Institutional Engineering and Political Accountability
Once in a while one might encounter a book which gives its readers mixed feelings. This impression is precisely what one might get after reading Ziegenhain’s book. His book, which compares the politics of institutional engineering to promote political accountability and its impact on the quality of democracy in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, is a novel attempt to systematically analyze the said issue in comparative perspective. However, while his intellectual effort is appreciated, the book lacks methodological rigor, misses some key references, and needs improvement in terms of its organization.
Ziegenhain starts by outlining his theoretical and methodological frameworks in the first two chapters of the book. He argues that an institutionalist perspective, especially the version espoused by the famous comparativist Guillermo O’Donnell, can explain the important role of political institutions in influencing three dimensions of political accountability, namely electoral (between citizens and government), vertical (between local and central governments), and horizontal (between different branches of government) accountabilities. But it is not until the last two chapters of the book, chapters six and seven, that he explicitly mentions the main thesis of his book: institutional reform can promote more accountability and subsequently the quality of democracy in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines (pp. 239-245).
The main chapters of the book, chapters three to five, compare the three countries in terms of their progress in promoting greater political accountability after institutional reforms. Here, Ziegenhain traces the legacy of the pre-reform period, the evolution of institutional engineering, and the impact of these two factors on political accountability in each country. He then corroborates his claim based on his extensive interviews with various key informants on the ground, such as politicians, bureaucrats, and academics. In doing so, this work manages to make some meaningful generalizations across the three cases while taking into account the diversity of local contexts.
In general, Ziegenhain seems to ascribe a more positive assessment toward the Indonesian experience. From his perspective, a series of institutional reforms in Indonesia, from direct local elections and open-list electoral systems, to the increasing importance of the constitutional court and overseeing agencies such as the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), have significantly improved political accountability in the country, more so than its two neighbors. This does not mean that institutional engineering is nonexistent in Thailand and the Philippines. In fact, institutional engineering was introduced earlier in these two countries, after the implementation of the 1997 constitution and democratization in the post-Marcos era in Thailand and the Philippines respectively. Nonetheless, the extent to which institutional reforms are successful in the said two countries is more limited compared to Indonesia. Oligarchs and local bosses still dominate politics in the Philippines, whereas political instability and continuous interruption of democratic rule have been the norm rather than exception in post-Thaksin Thai politics. This indicates the limit of institutional reforms in the two countries.
While the overall argument of the book is quite convincing and supported by adequate empirical evidence, the book unfortunately still leaves some important theoretical and methodological concerns unaddressed. For example, Ziegenhain does not really explain the kind of institutional perspectives that he adopts in his book despite the fact that there are different strands of institutional analysis in political science. [1] Judging from his analysis, it seems that he is leaning toward the historical institutionalist tradition. However, he neither makes this theoretical preference more explicit nor rules out other competing explanations more effectively. Furthermore, although he is quite aware of the interaction between institutions and other dimensions such as structural factors and the agency of political elites, sometimes it sounds like he is dismissive of those other factors in his analysis. He also could have mentioned that he essentially uses the “most similar systems design” or Mill’s method of difference [2] in comparing Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines in his research design to strengthen the analytical leverage of his argument.
Additionally, he could have substantiated the discussion of his research framework and case studies by engaging with the key literature on those subjects more thoroughly. While his theoretical discussion is pretty extensive, any experienced reader of comparative politics literature might feel that the book sometimes only touches upon the peripheral literature and misses some major works on political institutions and accountability. Quite similarly, he should have engaged with the literature on each of his country cases more thoroughly. For instance, he could have cited some of the important works on local bossism in the three countries to better strengthen his argument on the continuing dominance of old predatory elites despite institutional reforms. [3] He also should have explained in a more detailed manner why he argues that the stability of Indonesian political institutions, party system, and subsequently political accountability at the expense of a more institutionalized and competitive party system is good for democratic stability (pp. 193-195). While this argument is quite plausible, one could also argue that the continuing fragmentation and cartelization of Indonesian party system decrease the quality of democracy and thus can jeopardize democratic stability in the long run. Lastly, the book at times reads more like a policy report with a rigid structure rather than an academic work with a nice flow. A better organization of the book will allow it to engage with the broader audience of social scientists, area specialists, and concerned policymakers, activists, and lay readers.
In brief, the book has made an important contribution to the studies of institutional engineering and political accountability in Southeast Asia. This, however, is achieved at the expense of theoretical, methodological, and empirical rigor that the book could have made. In the end, the reader is left with mixed feelings regarding the overall quality of the book.
*Iqra Anugrah is a PhD candidate in Political Science and Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. He is a visiting research fellow at the Jakarta-based Institute for Economic and Social Research, Education, and Information (LP3ES) for the 2015-2016 academic year and a pre-doctoral fellow for the Transparency for Development (T4D) Project in Indonesia of the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School for Fall 2015. In February 2016, he is scheduled to take up a visiting fellowship from Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) at the University of Sydney (ianugrah@niu.edu).
[1] Namely Historical, Rational Choice, and Sociological Institutionalisms. See Hall, P. A. and R. Taylor. 1996. “Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms,” Political Studies 44: 936-57.
[2] The most similar systems design basically compares cases with similar characteristics but produce different outcomes. A classic reference for the discussion on this methodological strategy is Przeworski, A. and H. Teune. 1970. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, New York: Wiley-Interscience.
[3] For example see Sidel, J. 1996. “Siam and Its Twin?: Democratization and Bossism in Contemporary Thailand and the Philippines,” IDS Bulletin 27(2): 36-52 and Sidel, J. 2004. ‘Bossism and Democracy in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia: Towards an Alternative Framework for the Study of ‘Local Strongmen’’, in Harriss, J., Stokke, K. and Tornquist, O (eds.) Politicising Democracy: the New Local Politics of Democratisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 51-74.