analysis of historical, political, economic, and social factors with the aim of explaining the underlying causes of democratic instability in these countries. Using a qualitative approach, the research conducts documentary reviews as part of the literature review to gather relevant data. Data was collected from online databases to provide a diverse range of perspectives. The documents were selected based on their relevance to the research objectives and their authenticity, credibility, and representativeness of various viewpoints. The findings indicate that military intervention, corruption, electoral authoritarianism, constitutional crises, the resource curse, and foreign influence significantly contribute to democratic instability in Zimbabwe and Pakistan. Military interference in civilian governance, corruption within governance structures, and flawed electoral processes have eroded democratic principles and diminished public trust in institutions. Additionally, the historical legacies of colonialism, power struggles among political elites, dependence on natural resources, and societal tensions further complicate governance challenges. The study concludes that addressing these issues requires coordinated efforts to strengthen democratic institutions, improve transparency and accountability, and promote inclusive governance. The research indicates that postcolonial countries can attain lasting democratic stability and social equity by implementing these strategies.

Throughout the twentieth century, Taiwan and South Korea underwent rapid economic development and successfully democratized without reversal to authoritarianism. Despite their similar trajectories, the two countries diverge significantly in political and public support for gender equality. Taiwan is widely seen as the most gender-equal country in Asia, while South Korea remains deeply polarized, with uneven progress in women’s representation. What accounts for this divergence between two democracies? This article advances a political institutions thesis, arguing that differences in democratic institution-building—particularly the actors and modes of democratization—have shaped the contour of gender politics of each country. Contrasting the histories of party-driven democratization in Taiwan and mass-driven democratization in South Korea, this article shows that the process of building democracy has had lasting effects on the institutionalization and sustainability of gender equality.

Taking pride in the vibrancy and transparency of democracy, countries such as the USA have prioritized the spread of democracy in its foreign policy. The admirable impact that this political agenda has garnered across the globe pushes us to ponder what China would offer as it aspires for a more prominent position on the international stage. Particularly, how would China foster its image in Asia and, as a result, earn a favorable voice and even all-out support from Asian countries, countries economically underdeveloped and politically volatile? This paper sets out to answer this question by critiquing whether or not popular perceptions of China’s political system impact how Asians perceive China’s influence in general. Conducting statistical analysis using the fourth wave of Asian Barometer Survey (2016) to assess the above argument, we find that Asians who lend their support for China are more keen to the economic opportunities that China’s growing economy offers their country than they are of China’s political system. In short, China’s authoritarian regime type does not factor into Asians’ perception of China, except when individuals are highly educated with and committed to democratic principles.

Drawing primarily from qualitative interviews conducted between 2017 and 2018, this empirical study tells a granular story of how legal actors mobilised during the Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan (2007–2009) from the perspective of lawyer-leaders who organised, steered and sustained support for the Movement through rapidly shifting political conditions. By underscoring the contribution of lawyer-leaders in empowering judges, the article seeks both to displace uncritical assumptions and arguments about courts as the nucleus of legal mobilisation in Pakistan, and to highlight the crucial role of political parties in the restoration of the judiciary against the backdrop of disintegrating lawyer-judge coalitions. Given Pakistan’s political context of a ‘hybrid regime’, the article reflects on the unsuitability of the ‘legal complex’ theory of ‘political liberalism’ for analysing and understanding the Movement, and locates it instead in the literature on legal mobilisation in authoritarian regimes.