December 9, 2021

Assistant Professor Elvin Ong (NUS Department of Political Science) will soon be releasing a book with the University of Michigan Press, as part of the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies series, titled Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies. The book argues that opposition party leaders’ perceptions of regime vulnerability and inter-party dependency shape their efforts and attempts to construct opposition alliances. To illustrate his argument, Asst Prof Ong uses two pairs of case study comparisons in East and Southeast Asia –  the Philippines and South Korea in the late 1980s, and Malaysia and Singapore from 1965 to 2020. Drawing on a broad range of archival material and fieldwork, he explains how sharing information about the relative strengths and weaknesses of different opposition parties of a regime may foster recognition of their mutual dependency and encourage leaders to work together to achieve joint victories. This is especially the case after regime-debilitating events which affect the incumbent within a short period of time, as they tend to raise opposition expectations of impending victory and galvanize efforts for inter-party coordination.

Pre-order the book here.