The march of democracy in Southeast Asia

Does economic development lead to democracy? Up until now, several East Asian states have seemed determined to prove the theory wrong.

But small changes in Malaysia and Singapore suggest that, in these countries at least, claims for political freedom may be slowly on the march.

Both Malaysia and Singapore are nominally democratic. Yet both are what Fareed Zakaria calls 'illiberal democracies': "democratically elected regimes... routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms."

Both countries have been ruled by the same party, the Barisan National (BN or National Front) coalition in Malaysia and the People's Action Party (PAP) in Singapore, since independence. Both the BN and the PAP have used their country's remarkable economic growth over the past five decades – Malaysia's GDP per capita is now around US$7,000, and Singapore's is more than US$36,000 – to legitimise their ongoing rule. The pace of economic development has been spectacular; the pace of democratic reform has not.

In its 2010 'Freedom in the World' report, US think-tank Freedom House rates both Malaysia and Singapore as 'partly free'. Both hold regular elections; but elections are not necessarily fair. Both governments use strict controls on the media and opposition parties, as well as electoral gerrymandering, to maintain their grip on power.

Yet that grip now seems to be gradually slipping. In 2008, the BN was dealt a blow in the Malaysian general election when it lost more than a third of its seats as well as control of five state governments.

In the last few months, Kuala Lumpur has been rocked by a string of mass protests calling for cleaner elections, the biggest of which saw almost 1,700 protestors arrested.

Only last week, Prime Minister Najib, under pressure, promised that he would repeal the controversial 'Internal Security Act.' The legislation, introduced in 1960 due to fears of Communist subversion, allows police to detain Malaysians without trial or charge. The BN has long been criticised for using it as a weapon to silence political opponents, including charismatic opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

On Thursday, the Prime Minister pledged that Malaysians would no longer be detained on the basis of their political views.

In 2009, Najib announced that he would begin to dismantle Malaysia's institutionalised system of racially based affirmative action, a bedrock of the BN's historical platform which had attracted sustained criticism for limiting Malaysia's economic growth.

Commentators have suggested that Najib's most recent round of liberalizing reforms are 'sweeteners' ahead of next year's general election. Sceptics have questioned whether the changes are significant at all. The government maintains that human rights and law reforms are needed to bring Malaysia closer to developed country status.

Whatever the case, the BN appears cognizant of the need to edge closer towards meaningful democracy before Malaysians go to the ballot box.

Across the border in Singapore, the PAP's Tony Tan was sworn in as President a fortnight ago. He won by the narrowest of margins, just beating out a former PAP politician campaigning on a platform of more transparent government. In a sign of the growing divisions within the party and the electorate, this was the first presidential poll since 1993 (the first time it was held) to be contested by more than one candidate.

In the May general election, the PAP won 60% of the votes. While this would be considered a landslide in Australia, it actually represented a 6.5% swing away from the party and its worst result since independence in 1965.

These are small steps, but they are nevertheless significant. In a region known for its stellar economic growth, the path from development to democracy has been uneven at best.

Singapore's first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew famously maintained that Asian people preferred soft authoritarian 'Asian values' to the individual freedoms espoused by the West.

John Lee pointed out back in 2008 that China's economic modernisation had not led to widespread democratic demands. The well off, well educated middle class had increased rapidly in size. But these nouveau riche preferred party membership to political franchise.

Once seen as Southeast Asia's greatest hopes for democracy, coup-ridden Thailand and the Philippines have seen political freedoms decline over the last decade.

But other large Asian countries have bucked the trend. In Japan and South Korea, the first Asian 'tigers', democracy has been remarkably resilient. Indonesia, just over a decade ago an authoritarian stronghold, has transformed into a vibrant (if messy) democracy. Now it seems that liberal democracy is a real (if perhaps distant) possibility in Malaysia and Singapore too.

Writing in the influential journal Foreign Affairs in 2009, Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel argued that economic "modernization does not automatically lead to democracy. Rather, it, in the long run, brings social and cultural changes that make democratization increasingly probable."

Malaysians and Singaporeans, now well accustomed to economic growth and development, are slowly beginning to demand political freedoms too.