The Rise & Fall of Imperial Democracies

Using fear and manifesting a threat

Just five years ago, southern Thailand was relatively peaceful. The army had only a limited presence in the region, and no one feared walking on the streets at night. Tourism flourished, and Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian religious leaders maintained close contacts. In fact, many political scientists cited southern Thailand as a model of how a government could successfully promote interfaith harmony and integrate a Muslim minority.

It's no surprise that the change is partially due to al Qaeda, whose networks have pressed to politicize and make more violent a growing Thai Islamism. But the ratcheting-up of the conflict also owes much to decisions made by the government itself. The leadership of the aggressive, autocratic, self-aggrandizing Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has exacerbated the insurgency problem. But though Thaksin's heavy-handed tactics—repressing independent voices in the media and bureaucracy in times of crisis, locking up members of Islamic opposition parties, and cracking down on institutions that gave the country's Muslim minorities a role in their own governance—seem like the work of a tyrant, they're not. When the most sweeping of the prime minister's actions came to light, the electorate endorsed them, returning Thaksin to office with huge majorities in Parliament.

In times of conflict, this is how even democracies tend to behave: Leaders consolidate executive power and punish dissension, while the electorate rewards them—at least initially—for such shows of strength. The war on terror has given cover to governments around the globe—from Italy and Russia to the Philippines and Thailand to even the United States—that have followed this pattern, becoming imperial democracies. But as the example of Thailand vividly shows, heavy-handed efforts in the name of taking on terror have succeeded only in making violent Islamism a more profound and urgent threat.

How bad is it to have leaders with latent authoritarian tendencies in power when there is a terrorism attack.