created by SmokyB11 on 21/01/2025 at 09:57 UTC
1984 upvotes, 6 top-level comments (showing 6)
Are there examples of oligarchic governments being removed peacefully or does always end in violence?
Comment by AutoModerator at 21/01/2025 at 09:57 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. **Please Read Our Rules[1] before you comment in this community**. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed[2].
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules
We thank you for your interest in this *question*, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension[5], or getting the Weekly Roundup[6]. In the meantime our Bluesky[7], and Sunday Digest[8] feature excellent content that has already been written!
7: https://bsky.app/profile/askhistorians.bsky.social
9: /message/compose/?to=/r/AskHistorians
Comment by postal-history at 21/01/2025 at 14:35 UTC*
1388 upvotes, 9 direct replies
In recent history it has not been uncommon for oligarchic governments to unwind themselves after recognizing that they have lost their popular mandate. Here are a few examples from between 20 and 40 years ago.
In 1986, the Phillippines held a fraudulent election attempting to prop up the undemocratic rule of Ferdinand Marcos. This resulted in an instant mass protest of about two million people. Military leaders attempted a coup, but Marcos uncovered their plot and attempted to arrest the leaders. The Catholic cardinal Jaime Sin addressed the nation over the radio, causing a mass peaceful uprising, this time with soldiers taking sides with the marchers. This delegitimized Marcos to the extent that his attempt to inaugurate himself was not taken seriously and he fled the country, less than a week after Cardinal Sin's radio address. The opposition declared that a revolution had occurred and promulgated a democratic constitution (by fiat).
In 1987, the Taiwanese army massacred 24 Vietnamese refugees, including children and a baby, on the shoreline of Donggang Bay, where the autocratic KMT government was secretly developing nuclear weapons. The KMT operated under violent martial law and did not permit opposition parties, but was already facing resistance from a strongly organized civil society which was able to get unofficial opposition candidates elected. The coverup of the refugee murders was printed in illegal opposition newspapers which were distributed on the street. The unofficially organized opposition broke the news in the Legislative Yuan, which contributed to the image of a government acting outside the rule of law. Facing a possible delegitimization of their government, the KMT voluntarily lifted martial law, while keeping many restrictions on speech and assembly in place. This led to a sustained multi-year democracy campaign, involving among other things two democracy activists committing highly visible suicides by self-immolation. Eventually Taiwan democratized to the extent where victims of the KMT began receiving apologies and compensation in 1999.
Also in 1987, the autocratic government of South Korea attempted to cover up the murder of two students, Park Jong-chul (murdered by police torture) and Lee Han-yeol (murdered by skull fracture from a tear gas canister, caught on camera). Again, this news was disseminated by underground civil society, especially a strong, powerful student movement which had been resisting police oppression throughout the 1980s, in memory of the deaths of hundreds of their classmates in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. It just so happened that Korea had agreed to host the Olympics in 1988, so as the protesters started to take to the streets, the government felt unable to bear the negative publicity of further violence. Instead, limited concessions were made, which led to a democratic election in 1988 and the end of military rule in 1992.
In 1997, Indonesia, which had been a repressive one-party state run by Suharto and a network of oligarchic capitalists since 1965, rapidly entered an economic depression. Again, resistance to Suharto began with college students, who faced dark economic prospects. Again, the protests spiraled after control after the army killed four students. In this case, Suharto's crony Prabowo decided to turn public outrage against Chinese-run businesses, which were weathering the economic depression better than other businesses thanks to their larger support networks; this led to rioting, hundreds of deaths and widespread economic damage. However, the protesting students were by and large not fooled by Prabowo's scheme and occupied the Indonesian parliament. Suharto's oligarch allies saw his impending downfall and abandoned him; he attempted to impose martial law, but the army refused the order. The local chambers of commerce came out in support of the students. Within days, Suharto resigned. Indonesia's story is the most bittersweet: a powerful reform government was elected in 1999, which set up an independent judiciary and reform council among other things, but the civil society backing these structures was relatively undeveloped and oligarchs saw an opening to defang the new institutions. (Don't google the current president of Indonesia.)
Comment by abn1304 at 21/01/2025 at 22:57 UTC
92 upvotes, 2 direct replies
It’s debatable if Spain and Portugal were oligarchic, but both had peaceful transitions from autocratic governments to democracies.
Portugal was under a military dictatorship that overthrew the First Republic in 1926, which transitioned to Fascist control in 1933. The Fascist government lasted until 1974, although it began losing power rapidly after the death of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in 1970; he had been de-facto dictator since 1932. After he became severely ill in 1968 some of his lieutenants began making halfhearted attempts at democratizing the country, but not much came of it until growing conflict over Portuguese colonial policy came to a head in 1972. Facing diplomatic isolation on top of domestic unrest over a stagnating economic and en-masse immigration of ethnic Portuguese leaving her colonies, as well as discontent over the cost of colonial counterinsurgency, the Portuguese Army launched a coup in on April 24, 1974. Huge numbers of civilians came out to support the coup, which was largely bloodless (government security forces killed four civilians; the perpetrators were swiftly arrested, tried, and convicted of murder). The military government quickly moved to establish elections, which took place on 25 April 1975; these elections established a 250-member commission responsible for drafting a constitution, which entered into force on 2 April 1976. Over the summer of 1975, about 10 more people died in clashes between pro- and anti-socialist protesters, but these subsided with the new constitution.
Spain’s transition was smoother. Francisco Franco came to power after the Spanish Civil War, and reigned until his death in 1975. In 1969, he designated Prince Juan Carlos, grandson of the Spanish king, as his successor; Juan Carlos was largely seen as a supportive Francoist at the time. Once Franco died, however, Juan Carlos - now crowned as King Juan Carlos I - quickly changed his tune, giving a speech on 22 November 1975 wherein he publicly supported a transition to a constitutional monarchy. After substantial negotiation within Spain’s heretofore-rubber-stamp-parliament, the Cortes, King Carlos appointed Adolfo Suárez as Prime Minister in July 1976. Suárez was a Francoist, but supported the King’s plan for a transition to democratic rule; his faction within the Cortes swiftly developed a plan for democratic elections, passing it into law in June 1977. The Spanish state held elections on 15 December 1977, electing the Constituent Cortes, a transitional parliament intended to develop a new Constitution. They completed this process in summer 1978, passing the Constitution into law via a referendum held on 6 December 1978, formally ending Spanish autocracy and transitioning the state to a constitutional monarchy that remains in effect. (The Spanish King has relatively little power, like other European constitutional monarchies, and for all intents and purposes Spain is a fully democratic state.)
There *were* deaths during this process in Spain, but they weren’t directly related to the government transition (they stemmed from separatist terrorism, largely in the Basque region), and the Spanish military did not interfere in the political process - a major goal of all factions throughout the process was to avoid a military coup, whatever the outcome of the process would be.
Comment by Naive_Violinist_4871 at 23/01/2025 at 00:33 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
South Africa’s oligarchy sometimes gets portrayed as dismantling itself voluntarily, but that’s an oversimplification. The government was essentially dragged kicking and screaming into transitioning to democracy by being hit with both international sanctions and violent domestic revolt, and it essentially reached the point where leaders realized they could either end Apartheid or it would probably end them.
Comment by [deleted] at 22/01/2025 at 12:08 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by [deleted] at 21/01/2025 at 13:26 UTC
-3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[removed]