The politics of authoritarianism: the state and political soldiers in burma, indonesia, and thailand by Chao-Tzang Yawnghwe M. A., University of British Columbia, 1990 B. A., University of Rangoon, 1961

To gain a better theoretical appreciation of the military’s role in politics, it is necessary to examine concepts that assist in understanding the state -- the ultimate structure of power and dominance in any state-society formation. Significant here are a number of key concepts relating to the state: the nature of state autonomy; the way power is organized or arranged; the particular forms of the state-society interrelation-ship; and, finally, changes in the patterns of domination or relative autonomy among elements within the state in military-authoritarian orders.

For this purposes of this inquiry, "the state" is defined as an ensemble of power structures, manned and directed by power-holders and officials, situated within an internationally recognized legal-territorial space (sometimes known as the "nation-state"), and dominating another set of structures and relationships: the wider society. From this standpoint, the state is part of society, and society is part of the state. However, as Naomi Chazan notes, state and society can be analytically conceptualized as intersecting, interrelated, but potentially independent variables.⁶⁴ The relationship between state and society is a complex, dynamic one. To better to understand how the state relates to society and vice-versa, it is important to study elements of the state in relation to forces within society, and also the reverse.⁶⁵ In this thesis on military-authoritarian regimes, the military constitutes an important component of the state.

At the heart of the politics of state-society interaction is the issue of state autonomy, which will be examined next. An especially well-known position on state autonomy is Karl Marx’s view of the modern state as a committee for managing the common affairs of the capital-holding class, the bourgeoisie.⁶⁶ The state is merely a "loyal agent" of capital. However, in a review of Marx’s thoughts on the state, Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum assert that different historical circumstances can produce different outcomes in the nature and development of states. Thus, although the Prusso-German empire, Switzerland, Britain, and the United States all had in common a capitalist system, the form of the state in each was different.⁶⁷ Marx even argues that under particular circumstances, the state may stand above, and distinct from, society. In Prussia, residual feudalist influences enabled the landed classes to construct a state that was "oppressive, independent, a sacred force [in no way] degrad-ing itself by becoming a vulgar instrument of bourgeois society".⁶⁸ The Bonapartist state, in Marx’s view, was likewise one which reduced all classes -- including the bourgeoisie -- to a position of subservience, kneeling "before the rifle butt".⁶⁹

The view of the state as autonomous from or independent of society is advanced by Eric Nordlinger in his analysis of state autonomy in democratic states, the United States particularly.⁷⁰ Nordlinger argues that the convention holding that state elites and functionaries (or as he puts it, "state officials") in democracies are "consistently constrained by societal groups" is a distortion of reality. Even when the preferences of powerful societal actors diverge from those of officials, the latter not only possess, but are able to capitalize on, "autonomy-enhancing capacities and opportunities". They are able to translate their preferences into public policy. He maintains that officials do act in ways that assert the state’s autonomy, in disregard of the preferences of society.⁷¹

Gianfranco Poggi shares Nordlinger’s views.⁷² He notes that officials in democracies, having secured firm guarantees of tenure, pensions, and "the autonomy of their professional judgement", do assert their independence, and that the increased use of highly technical knowledge in administering a complex economy "leaves the mere citizen nowhere".⁷³ Poggi sees public policy increasingly being replaced by bureaucratic interaction among self-regarding state interests and their allies in business (the "privileged parts of society").⁷⁴ For her part, Theda Skocpol notes that all states play a major role in forming and implementing policies, managing economic development, resolving extranational problems, and shaping class formations and social protests.⁷⁵ It would seem, then, that the state everywhere has a high degree of autonomy, and society is somewhat powerless in its relations with the state.

The question that arises at this point is: if the state is increasingly autonomous, even in a democracy, how does a democratic state differ from an authoritarian or even "totalitarian" one? Is there, at bottom, no difference at all in terms of the state’s relative autonomy or independence from society? If there is, what is/are the differentiating feature(s)? To answer these questions, we must delve further into the various aspects of state autonomy.

