Comment on “The Southeast Asian Economies in the Age of Discontent”

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12311
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020

Comment on “The Southeast Asian

Economies in the Age of Discontent”

Takatoshi ITO†

Columbia University, USA

JEL codes: F02, F60, H12, Z18

Accepted: 28 March 2020

Basri and Hill (2020) ask the question whether the recent global trend of authoritarian

populism has influenced Southeast Asian countries. Their short answer is “No,”and

they provide several reasons. If the authoritarian populism in the advanced countries is

triggered by stagnant growth, unemployment, and social discontent with globalization,

then an easy explanation is that the Southeast Asian countries do not have those

socio-economic conditions. In Southeast Asia, growth is still reasonable; unemploy-

ment is not a major problem; and globalization has helped their exports and growth.

The socio-economic backgrounds for the rise of authoritarian regimes in several

advanced and emerging market countries appear to vary from one country to another.

Take the USA for example. The unemployment rate was the highest during the

months following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. However, the US case does

not exactly fit the conventional wisdom of the rise of protectionism (illiberalism) and

populism. The year of the worst economic performance was 2009, when the unem-

ployment rate shot up to 10%. It would not have been surprising if protectionism had

risen then. On the contrary, the G-20 summit meeting reaffirmed the value of free

trade. Protectionism under Trump was introduced when the economy was booming,

with a very low unemployment rate. So, why was there no backlash against globaliza-

tion in 2009, but a surge in support for a politician advocating protectionism in 2016?

This is a puzzle (Naoi, forthcoming).

In Basri and Hill (2020), authoritarian and populism are mentioned in one breath.

However, in a true authoritarian state with a one-party system, such as China and

Vietnam, the leader does not have to be a populist since there is no general election. In

a democracy, a candidate for president or prime minister may have to promise many

populist measures to win votes in elections. A closely-contested, democratically elected

authoritarian needs to be a populist, but this is not the case for a true authoritarian in

a non-democratic, one-party system. Where is the line between legitimate political tac-

tics to gain “mean voters”(in the sense of the mean voter theorem) and populism with

its bad connotation? In some Southeast Asian countries, in the past, a de facto

†Correspondence: Takatoshi Ito, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia Univer-

sity, New York, NY 10027, USA. Email: ti2164@columbia.edu

210 © 2020 Japan Center for Economic Research

doi: 10.1111/aepr.12311 Asian Economic Policy Review (2020) 15, 210–211