Political Doctrines and Practical Politics in Southeast Asia

Abstract

T HE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE, for modernization of traditional or colonial political institutions and for consolidation of new or resurgent nations has produced in the last fifty years a considerable amount of political thought in Southeast Asia, mostly in the form of speeches, articles, and pamphlets. But the doctrines behind these efforts were imported-from the West, from the Communist world, from India, or from China. Whether engaged in the nationalist struggle at home or in exile, whether free or under detention, the nationalist leaders of Southeast Asian countries, who became the first statesmen of their nations after independence, devoted little effort, in the years during which they prepared themselves and led the struggle of their peoples for independence, to the systematic formulation of the theoretical principles that would govern their nations' existence in the years after the achievement of sovereignty. The results became evident after independence. Southeast Asian politics lacked the clarity of purpose and firmness of direction which are possible only with well thought-through doctrine. The institutions adopted, either on the basis of explicit acceptance of alien political theories or without profound meditation about their implicit philosophies, revealed, after a few years of attempts to make them work, discrepancies with the world-views imbedded in the folk-cultures of the area and with habits shaped by history. Consequently, the thinking and re-thinking of fundamental presuppositions, neglected in the years of preparation and struggle, had to take place under the pressure of increasing domestic difficulties and of the ideological challenge of Communism. Why were the leaders of Southeast Asia so little concerned with the formulation of political doctrines custom-tailored for their own nations? One is tempted to argue that the leaders of these movements for national independence and political reform were in some fashion distant descendants of the Enlightenment. As rationalists they were bound to believe in the universal applicability of Western theories and institutions. The very fact that they claimed for their nations the right to self-determination implied that their peoples and they as leaders were as well qualified as the imperialists of the West to create and run modern political institutions of universal applicability.