Comment by postal-history on 21/01/2025 at 14:35 UTC*

1393 upvotes, 9 direct replies (showing 9)

View submission: Are there examples of oligarchic governments being removed peacefully?

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.)

Replies

Comment by [deleted] at 21/01/2025 at 15:07 UTC

445 upvotes, 2 direct replies

[removed]

Comment by Ekenda at 21/01/2025 at 15:09 UTC

672 upvotes, 3 direct replies

The reality is that none of these were peaceful, they all involved the populace coming out and overtly demonstrating their frustrations with the regime. The Military was often split enough to not aggressively suppress the population, or if it did it severely worsened the situation prompting more civil violence. Additionally, these governments listed all still have a long way to go. Arguably South Korea is still oligarchic with very powerful companies like Samsung amongst others. Indonesia has flip flopped between democracy autocracy and seems to have largely returned to favouring Suharto's line. The Philippines just elected "Bongbong" Marcos who is genuinely quite the character. Of the lot Taiwan has probably done the best but yeah for the others listed here it isn't looking quite so rosy yet. The reality was that most of the "oligarchs" that were overthrown weren't totally ousted and retained significant influence following their removal, whilst the polities that replaced them failed to make significant improvements.

Comment by StorySad6940 at 22/01/2025 at 00:31 UTC

118 upvotes, 3 direct replies

I think you are blurring the lines between *oligarchy* and *authoritarianism*. These are distinct concepts and should not be confused. It is perfectly possible for oligarchy to exist in an electoral democracy (e.g. the US). Indeed, neo-Marxist scholarship tends to argue that modern liberal democracy is designed to protect oligarchies. I recommend Winters (2011) as an excellent definitional and comparative work.

To take a couple of your examples, Indonesia and the Philippines both became electoral democracies after their respective periods of popular mobilisation, *but remained oligarchies*.

Indeed, most scholars of Indonesian politics would accept that Suharto’s fall was guaranteed not due to the student protests, but because the bulk of the country’s military and politico-business elite abandoned him to ensure their own survival in a new, highly unequal electoral democracy. Robison and Hadiz (2004) set out the most influential version of this argument.

In short, the popular mobilisations you cite achieved democratic reforms but *did not topple oligarchies*.

Comment by TonyB-Research at 22/01/2025 at 00:40 UTC

15 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Can you please cite some sources for this detailed response? Thank you.

Comment by [deleted] at 22/01/2025 at 04:42 UTC

14 upvotes, 0 direct replies

[removed]

Comment by MacGealach at 22/01/2025 at 15:58 UTC

10 upvotes, 2 direct replies

I'm sorry, this was very informative and I thank you for the insight, but there was a Cardinal named Cardinal Sin?