Extrapolating from Skocpol’s discussion of state autonomy, the concept can be broken down in four ways.⁷⁶ First, the state is autonomous relative to society because it responds to a dominant class, the bourgeoisie, more than to the "public". This is the conventional perspective of Marx and Marxian scholars in general. To a degree, it is also Poggi’s. Second, it is autonomous from privileged segments (the bourgeoisie, traditional notables, landowners, etc.), and responds to the need to achieve higher nationalist or "communitarian" goals. This is the ideal claimed by nationalists, author-itarians, and recently some Asian/ASEAN leaders. Third, the state is relatively independent of all classes and segments, and responds mainly to the policy preferences of state officials. This, more or less, is Nordlinger’s position (and that of Marx the sociologist).⁷⁷ And four, it is relatively not autonomous, but responds to all, because the state is a site of contestation between groups that articulate different and conflicting interests. This is the view of the pluralist, liberal school.

In the context of the autonomy-responsiveness axis, it is possible to consider the phenomenon from another perspective: to what or to whom is the state responsible or responsive? A useful conceptualization in this regard is Nordlinger’s treatment of the state's autonomy and responsiveness in terms of the autonomy relations of society and the state (and state officials).⁷⁸

In Nordlinger's view, state autonomy rests on malleability, insulation, and resilience, among other factors.⁷⁹ Less malleable or non-malleable states are those that are not susceptible or responsive to societal pressures. "Malleability", in turn, is determined by whether the state is separated by high (non-porous) or low (porous) "walls". In the former, officials will tend not to respond to, or will ignore, societal preferences.⁸⁰ "Insulation" is an autonomy-maximizing feature. Nordlinger states that the most extreme type is represented by "sultanism," where the ruler is little concerned with responding to his subjects. Insulation is high in a state where officials do not depend on society for resources, but rely on coercive measures rather than upon support that is more or less freely given.⁸¹ "Resilience" is defined as the state’s capacity to counteract potential and actual societal opposition. The state is resilient when officials possess policy instruments that enable them to use a "carrot-and-stick" strategy to assert autonomy. The instruments at hand include the granting or withhold-ing of contracts, licenses, and exemptions; other discretionary behaviour, such as the speed or tardiness with which laws are implemented or ignored, the strictness or laxness with which regulations are enforced, and the like.⁸² The state will have a high degree of autonomy from society if the state is low in malleability, and high in insulation and resilience.

But the insulation, resilience, and malleability that account for the autonomy of the state are also determined, in Nordlinger’s formulation, by the availability to society of access to the state, and by the depth of a society’s intermediary institutions and associations⁸³ -- i.e., the way power and state-society relations are organized. An inference can be drawn that the autonomy of the state and its officials rests, to a large degree, on the existence of these intermediary institutions and associations, their autonomy from the state and its officials, and their ease of access by society. Where they are nonexistent or not autonomous, and where accordingly their availability to societal forces is limited, the state will tend to be highly autonomous. Society, conversely, will be relatively non-autonomous vis-à-vis the state.

Skocpol makes a similar point about state autonomy: namely, that it is not a simple phenomenon, nor does it stand alone. It is closely tied to two main factors. The first is the situation of state actors. Their organizational resources and policy instruments, their means of utilizing power, their ideology, and their cohesion will influence their propensity to assert state autonomy. These, in turn, determine the extent to which the state and its officials are autonomous from society. The second factor is the strength or weakness of non-dominant segments and/or powerful private interests (especially economic interests), together with their degree of access to the state, i.e., via autonomous and accessibile intermediary institutions and channels to the state. This will determine the degree to which the state responds to or ignores them, which is indicative of the extent to which the state preserves autonomy from society.

At this juncture, it will be useful to explore, briefly, some of the salient features of the state and how they relate to society. Skocpol, citing Max Weber, notes that states are compulsory associations claiming control over territories and people within them.⁸⁶ Administrative, legal, extractive, and coercive organizations are the core of any state. States matter because of the power that enamates from them. States may formulate and pursue goals that do not reflect the demands or interests of social groups, classes, or society,⁸⁷ i.e., they attempt to assert their autonomy from social groups. However, states are variably structured. The organizational configuration and structures of states, along with their overall patterns of activities, "affect political culture; encourage some kinds of group formation and collective political actions (but not others); and make possible the raising of certain political issues (but not others)".⁸⁸ Some may be "embedded"⁸⁹ in some sort of constitutional-representative system of parliamentary decision-making or electoral contest for key executive and legislative posts, and some others, as implied, may take in various forms of non-parliamentary or authoritarian arrangements.

