Social Science Research in Southeast Asia: the Challenges of Studying Parliamentary Institutions

This paper introduces the challenges of studying parliamentary institutions in Southeast Asia. My focus of research is in three countries’ institutions: national parliaments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. While in Southeast Asia, it is widely known that studying issues of politics and institutions face challenges – compared to studying culture, for example, this view is arguably no longer valid, however with certain qualification. The comparison of parliamentary tradition between three countries – based on observation of the plenary session reveals that the effectiveness of parliamentary works is related to parliamentary procedure, and even to the culture of work in the countries. Parliamentary structure, procedure and their political culture matters. Therefore, acknowledging these factors will give rise to more research opportunities, if a researcher plans to study the political institution in other countries in Southeast Asia.


Introduction
In the mid-1980s a wave of democratization came to Southeast Asia and the amount of research on its political institutions increased.
Accordingly, studies on parliamentary institutions have been recently blooming. As is known widely, studying politically sensitive issues in Southeast Asia, including political institutions, have faced more challenges, in comparison to studies on cultural issues. During the 1990s, the political studies of Southeast Asian region were usually descriptive and chronological (Rüland, 2006, p. 86), implicitly reaffirming what the highly-censored government dictated. The government preferred publication about development and modernisation in their countries (Halib & Huxley, 1996, p. 6). In Southeast Asia, leading up to the year of 2000, parliaments were notoriously known as rubberstamp bodies. Meaning the governments in the region that could be attributed to authoritarianism, compared to the Western-style liberal democracy. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, studies about democratization and parliament gained momentum. Ziegenhain (2008) discovered that the role of (Indonesian) parliament actually was greater during democratic transition. However, Aspinall (2014) held the view that patronage politics still ruled the parliaments, especially during the election time. Such contrasting views are interesting to explore. The question as to whether or not the role of parliaments in Southeast has indeed progressing or regressing, the role of other actors or agents distinct from the executive government, such as the parliament and civil society are worth investigating in the Southeast Asia region too. Furthermore, with an increase of discussion on global governance and the way international organizations impose the importance of global agenda, which emphasizes the involvement of as many actors as possible, the parliament's participation is required even more by the constituents and public. My research topic which studies the role of (Southeast Asian) parliaments in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is related to this new trend, at least in Europe where I am to share the challenges of researching these institutions, as the main purpose of this volume. Networking and affiliation indeed influence the researcher's access to these bureaucratic offices. But knowledge of parliamentary working organs is helpful for smooth arrangement.
Acknowledging these factors will give more research opportunities -and not only challenges, if a researcher plans to study similar parliaments in Southeast Asia. Moreover, based on my observation, I find out that the institutional structure and procedure of these parliaments heavily shape their works, which in turn is influenced by the country's political culture.
The general view is that the Southeast Asian politics are shaped heavily by their executive governments (elites and leaders) is confirmed too, endorsing the view of William Case (2002Case ( , 2009 and Rüland (2012) on the role of elite in the region.
This paper thus introduces the challenges of studying parliamentary institutions and the typology of parliaments in Southeast Asia, based on observation made from collecting data in the three national parliaments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. To present this, this paper is organized into, first, discussing the literature on the background of social research challenges over time, and how I managed to research on parliamentary institutions (my research topic). Secondly, I introduce the method that I use for my social research: parliamentary ethnography, and how it helps me to observe and pay attention to parliaments that I study. The third part will explain in detail of the works of three parliaments and how the parliaments' structure and procedure explain the lack of or sufficiency of the arrangement of the institutions, and analyse these arrangements in comparison. This will show the argument on the influence of institutional structure and procedure with the 150 Ratih Adiputri parliamentary work and tradition, and highlighting the elite's role in parliament, as stated above. The last part is the conclusion of the study.

