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Abstract

Many countries around the world are beset by the democratic recession, and Southeast Asia is no exception to that. Series of events show that Southeast Asian electoral democracies are receding back to full authoritarianism, and such a phenomenon requires academic attention to investigate its pattern. This paper explores the impact of Chinese patronage on Southeast Asian democracy and argues that its economic and normative support of autocrats enable the continuation of an authoritarian turn in Southeast Asia. Two cases of the Philippines and Cambodia unravel how Chinese patronage leads to autocrats’ disregard for liberal pressures. The logic is twofold. First, economic support enables them to maintain performance- based legitimacy and resume planned policies in the face of democratic states’ sanctions. Second, normative endorsement raises the hurdle of liberal actors to sanction autocrats by changing international audiences’ empirical expectations of the admissibility of strongman leadership. This paper contributes to the literature by incorporating a normative lens into the discussion of the continued democratic recession in Southeast Asia.

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