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Panel presentation :
Since Fareed Zakaria published his article, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy" in 1997, scholars have paid attention to the phenomenon of regimes that behave in authoritarian ways while preserving many characteristics of democracy. Terms like “hybrid regime”, “illiberal democracy” or “semi- authoritarianism” are only a few derived from this phenomenon which Levitsky and Way have characterised as “competitive authoritarianism” because political control was combined with political competition to produce a hybrid system. Levitsky and Way attributed this phenomenon to the effects of international pressure for democratic behaviour in societies where local social factors were more conducive to authoritarianism.
Amid a series of crises for nearly a decade throughout the world, many leaders of democratic countries in Asia, as in other parts of the world, have contributed to the decline of global freedom according to the 2016 Freedom House Report. The ranking of Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Burma in 2016, for example, was 72nd, 70th 130th and143rd of 180 counties respectively, falling 11 and 10 places from 2015 in the cases of Japan and South Korea. In this panel, we suggest that semi-authoritarianism is also conditional upon the personality of the leader who presides over it. We argue that the personal characteristics of these leaders are shaped by personal background (both ideological and in terms of class interest) and by generational experience. By characterising these leaders as “semi-authoritarian leaders” or “democratic authoritarian leaders”, we discuss leaders of the above four countries exploring the possibility that authoritarian democracy is contingent upon personality, including the personal ability of leaders to mobilize “communities of emotion” that undermine democratic conventions. In making this argument, we draw attention to the phenomenon of democratic authoritarian leaders in Asia while also noting the opportunity for genuine democratic progress that arises when an authoritarian leader departs.