Are The Southeast Asian Parliaments Weak?
During 1990s, parliaments in the Southeast Asia were considered weak as the executive government were in the spotlight. Yet, Singapore is the most developed country in Southeast Asia with around 320 million USD Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With such big economic power, its citizens do not mind authoritative government as long as people's access to basic needs are covered and fulfilled.
Singaporean "competitive authoritarian" style is likely to be accepted by the people as long as the country remains stable and prosperous.
In the democratization era, amidst the executive government hegemony, research on parliaments in the Southeast Asia is increasing (Rüland, 2006, p. 93). Parliaments do not act as rubber-stamp institutions anymore, however, without drastic structural change in parliamentary institution like South Korea's, parliament will remain the same as the previous era. For example, in Indonesia, the continual usage of similar parliamentary procedure means parliamentary research will only report legislative chronology (see Adiputri, 2015).
Asian values, also called ' Asian model of democracy' (Neher, 1994) with the characteristics of superior-inferior relationship, personal characteristics, and hierarchy form the basis of the political and social structure of Southeast Asia (Neher, 1994, p. 950) is obviously seen in the parliament. The three parliaments studied here -Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore -still show the tendency of valuing the position of executive leaders higher than the position of parliamentary leaders.
The leadership position is indeed prestigious, with many benefits and opportunities. Leaders may guide certain agenda (bills) and certain discussion; determine legislative priority, even determine whether the parliamentary discussion is considered a closed or open meeting. This shows the existence of hierarchy, seniority over 'ordinary members' and unequal power relationship among members of parliament (MPs).
These so-called "Asian values" as well as the pattern or procedural frameworks within the parliament are the products of the social relationship of the country. This is what social sciences aim to address, the explanation of something, which has arisen a form causal relationship between social phenomena. How can we explain the phenomenon that even when the democratization came to the Southeast Asian region; the parliament still suffers from corruption (in the case of Indonesia and Malaysia) and is ruled by one hegemonic political party (Singapore)? I realize that change does not come overnight, and require timely process, however what I discover -at least from studying the Indonesian parliament -when parliamentary procedure remains the same as before the democratic regime started, the tendency to exercise the similar un-democratic ways persist (Adiputri, 2015).
Despite a difference in structural arrangement, parliament must share certain features. The parliamentary members are selected by the regular election; the members are representatives of people from certain constituents, exercising the role of parliament: legislating, overseeing and budgeting. MPs also need to convene at certain time and period throughout the year. There is also the task of speaking or debate -which why sometimes parliament is called as "speaking government" (Palonen, 2014); and the elected members will work based on the program of his/ her political parties but still need to address the constituents' interests in legislation.
In studying the parliaments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, I use institution theory, especially historical institutionalism. The theory contends that 'institutions have the ability to influence and determine political strategies and political outcomes…[meaning] that institutions matter due to their ability to shape the strategies and goals of actors, mediate cooperation and conflict and structure political situations'  (Allison, 2015, p. 126, quoted from Steinmo, Thelen & Longstreth, 1992. Specifically in relation to historical institutionalism, the focus of the study is 'the construction, maintenance, and adaptation of institutions' (Sanders, 2006, p. 42). Therefore, in the discussion section below, I will briefly inform the historical background of the parliament and how this history evolve inside the institution, before presenting an observation of these parliaments' plenary sessions.
In addition to historical Institutional theory, parliamentary procedures are also important. The procedure in parliamentary manner sets up and distinguishes the parliament from other institution (Adiputri, 2015, p. 37 These procedures highlight the parliament's main job of speaking.
This "speaking" distinguishes the work of Malaysian and Singaporean parliaments, compared to Indonesia's. The Westminster style of parliaments in Malaysia and Singapore have ritual agenda of questioning the government or ministers in the first hour of their plenary session.
Even the lay-out of the Plenary rooms are for speaking/debating and divided the government from the opposition sides, which clearly show the debate characteristics. This differs from the Indonesian one -which place emphasize on the "legislature" work, as seen with the lay-out of podium stands in the front -next to Speakers' seats -for political groups or faction (fraksi) to deliver overview/speeches for the bills. This type of lay-out is also designed for listening, rather than speaking.
Thus, theoretically, in order to study the parliamentary institution, a researcher must acknowledge such background of the studied institutions, such as the history and procedure. The theories of historical institutions and parliamentary procedure are useful to study, as well 154 Ratih Adiputri as the parliament's and its ceremonial and routine activities too. The next section will discuss the method used to study the parliament and the challenges that I found when observing the parliaments.

Parliamentary Ethnography
To study the parliamentary institutions in Indonesia, Malaysia  a former officer within the parliament secretariat provide the whole understanding why things happen as they are, and such is related to the country's political culture in general. My view as a former "insider" must give an advantage (Moser, 2008, p. 385).
In my previous study of the Indonesian parliament (Adiputri, 2015) -similar to Crewe, I found out that politics is entangled with the social and cultural life of the country. Relationships, power and culture can be seen in the ritual procedure of the parliament, and paying attention to details like this, which are often seen as not important actually can imply the structural foundation of the institution. Before going further for the discussion, I must explain my current research topic, working background and the process during my data collection.
Altogether, these allowed me to exercise challenges (and opportunities) to study parliaments in Southeast Asia.

