In a pattern oft-repeated across world history, the culturally diverse nations of Indonesia and Malaysia have moved in recent decades from strict hegemonic rule to open political competition. Out of one, many. Whenever and wherever such transitions occur, most typically with the end of an empire or the demise of a dictatorship, it is highly uncertain whether democracy and diversity can flourish – either alone or in tandem. Battles for Pluralism historically traces these parallel decades-long transitions in two of the world’s only Muslim-majority democracies. It offers a comparative perspective on the enduring and surprisingly successful struggles of pluralists in Indonesia and Malaysia to build winning coalitions that can both secure democracy and protect diversity. It places special stress on how the decaying decades of authoritarian hegemony laid obstacles in the path of democracy’s champions and diversity’s defenders, and on how elite failure rather than a lack of mass support has limited and continues to threaten pluralism’s gains. The book’s simple guiding conviction is that for democracy and diversity to work, political forces supporting democracy and diversity need to win. 

Meet our speaker and chair:

Dan Slater is the James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Emerging Democracies (@umichDemocracy) at the University of Michigan. He specializes in the politics and history of democracy and authoritarianism, especially in Southeast Asia. His books include From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia (Princeton 2022, with Joseph Wong) and Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge 2010).

John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE. Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (2007), Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines (2020, with Jaime Faustino) and Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (2021).

More about this event:

The Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (@LSESEAC) is a multidisciplinary Research Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Building on the School’s deep academic and historical connections with Southeast Asia, SEAC seeks to foster world-leading academic research focused on the region’s cultural, economic, political, religious, and social landscapes, drawing on the LSE’s signature strengths in the social sciences, history, and law.

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