Author: Dan Slater, University of Michigan

Democratisation scholars hate modernisation theory as much as anybody. From a modernisation perspective, so-called ‘developing countries’ are on some sort of uniform track toward a liberal and democratic future, as if some imagined unity called ‘the West’ had already laid it down for them.

This notion has long been discredited and is even considered offensive in most academic circles. As countries like China, Malaysia and Singapore have gotten rich while remaining authoritarian, the contrary perspective only seems to become more obviously correct: that there are multiple pathways to the modern world, many of them illiberal and undemocratic.

The most sophisticated quantitative research consistently confirms the unbreakable global correlation between national wealth and levels of democracy. Still, scholars of particular countries and regions tend to dismiss the idea that democracy becomes much likelier as a country becomes much richer.

But then something happens like Malaysia’s 14th general election (GE14). Malaysia has been getting richer for decades, yet the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition that it commands have continued to fend off its opponents in undemocratic election after undemocratic election. GE14 was no more democratic than its recent predecessors, with the playing field tragicomically skewed in the BN’s favour.

Nonetheless, an eclectic assemblage of opposition parties led by the People’s Justice Party (PKR), which has been leading the charge for democratic reforms since the reformasi movement began in 1998, swept to a decisive victory, seizing 122 national parliamentary seats to BN’s 79.

Virtually all dedicated Malaysia-watchers professed themselves shocked by the result. But if leading modernisation theorists like Seymour Martin Lipset or Samuel Huntington were still alive — even in their fusty 1950s and 1960s guises — they wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest.

Naturally economic growth leads to a larger and more educated urban middle class, modernisation theorists have long argued. This middle class will resent the kind of grand corruption that outgoing prime minister and scoundrel-in-chief Najib Razak engaged in alongside his pantomime villain of a spouse, Rosmah — so egregiously in the 1MDB scandal as to reach moustache-twirling levels of cartoonish absurdity. They will be less vulnerable to ethnic and religious appeals or to the kinds of petty blandishments that can win over poorer voters in the countryside. They will want equality, freedom, the rule of law and public goods. Their vote cannot simply be coerced.

Nobody thinks it is impossible to maintain authoritarian domination as a country undergoes decades of rapid socioeconomic change. But as Najib and Rosmah can now tearfully attest, it gets harder and more expensive. It takes a whole lot of money to buy electoral love in a society with a mushrooming middle class.

GE14 was thus not the ‘Malay tsunami’ that incoming (and returning) Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad so irresponsibly called for. Nor was it a ‘Chinese tsunami’, as Najib dubbed BN’s 2013 loss of the popular vote in such an incendiary fashion. It was more like a modernisation tsunami. And, like a real tsunami, modernisation has its most powerful sources at deep levels, where nobody in particular can command it.

Not even as commanding a figure as Mahathir. His adoring fans are bestowing credit upon him for the electoral win in tones smacking of feudalism and hero worship more appropriate to an absolutist sultan than a democratic leader. This echoes the credit they have long given him for Malaysia’s economic development.

Yet in both instances Mahathir relied more on luck than on skill. On the development front, he was lucky to inherit a strong and developmentally capable state apparatus that he sadly chose to use autocratically and brutally with devastating long-term consequences.

As for the election, Mahathir was lucky to hitch a ride on Malaysia’s modernisation tsunami just as it was cresting. Visible as he may be, Mahathir is but foam atop this long-swelling opposition wave. The opposition didn’t need Mahathir to deny the BN its two-thirds majority in 2008 or to win the popular vote in 2013. The only time UMNO has seen its election performance improve this millennium was in 2004, when voters were freshly rejoicing at Mahathir’s overdue resignation in late 2003. And of course he wouldn’t have been victoriously surfing the wave of GE14 at all unless rightful opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim were still in prison, where Mahathir so cravenly shunted him in the first place.

Mahathir is not merely an oppositional Johnny-come-lately; he is the biggest obstacle to democratic opposition’s development that Malaysia has ever seen. Credit for GE14 should go to the tireless activists and opposition politicians who began braving the iron claws and filed teeth of the Mahathir regime in the late 1990s, and in some cases even the late 1980s. Unlike actual tsunamis, modernisation tsunamis are made over the long haul by men and women — those with the courage to translate socioeconomic transformation into a freer politics for their countrymen and countrywomen. This victory is theirs.

Dan Slater (@SlaterPolitics) is Professor of Political Science and incoming Director of the Weiser Centre for Emerging Democracies (WCED) at the University of Michigan. He was previously a professor for twelve years at the University of Chicago.