Introduction
The March 2018 Chatham House conference on the topic of governance, leadership and legitimacy compared political and government systems in the three major political and economic powers in East Asia.1 It considered the systems in the context of the historical and political legitimacy of different leadership models in China, Japan and South Korea, and assessed the implications of these differences for the international order.
Reviewing this subject a year later, it is difficult not to approach it in the developing context of the growth of populism worldwide. Increasingly, we are seeing challenges to the assumption that the optimal model of government is the representative parliamentary democracy. Instead, the idea of the ‘strong man’ leader is returning to the fore, backed up by resort to plebiscites where necessary to secure the backing of the so-called ‘popular will’. The idea of politics as the rational negotiation within different representative and interest groups of alternative policy choices, in pursuit of the most acceptable and practical social outcomes, is seen in some quarters as an invention of the elites to thwart the will of the people.2 It is being replaced by a different model in which complex choices are simplified and alternative voices to the ‘popular will’ discredited and delegitimized. The concept of social partnership, developed after a long process of bargaining and compromise, gives way to the assertion of pure political power.
It is difficult not to approach the subject of governance, leadership and legitimacy in East Asia in the developing context of the growth of populism worldwide. Increasingly, we are seeing challenges to the assumption that the optimal model of government is the representative parliamentary democracy.
We have been here before. ‘Who, whom?’, Lenin is supposed to have said at the second All-Russian Congress of Political Education Departments in October 1921 – or, more accurately, ‘who will overtake whom?’, as the principle of ‘socialism in one country’ challenged the hegemony of Western capitalism. It was Stalin, eight years later, in a speech to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, who truncated the question to its current, more familiar form – and removed the idea that continuous competition between the two systems might be part of the equation. ‘Will we knock the capitalists flat or will they do the same to us?’ The phrase has become a shorthand way of reducing a difference of view to a statement of inevitable supremacy of one interest over another. Thus, the concept of zero-sum politics was born.
Many of us have lived through an era in which the impact of the zero-sum approach to ideology has been cruelly apparent. The first half of the 20th century saw the destruction (in most countries) of the fascist model of political society; the second half, at least in Europe, the discrediting and failure of communism. ‘The choice we face in the next generation,’ the late Tony Judt observed in his last dialogue with the historian Timothy Snyder, ‘is not capitalism versus communism, or the end of history versus the return of history, but the politics of social cohesion based around collective purposes versus the erosion of society by the politics of fear.’3
Although the zero-sum calculation is perhaps different today, questions of governance, leadership and legitimacy will be no less relevant if the aim is to build bridges and forge partnerships rather than project power and enforce compliance (or even servitude). Who makes the rules of a society, and how transparently and accountably are they made? How can they be changed, and against what criteria is this process taken forward? Who has the responsibility for negotiating this process with different social and economic interest groups, and from what sources do these people – the leaders of a society – draw their right to oversee and control the legislative and executive functions of the society they lead?
There are many examples throughout the world where these questions are being actively and sometimes stridently debated. This essay is about Asia, not the UK, but it is striking that British democracy has been infected with the virus of populism, and that we are now seeing democratically elected politicians questioning the authority of an elected parliament to take any course of action other than following the ‘popular will’, even to the extent of questioning the desirability of maintaining democratic institutions themselves.4 Those arguing against a Brexit chosen by referendum have described the process as flawed and corrupted, and one that has led to a chaotic and undeliverable policy outcome. They have been challenged by those arguing that failure to deliver ‘the will of the people’ would be a fundamental betrayal of a democratic vote in which 72 per cent of the electorate participated. Although the substance of the arguments in favour of ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ respectively is being challenged, so to a degree are the nature and quality of the democratic process that has led to the impasse. In other words, is a plebiscite more legitimate than a vote by parliamentary representatives? Although the current constitutional crisis in the UK over the decision to leave the European Union is outside the scope of this paper, it is becoming an object lesson in how the principles of democracy and political leadership can buckle under the strain of unresolved questions of governance and legitimacy.
1 For more details, see Chatham House (2018), ‘Governance, Leadership and Legitimacy in East Asia’, 26 March 2018, https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/governance-leadership-and-legitimacy-east-asia (accessed 28 Jun. 2019).
2 As discussed by Jan-Werner Müller: ‘It can often seem that populists claim to represent the common good as willed by the people. On closer inspection, it turns out that what matters for populists is less the product of a genuine process of will-formation or a common good that anyone with common sense can glean than a symbolic representation of the ‘real people’ from which the correct policy is then deduced. This renders the political position of populist immune to empirical refutation. Populists can always play off the ‘real people’ or ‘silent majority’ against elected representatives and the official outcome of a vote.’ Müller, J.-W. (2017), What Is Populism?, London: Penguin Books Ltd, p. 102.
3 Judt, T. and Snyder, T. (2012), Thinking the Twentieth Century, London: Penguin Books Ltd, p. 386.
4 For example, the former Brexit minister, Steve Baker MP, was quoted as having said, doubtless rhetorically, ‘I could tear this place down and bulldoze it into the river’ in response to the prospect of the prime minister’s withdrawal deal being put to MPs for the third time. Wilcock, D. (2019), ‘Brexiteer Steve Baker brands May’s speech a ‘pantomime’ and threatens to QUIT the Tories if her Brexit deal passes’, Daily Mail, 27 March 2019, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6857693/Brexiteer-Steve-Baker-brands-Mays-speech-pantomime-threatens-QUIT-Tories.html (accessed 21 Jun. 2019). The willingness of some of the candidates in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election to contemplate the proroguing of Parliament to ensure that the UK leaves the EU by 31 October is another example.