New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xviii, 354 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$34.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-61423-9.
In Party System Institutionalization in Asia, Allen Hicken and Erik Kuhonta assemble an impressive series of chapters with a quality and analytical coherence that is difficult to achieve in an edited volume. Drawing on Samuel Huntington’s concept of institutionalization, along with Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully’s later work on party system institutionalization, the authors set out to explain the existence—and non-existence—of institutionalized party systems in Asia.
Political parties, often maligned institutions, are viewed by the authors as central to the health of a democratic system. Party systems with a high degree of institutionalization provide citizens with coherent electoral options capable of channeling interests. They act as a bridge between society and government, facilitating accountability. Party systems with a low degree of institutionalization, on the other hand, contain ever-changing partisan options, are often dominated by a leader’s personality, and contain vague platforms. Because they are disciplined and cohesive, institutionalized systems are in a better position to deliver public goods. They can also improve the quality of democracy. As one prominent contributor puts it, institutionalized party systems do not ensure good democratic outcomes, “but in the medium and long terms, it is difficult to have good outcomes under democracy without a reasonably institutionalized system” (344).
In a neatly written introductory chapter, the editors make several key empirical and theoretical contributions. Most obviously, they extend the analysis of party system institutionalization to Asian cases using a comparative approach. Theoretically, they underline the important relationship between authoritarian legacies and party system institutionalization. Those party systems with the highest degree of institutionalization—Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan—all at some point relied on authoritarian rules to constrain competition. Only Taiwan ever made a transition to democracy. Hicken and Kuhonta note, “A highly institutionalized party system…may emerge from the shell of undemocratic politics” (16).
The twelve-country case study chapters are of an impressive quality. Meredith Weiss’s chapter on Malaysia compellingly argues that democratic change seems most plausible during periods of party system deinstitutionalization. The other chapters, focusing on semi-democratic and non-democratic parties, all tend to bring the issue of leadership succession to the fore. Netina Tan argues that routinized leadership recruitment mechanisms in Singapore’s People’s Action Party have entrenched the power of the hegemonic party and contributed to the stability of the regime. Tuong Vu examines temporal periods of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization of the Vietnamese Communist Party through an examination of leadership turnover and the shifting social bases of the party’s elite. Likewise, Yongnian Zheng’s chapter on the Chinese communist party examines intra-party processes and the party’s relationship with society and the state, finding that the party is capable of the adaptation necessary to prevent the rise of an organized opposition. In all these cases, party system institutionalization aids authoritarian survival.
There is little agreement on what, if any, effect electoral systems have on institutionalization. Tun-jen Cheng and Yung-ming Hsu’s chapter on Taiwan suggests single non-transferable voting rules aided party system institutionalization by forcing the nascent opposition to coordinate its electoral activities. Kenneth Mori McElwain thinks those same rules produced a clientelism and weak party identification in Japan, albeit in a stable, predictable pattern of interactions. Hicken’s chapter outlines all the institutional variables that keep the Philippines party system weakly institutionalized, while Csaba Nikolenyi finds that legislative rules against party defection have, to some degree, contributed to party system institutionalization. Institutions matter, but the particular institution and the direction of the effect appear to vary across contexts.
Several chapters present evidence to challenge the theoretical linkage between institutionalized, programmatic parties and desirable outcomes like democratization and the provision of public goods. On the one hand, Kuhonta finds that Thailand’s non-ideological, feckless party system has contributed to regime instability. Yet Paige Johnson Tan argues that the recent success of less-rooted parties in Indonesia may actually reduce potentially dangerous political polarization. Likewise, Joseph Wong’s examination of South Korea demonstrates the possibility of expanding public goods provision in the absence of a strongly institutionalized party system.
While Hicken and Kuhonta extend Mainwaring’s party system institutionalization concept to Asia, Mainwaring himself shows up at the end of the volume to provide his analysis and voice some concerns. Party system institutionalization should be sorted by regime type, insists Mainwaring, as the measures used to study institutionalization in competitive systems are inappropriately applied to hegemonic systems like Malaysia and Singapore. For example, does the Cambodian People’s Party steady collection of around 40 to 50 percent of the electoral vote indicate party system stability or simply the successful manipulation of polls and harassment of opposition? Sorpong Peou’s Cambodian chapter suggests the latter, finding electoral stability is likely “based more on coercion than consent” (232). Mainwaring raises methodological and empirical issues, and notes his skepticism that authoritarianism itself does much to bolster later party system institutionalization. The dialogue between the editors and Mainwaring helps situate the book’s contribution beyond Asia.
The book does not end up providing a clear path forward, both in terms of research agenda and practice. The authors find that existing theories provide minimal insight: democratic experience has not lead directly to party system institutionalization, and electoral engineering is likely to have unpredictable effects. Party system institutionalization may be the legacy of authoritarian policies, but most autocratic regimes in Asia have not arrived at this destination. In terms of democratic longevity, several non-institutionalized systems survive just fine, while Thailand’s recent experience with increasingly programmatic, rooted parties ended poorly. The emergence of institutionalized, programmatic party competition is certainly a worthwhile subject, but the Asian experience offers few lessons as to how a democracy transitions from a non-institutionalized to an institutionalized party system without triggering destabilizing polarization.
Although the empirical findings often challenge existing theories of party system institutionalization—and the editors’ key arguments—the shared analytical focus anchors the book and creates a productive dialogue among contributors. This is a worthwhile volume, containing chapters that can be assigned in class as standalone pieces while reaching a level of rigour that will inform future research.
Nathan Allen
Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 103-105