Napo baby leaders are strangling Southeast Asia

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The author is Director of the Asia-Pacific Program at Chatham House

When 38-year-old Padongtern Shinawatra was sworn in as Thailand’s new prime minister last Sunday, his inauguration marked three milestones.

First, he became the youngest Prime Minister of this important Southeast Asian nation. Second, he brought the Shinawatra family back to power for the first time in a decade after his aunt Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted by a judicial ruling in 2014 and her father Thaksin Shinawatra, the owner of Manchester City, was sacked. 2006 coup. Third, his appointment means that 10 countries in Southeast Asia will be ruled by six family dynasties.

While patronage networks and relationships are common in politics around the world, what is striking in Southeast Asia is how political families are resurgent in both democratic and non-democratic settings. Elections from the Philippines and Indonesia are hotly contested, and you can find them in regional democracies like Thailand and one-party states like Laos and Cambodia.

With more than 670 million people and the world’s fifth-largest combined economy, Southeast Asia has become a hotbed of geopolitical competition between the United States and China. Foreign diplomats and business executives seeking influence and profit here must understand these family dynamics if they want to succeed.

Along with Paetongtarn, four other Southeast Asian countries are led by children of former rulers: Bongbong Marcos in the Philippines, Hun Manet in Cambodia, Sonexay Siphandone in Laos, and Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah in Brunei. Indonesia will join the club when Prabowo Subianto takes office as president in October. Prabowo, a former son-in-law of longtime dictator Suharto and the son and grandson of leading Indonesian politicians, will have Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the son of outgoing President Joko Widodo, as his vice president. In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of founding father Aung San, was elected leader until ousted in a 2021 military coup.

The dominance of political families is reflected in the business sector and local politics. This reflects a broader failure to build strong and effective institutions that distribute electricity and public goods and ensure accountability and transparent governance.

In competitive democracies such as Indonesia and the Philippines, the high cost of campaigning and the lack of institutionalized political parties provide an opening for successors to political families who benefit from instant name recognition and large support networks.

In authoritarian systems, powerful families can manipulate the political system to their advantage in more direct ways.

For example, Padongdorn would not have become prime minister without the Thai elite’s successful efforts to suppress democratic opposition by undermining and then banning the progressive and popular Move Forward Party.

As Nebo children everywhere argue, their parents should not bar them from any particular career. That doesn’t mean they can’t be good at their jobs. Family-run conglomerates in Southeast Asia have been remarkably resilient through the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis and Covid-19.

However, their success has often come at the cost of local and international competitors, forcing Southeast Asian consumers to pay higher prices for their goods and services. Similarly, in the political sphere, the dominance of such families stifles future competition.

It is important to acknowledge that, at least in the Philippines and Indonesia, citizens elected dynastic politicians in largely free and fair contests. At a time when Southeast Asia’s economic and geopolitical status is under renewed pressure, voters seemed drawn to the stability of familiar names.

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However, they shouldn’t take anything for granted. Dynastic traditions may help preserve power. But citizens judge their leaders by their performance, not their parentage. The people of Bangladesh, bordering Southeast Asia, have shown just that. Earlier this month they ousted unpopular Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Waseda – the daughter of the country’s founding leader.