Asia’s ‘Eastminster Model’

Most people in America and around the world are waiting with bated breaths for 2025, and what a second Trump term will mean. The year 2024 is ending with a botched martial law declaration by Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea, parliament’s failed attempt to impeach him, and more street protests and vigils. 

At a time when people in most Asian countries practice varying degrees of openness, signs signal further democratic reversals in the coming year.  

From authoritarian North Korea and China, elected autocracies like Singapore, to formerly democratic countries that are backsliding like the Philippines and Indonesia, the Asia-Pacific region has been witnessing democratic decay for decades.

However, with a new hardline rightwing government in Washington next year, analysts in the region fear further erosion of press freedom, democracy and rule of law. America will no longer have the moral high ground in preaching human rights, democratic values and civic freedoms to the rest of the world.

This will likely be accompanied by Trump’s America ditching traditional allies like South Korea, Japan or Taiwan, or asking them to pay for the US defence umbrella as he tried to do the first time round. 

Trump’s muddle-headedness on bilateral trade and security alliances are likely to leave both allies and adversaries scratching their heads. One outcome could be China filling the vacuum left by America’s strategic retreat. Even Kim Jong-Un is relieved that his old pal is back in the Oval Office, and will not be giving him a hard time about sending 10,000 troops to fight in the Russian Army against Ukraine. 

Most Asians look admiringly at China and Singapore, which have achieved phenomenal economic progress despite limiting political and media freedoms. They are strongly attracted by ‘Asian values’ that emphasise the collective good rather than individual pursuit of happiness, and feel that Westminster-style parliamentary democracy is not really suited to Asian political culture.

This philosophy has adherents in middle-income states like Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, as well as the poorer parts of the continent like India, where there is a hankering for strongman rule.

They argue that political pluralism leads to societal divisiveness, undermines a cohesive national ethos, and distracts leaders from focusing their attention to lift living standards of citizens. What is the point of being allowed to vote freely for a political party if there is no freedom from hunger, is their reasoning.

Many in Asia’s badly governed countries are convinced by this argument. The countries with the lowest per capita income in South Asia practice western-style parliamentary democracy, but even there the system has been hijacked by populist leaders. 

Some have called this the ‘Eastminster’ model. In the world’s largest democracy, India, the compulsion to play economic catchup with China is so great that rulers in New Delhi have borrowed Beijing’s authoritarian playbook: abandon the doctrine of separation of powers, steadily but steadfastly constrict freedom of expression, manipulate the electoral mechanism, and weaponise social media networks to stoke populist rhetoric against ethnic minorities, migrants, or magnify external threats.

This has worked brilliantly to elect autocrats: in many formerly democratic countries authoritarian leaders have been elected multiple times because of their stranglehold on the levers of power. They have used free election to get to power and then dismantled the very institutions of democracy that got them elected in the first place.

Elected despots have co-opted the judiciary to deploy strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) to target political rivals, journalists and civil society — framing them on trumped up charges of tax evasion, money laundering or even sedition.

All this has been made possible by the tyranny of the algorithm which has aided and abetted populism on social media platforms, polarising and radicalising voters at election time. Disinformation and deepfakes on X spread the toxic sludge, silencing rational voices, muting critics, stoking bigotry and xenophobia.

Asia’s autocrats have keenly watched the US presidential elections, and they have been taking notes. If the United States and India, with all their constitutional safeguards, can drift into authoritarianism, what hope is there for Asia?

One thing to keep in mind is that countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka or Philippines and Indonesia have tried strongman rule before, and it was a disaster. And there are examples of formerly authoritarian Asian states that have prospered after restoring democratic checks and balances. Seemingly self-fulfilling predictions of the demise of democracy in countries of the Asia-Pacific, therefore, may be exaggerated and premature.