Introduction
This part of the book comprises chapters on Southeast Asian states. The Southeast Asian experience is even more diverse than the East Asian, and some have argued that its unity lies only in its diversity. Yet its history reveals some common features. For centuries, for example, the region has for the most part been sparsely populated, only in the past century or so attaining the current density. As a result, control over men was more significant than control over land, and it may be that the strength of patron–client relationships even today owes something to that past. State- building was always a challenge, and in some respects regimes are still attempting to make modern states out of the colonial structures set up in all the area except Thailand.
Singapore, an essential base for the British colonial venture, was never expected to become an independent state. That it perforce did in 1965, when it was extruded from recently founded Malaysia. A small state, it has nevertheless survived and prospered, run throughout four decades by a strong government in the hands of the People’s Action Party.
Considering Singapore in the present context prompts definitional questions. Does corruption encompass patronage? That is of particular importance in respect of Southeast Asia, where patron–client relationships are often unusually significant. Perhaps it may be suggested that, not that they are in themselves corrupt, but that they provide favourable con- ditions for corruption, in the sense that public resources may be used for personal purposes, even if not necessarily merely for pecuniary gain.
Can the long-standing PAP rule in Singapore be viewed as one of South- east Asia’s patronage systems? If so, and those are after all seen as corrupt, then its rule as a whole must be seen as corrupt, despite the fact that it has been able to suppress the more obvious forms of personal corruption and its high Transparency Index ratings notwithstanding. Perhaps, it may be thought, Alfred Oehlers’ chapter (Chapter 7) draws too wide a definition.
Alternatively, PAP rule might be seen as ‘corrupt’ in an older sense: a demo- cratic form of government exists, but it is operated in an authoritarian way.
Young countries fix on development as the highest priority and tend to suspend political and social niceties. The PAP legitimises itself by its eco- nomic success, but also emphasises threats from within and without. Criti- cism, more likely to come from its more ‘cosmopolitan’ citizens than the
‘heartlanders’, it does not welcome. But, though it is able to dominate a small and compact state, it is clearly concerned over continuity, and it is difficult to see that its system can be sustained in the longer term.
In the Philippines, by contrast, almost every public relationship is corrupt. Is that related to its traditional patron–client culture? Has that been transformed or distorted by the growth of the state, the expansion of the economy, and the adoption of democratic forms? Or is the reverse the case? The increase in decentralisation – itself a reaction to the kleptocracy of the Marcoses – seems to have expanded corruption, not reduced it. The legal arrangements for checking corruption exist, but do not operate as they should. Corruption penetrates the fabric of society, and it is hard to know how and where to begin to deal with it. Natural disasters – and dealing with their outcome – appear only to offer it an increased opportunity, as Greg Bankoff argues in Chapter 8.
That question is raised even more acutely in the case of Burma, though for different reasons. The military regime seems corrupt in both senses of the word. Yet though it seems so deeply entrenched, there may be no need to despair, Peter Perry suggests in Chapter 9, pointing to the East Euro- pean experience. If a new regime is installed, it will have to work out ways of dealing with corruption in the more normal sense.
The same problem, it is suggested, still lies ahead in Indonesia. It is, of course, in a position to change its system, and it has begun the task. Until it is further down the track, arguably tackling corruption should be deferred. The contrary view is that the two processes should be combined.
Institutions should be established in ways that do not facilitate corruption or depend on it. The regional parliaments have not set a good example. In Indonesia, as in the Philippines, decentralisation has not checked corrup- tion, and Ahmad D. Habir discusses this in Chapter 10.
Malaysia, like Taiwan and Korea, has engaged in rapid development, in its case particularly under Dr Mahathir over the past two decades. An increasingly authoritarian state – though, like Singapore, still democratic in form – has been much involved. Malaysia’s ethnic structure has given devel- opment a special slant. Affirmative action has brought advantages, espe- cially to the Malays, but, if its time has past, it is difficult to change course.
The attempt to create a Malay middle class required – paradoxically enough – substantial patronage. ‘Money politics’ resulted. No one faction domin- ated, however, and that meant that corruption could be exposed, if only sub- sequently to be replicated. Rents were distributed, perhaps rightly, but neither transparently nor accountably. Some of those involved were corrupt.
Mahathir himself was concerned with patronage, not profit. Edmund Terence Gomez describes the Malaysian case in Chapter 11.
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Corruption, it has been argued, was in some sense the source of Thai- land’s economic transformation, transforming the ‘bureaucratic polity’
that Fred W. Riggs had identified. Increasingly, however, it became a source of national as well as international criticism. Though deeply divided, the soldiers intervened ostensibly to stem it, but they over- reached themselves. Pressed by the 1997 economic crisis, the civilians moved towards a wholesale political reform. Much of it, however, represented middle-class Bangkok discontent with the way democracy had worked in the provinces. It is not clear that the plethora of institutions set up will work effectively. Some, indeed, argue that the current premier, narrowly acquitted on corruption charges, rules in the authoritarian manner of the old militarists, as Nualnoi Treerat points out in Chapter 12.
Those seeking exemplary remedies are unlikely to find them in South- east Asia. In some ways the wealth created or made available by globalisa- tion has intensified the opportunity for governments and elites to sustain patronage systems and expand them. Foreign pressure may be countered by nationalism. Is one merely to hope? Thailand’s elaborate attempts to set up effective institutional restraints prompt only limited optimism.
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