This essay focuses on the subset of semiauthoritarian systems that Beatriz Magaloni calls hegemonic-party autocracies. In such autocracies, a single party or coalition holds power without interruption for several decades under semiauthoritarian conditions while conducting regular multiparty elections. Within this category, the experiences of Mexico and the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) from the l980s to 2000 are particularly helpful in illuminating the current political dynamics in Malaysia and its prospects (or lack thereof) for democratization.
About the Author
Joan M. Nelson, scholar in residence at American University’s School of International Service, held the Pok Rafeah Chair in International Studies at the National University of Malaysia’s Institute of Malaysian and International Studies in 2006–2007. She is coeditor (with Jacob Meerman and Abdul Rahman Haji Embong) of Globalization and National Autonomy: The Experience of Malaysia (2008).
Regular elections have become a fixture of political life throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but there are now “two Africas” in this regard: one where elections bring the blessings of greater political…
Juan Linz’s 1990 critique of presidentialism in these pages was based largely on the Latin American experience. In the last few years, however, four new Asian democracies have encountered presidential…
Alongside democratic backsliding is another, more pernicious phenomenon: dictatorial drift, where “soft” authoritarian regimes are opting to become highly repressive dictatorships. The West must develop new strategies to defend democracy…
