Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia

by Dan Slater

• ISBN13: 9780521165457
• ISBN10: 0521165458
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780511861819
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Like the postcolonial world more generally, Southeast Asia exhibits tremendous variation in state capacity and authoritarian durability. Ordering Power draws on theoretical insights dating back to Thomas Hobbes to develop a unified framework for explaining both of these political outcomes. States are especially strong and dictatorships especially durable when they have their origins in "protection pacts": broad elite coalitions unified by shared support for heightened state power and tightened authoritarian controls as bulwarks against especially threatening and challenging types of contentious politics. These coalitions provide the elite collective action underpinning strong states, robust ruling parties, cohesive militaries, and durable authoritarian regimes - all at the same time. Comparative-historical analysis of seven Southeast Asian countries (Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand) reveals that subtly divergent patterns of contentious politics after World War II provide the best explanation for the dramatic divergence in Southeast Asia's contemporary states and regimes.

Author Biography

Dan Slater is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Map, Tables, and Figures	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
The Puzzles and Arguments
To Extract and to Organize	p. 3
States and the Regimes that Run them	p. 33
Contentious Politics and the Institutions of Order
Colonialism, Cleavages, and the Contours of Contention	p. 55
Mobilization and Countermobilization Amid Colonial Retreat	p. 73
Varieties of Violence in Authoritarian Onset	p. 115
The Foundations and Fates of Authoritarian Leviathans
Protection and Provision in Authoritarian Leviathans	p. 145
Contentious Politics and the Struggle for Democratization	p. 197
Extending the Arguments
Congruent Cases in Southeast Asia	p. 229
The Consequences of Contention	p. 275
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 311
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