December 2, 2023

SG Cares Giving Week is commemorated from 1 to 7 Dec every year, encouraging businesses and non-profit organisations to celebrate their volunteering and philanthropy efforts. Civil society organisations, or CSOs, play a key role in promoting political reforms, notably, in autocracies. Assistant Professor Elvin Ong and Syazwi Bin Rahmad (both NUS Political Science) explore the impact of civil society collective action in Malaysia and Singapore in ‘Civil society collective action under authoritarianism: divergent collaborative equilibriums for political reform in Malaysia and Singapore’ (Democratization, 2023).

Ong and Rahmad argue that when civil society organizations act collectively to campaign for causes, there is a high likelihood of success in producing political changes by pressuring the incumbent autocrat to enforce liberalising reforms or to prevent democratic backsliding. However, the degree of success from these efforts depends largely on the level of public interest and support towards these causes. Strong support from the public results in high demand for collective action, thus motivating CSO leaders to work together in high-profile settings, generating even more public interest.

Strong networks and relationships between CSO leaders lead to a positive collaborative equilibrium and effective platforms for political change. Conversely, poor public support for CSO initiatives result in a negative collaborative equilibrium. The authors demonstrate this relationship through a study of CSOs in Malaysia and Singapore, where they conducted interviews with civil society activists and analysed public opinion data from the Asian Barometer and the World Values Survey.

From this research, the authors find that the success of collective action efforts in the two countries varies substantially. In Malaysia, collective action has been instrumental in producing political reforms, suggesting a positive collaborative equilibrium. CSO alliances have actively advocated for political changes, as seen from the partnership between Bersih and the Malaysian Bar Council, and the “Gerakan Mansuhkan ISA” (GMI) alliance. However, similar efforts in Singapore have been less successful, suggesting a negative collaborative equilibrium. The collective action efforts have mainly been directed at increasing public awareness and little effect has been made in terms of influencing political reforms.

The authors explain how the different collaborative equilibriums are shown in the different responses seen in each country towards the Asian Financial Crisis in the 1990s. The discrepancy in public support explains the difference in collaborative equilibriums, lending support to the authors’ main argument. The article suggests that not only are improved measures of public interest and support for political reform issues needed, but also that further research towards studying the forces that drive public interest and support is strongly warranted.

Read the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2023.2223142