States vary in their structures and the way they function for a number of histor-ical, economic, political and cultural reasons, including, as an important reason, the actions of key elites. Precisely because states do vary in their structures and in the way which political power is organized, it is possible to place along a continuum states exhibiting varying degrees of state autonomy. Like democracy and authoritarianism, state autonomy is not an issue of "yes-and-no", but a matter of "more-or-less".

In a state where political power is democratically organized and the state is compelled by its own legal requirements to provide social forces with relatively open access to politics and avenues of political influence, and more freedom of political action, the state will be (and is) relatively less autonomous from society, and more responsive to competing social forces. Poggi's thoughts on how political power is organized in a democratic polity⁹⁰ help clarify the patterns of autonomy in different states and regime, which further our understanding of some of the key differences between democratic and authoritarian states.

Poggi’s inquiry into the nature of the democratic state begins with the notion that in any state-society order, political power is paramount with respect to other social power. Power -- the capacity to mobilize the energies of others, even against their will -- is grounded, in the political sphere, upon the possession of coercive capabilities. The state holds the legitimate monopoly over these.⁹¹ Since political power directly relates to the state, the way it is organized will define its nature, and thus the measure of its autonomy as well.

What characterizes a democratic state is the fact that political power is organized and institutionalized in a particular way. Present first is what Poggi terms "democratic legitimation": the state’s acknowledgement that it regards the citizens as the foundation of its rule and the "ultimate seat of all powers that it exercises."⁹² Second, he claims that a bond links the populace to the state via the notion of citizenship: a set of general and equal entitlements and obligations vested in individuals with respect to the state, as well as the content of society’s activity and outputs.⁹³ Third, "the rule of law" exists. Law is brought into the "organization of political power [and] the modes of its exercise," establishing what Weber called "legal-rational domination."⁹⁴ Fourth, opposition to the state, debates and contestation over policies, critical orientations, and expressions are legitimized and institutionalized -- indeed, they are regarded as productive. This in turn is linked to the idea of the public sphere: recognition of the rights of assembly, association, and petition. Fifth, there is the established institution of representative government based on free and fair elections.⁹⁵

An important point about the democratic institution of power is the situation of power-holders and officials. To coin a phrase, power-holders are "temporary tenants of power": they are required to seek popular mandates in competitive elections.⁹⁶ Also, they are subject to removal by political-legal means if they abuse their power. Likewise, because officials exercise power on the public’s behalf, they are public servants, not masters.⁹⁷ The state is not the "creature" of rulers and officials: the state is "separated," conceptually and institutionally, from officials and holders of power -- more accurately, from their personal preferences.⁹⁸ In other words, the office is more important than the office-holder.

To summarize, the principles and practices of states where political power is democratically institutionalized establish the people (as citizens and electors) as the basis of rule. Political power is "tamed" and depersonalized. Citizens are able to protect themselves from the arbitrary exercise of power through legal safeguards and their legitimate right to participate in politics more or less independently of state control. They are also able to make the state respond, in varying degrees, to their pref-erences. The state-society interrelationship is monitored and moderated by the legal sphere and legal-rational procedures, binding on both rulers and ruled. Power is institutionalized in such a way that state power -- and state autonomy -- is moderated by countervailing forces in the public sphere.

The above discussion of how power is organized illustrates that how the state is structured affects, among other things, the pattern of autonomy relations between the state and society. It is wise at this point, however, to be aware that this portrait of the democratic polity, synthesized from Poggi’s work, is only a general conceptual one. Despite some fundamental similarities, democracies do differ. They range on the spectrum from the pure liberal democracy model to a more restrictive model of democracy that merges into the most mild form of authoritarianism on the spectrum.


