Institution and Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of Populist Political Changes in Three Southeast Asian Countries
Xia Fangbo
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Published
2024-06-28
Issue Date
2024-06-28
Abstract
The rise of populist movements has become an important feature of contemporary world politics, and the empirical reality in Southeast Asia shows that the changes of populist politics in each country has significantly diverged. The Philippines' populist politics has successfully institutionalized its transformation into a new political family, while Indonesia's populist politics has been tactical and marginalized. Established studies emphasizing the role of economic shocks, elite interactions, and cultural institutions have struggled to provide satisfactory answers to these phenomena. In order to explain the differences in the changes of populist politics, this paper proposes an analytical framework for the creation of elite coalition institutions and the diagnosis of populist discourse, and anaylzes the cases of populist politics in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Based on this explanatory framework, this study finds that populist movements in three Southeast Asia countries are difficult to cope with through the self-correcting capacity of Western democracies, and that the key lies in the ability of ruling elites to build effective government responsiveness and state governance capacity to optimize distribution and redistribution structures based on economic development, thereby defusing the intrusion of populist politics.
Xia Fangbo.
Institution and Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of Populist Political Changes in Three Southeast Asian Countries. Area Studies. 2024, 36(3): 81-123