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Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. By Dan Slater. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. 342.
Why did a strong, unified authoritarian state supported by ethnic and religious leaders, government officials, students, and trade unions evolve in Malaysia but not in the Philippines? More generally, why are some authoritarian states able to dominate society with the consent of factionalized elites for a long period of time while others are not? Political scientist Dan Slater addresses this question in his fascinating book Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. Beginning with the assertion that no country can be ruled by a single, unified political elite, he argues that any regime hoping to stay in power requires support from the various influential upper classes. Despite wide-ranging interests, these groups will sometimes surrender considerable amounts of their autonomy to support an authoritarian regime while in other cases they will not. Slater proposes a set of conditions that produce cross-elite coalitions and then tests his theory by conducting detailed historical case studies of post-colonial Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. It is this linking of theory and empirical evidence that differentiates this book from standard historical accounts of the development of states in Southeast Asia.
Slater proposes a Hobbesian explanation for cooperation. Elites are more likely to cooperate with one another and surrender some of their autonomy to the state when they fear that failing to do so will result in the loss of their property, privileges, and/or fife. The more that political elites fear social and political disorder, the more likely they will...