The Authoritarian Configuration of Political Power
Historically, polities where political power is, in Poggi's definition, "democrat-ically institutionalized", are relatively new. By contrast, untamed political power --its arbitrary use and exercise, its manifestation in a mode of domination based on power held by officials or derived from heredity -- has been with mankind since the dawn of recorded history.⁹⁹ It is also more or less the norm in the Third World. As with democratic systems, and perhaps more so, authoritarian systems vary considerably, from mild near the center of the spectrum to harsh near the totalitarian end.

The Third World authoritarian state, including the military-authoritarian state, is one where power is not democratically institutionalized. It will suffice to say, as dis-cussed in the previous chapter, with reference to Juan Linz, David Beetham, and Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski,¹⁰⁰ that political power and state structures are arranged in such a way that key holders of power, and their power base in the military or the bureaucracy, or both, are largely unaccountable to (and more autonomous from) society, or what might be called the "public". They are also "insufficiently subject to antecedent and enforceable rules of law".¹⁰¹ As Fred Riggs notes, with reference to Thailand,¹⁰² the only meaningful political actors are power-holders and top officials, military and civilians -- an appraisal that could be applied to most Third World "milit-ary" regimes. The state is quite highly "insulated" from society by a body of officials and power-holders. Pressures that direct or influence the state come chiefly from within it, via "palace" politics, or by means of intra-military and intra-bureaucratic struggles, with the "public" (or the ruled), having very little say in "public affairs".¹⁰³

Power, furthermore, is usually not de-personalized. It rests largely in the hands of personal rulers -- to varying degrees, depending upon the ruler's ability to assert his dominance and/or autonomy from subordinate power-holders, the military, and cliques and factions within the ruling circle.¹⁰⁴ Likewise, in the rest of the system, bureaucratic power is not institutionalized in a rational-legal mode. Rather, it tends to be characterized by particularistic, patrimonial relations that obscure the distinction between public and private domains, and between public and private goods.¹⁰⁵ The state and its power structures are generally "semi-private" property, and are often used (or misused) by power- and office-holders for private gain.¹⁰⁶

There is in such regimes, the removal -- but more commonly, the control and manipulation -- by bureaucratic elites of what Poggi calls the "public space" and inter-mediary institutions and associations: the means by which citizens participate in public affairs, and power-holders are pressured or made accountable.¹⁰⁷ Subordinate segments ("the masses") are excluded, coercively depoliticized, and deprived of meaningful access to both the political arena and the state. Owing to such an organizational con-figuration and structures, the Third World military-authoritarian state is, as a rule, quite autonomous, relative to society, but highly responsive to the preferences of state elites – including their private and personal concerns.

However, as Linz notes, although authoritarian orders are non-democratic, they are not totalitarian, despite the many similar traits.¹⁰⁸ As discussed, there is found in authoritarian regimes a certain measure of participatory pluralism. There often exist political parties -- but usually a "mobilizing" single-party, and sometimes an official party. Also elections are held, legislatures are "elected" and sit in session, and "legis-lators" might even debate issues. But the political and participatory pluralism in such regimes, in contrast to that in democracies, is limited, controlled, co-opted, and manipulated, as Linz notes.¹⁰⁹ In consequence, the relative autonomy of society -- especially its non-dominant segments -- is quite low, in contrast to the state and its managers. The above discussion on the way power is organized, and how this results in an authoritarian system, illustrates the importance of state structures -- namely, their centrality in shaping state-society politics and the relative autonomy pattern in nation-states.

At this point, it is important to note that authoritarian orders are not, as Friedrich and Brzezinski observe, based solely on coercion, repression, or violence.¹¹⁰ There also exists some version of consensus. It is only in the initial stage of their establish-ment, or re-establishment that such consensus tends to be lacking. Over time, they may develop some responsiveness and generate a viable consensus. (On the other hand, they may become more repressive). A broad consensus may emerge as the populace becomes accustomed to authoritarian rule, or as some segments are given, or discover, opportunities for personal advancement and gain.¹¹¹ We might add to this list the idea of consensus based on an ideology,¹¹² such as nationalism; on principles, such as constitutional monarchy; or on a founding constitution that is regarded as legitimate, and which the regime or the ruler might skilfully manipulate. Owing, therefore, to varying mixtures of coercion, repression, violence, rewards, and consensus, authoritarian orders may prove quite durable.¹¹³