Special Committe (Panitia Khusus)
Each MP must be a member of a Commission (from 11 commissions in point 3 above) and a council/committee above (around 7 councils) from the list. One council or committee has members around 10% from total number, which is around 55 members. Therefore, it would be a struggle for faction with limited members, as they need to come to many meetings compared to members of big factions. During Suharto's time, these work organs were filled with only three political parties and one to these MPs, I also had a chance to update about the DPR's working mechanism today. As most MPs are new and did not realize the problems of the "balkanized" arrangements which are a legacy of the previous regime. They did not see problems of procedure. When asked about the lack of speaking time, most MPs responded lightly that they did not find any problems with it and did not think speaking is important.
In their mind, it is the tasks of faction to update the MPs. For the SDGs discussion, Indonesia is quite advance and has even hosted two world parliamentary forums on sustainable issue, which IPU appreciated. The parliamentarization of SDG issue will be discussed at different paper.
During the research visit, I also had a chance to observe the DPR Plenum and I think that old tradition had not only not changed much but is has worsened. On 26 July 2018, I observed the DPR Plenary Session discussing the Ministry Accountability Report for the use of state budget in 2017. The official DPR website did not state that it was a plenary meeting and only presented it to look like a regular meeting of a committee. The plenum was supposed to start at 9.00 in the morning, but -as predicted (I have been warned) -it started only two hours later.
Lateness is a bad habit in Indonesia. During the session, I was sitting on the open balcony facing down the back of MPs' seats. The place was packed by many noisy MPs' assistants and journalists. Financial Minister, Ms. Sri Mulyani Indrayati was scheduled to deliver a speech about the previous year budget. Since it was a parliamentary session, the minister was treated as a guest and she was only "allowed" to enter the Plenum when requested. When the minister and her team went in to the room, they were flooded with applause by MPs. It was such a dramatic entrance. I found it interesting that if the minister was treated this highly, was she popular? Or does the executive government have special place, and the position of the executive is considered more important than legislature? After asking confirmation about this entrance, most MPs said that for Plenum, guests-like ministers -are only allowed to enter the room when given permission but the applause that sometimes happened could be interpreted differently. However, I can see that being For me this is interesting and puzzling at the same time. Interesting that the tradition of an old regime is kept running. Although many civil society organizations, also some MPs have stated that the DPR procedure is ineffective, which can be seen in the low number of enacted laws, no one cares to change the situation. The journalists also do not see that plenary session like these a problem. The session highlights the public view of representatives, which is that they say something regarding policy and the MPs do not have a chance to speak up. Newspapers and 165

Social Science Research in Southeast Asia
online news on the following day after the Plenary only reported the closing speech of the DPR Speaker, the calculation number of how many MPs attended the plenum and how low the number of laws enacted on this official term. No news reported the proceeding in this plenum. It is puzzling that even when MPs know the ceremonial status of plenary session and how the number of laws that DPR enacts annually has always been low which highlights that the DPR's ineffective exercise in the plenary keeps continuing. There has been no efforts to amend the situation, or no one point out has pointed out the ineffectiveness of the parliamentary procedure in the DPR. Only (democratic) leaders may have an opportunity to change this situation, but it is likely to take longer.

Malaysian Parliament
Differing from Indonesia, Malaysia exercised Westminster conglomerates, which will ensure access to state position, as well as to business opportunities. The hierarchy of the Malaysian government has always been paralleled with the country's business and economy (Case, 2002, p. 112)   Committee, and Committee of Privileges -will probably be updated soon (Parliament Malaysia, 2018).

Singaporean Parliament
Like Malaysia, Singapore continued the legacy of the British colonialism, forming a Westminster style parliamentary government.
This means that government ministers are members of parliaments elected through election and representing certain region of constituency.
Singapore was part of Malaysia before and seceded in 1965. This country is also stated to be a semi-democratic country, having regular election but restrictions on the voice of civil society. With only one significant party, People's Action Party (PAP) which has always won majority votes, Singapore needs to appoint members from the opposition in parliament to boost their credibility by including all people from different backgrounds. The PAP, which establishes the country's elites, is known to be disciplined and successfully creates an entrepreneurial bureaucracy and with only five million citizens. As the city state island, Singapore tends to have easier control over their socio-economic development (Case, 2002, p. 166). Probably due to its small size, Singapore's elites are able to blur 'the lines between their ruling party, the state bureaucracy, and the commanding heights of the financial sector' which make the country efficient (Case, 2002, p. 168). In Singapore's Westminster parliament, the parliamentary procedure are quite simple. This type refers to both Malaysia and Singapore. The parliament usually has three steps of legislative Readings (see Adiputri, 2015). First Reading is the first legislative stage after the bill is introduced. In this stage, a summary of the bill is provided and MPs might debate the general principle of the bill. If it is agreed that the bill will be accepted for further discussion, the bill will be moved to the Second Reading, usually to a committee related to the issue of the bill. The bill will be thoroughly debated at this stage and the wording of the article might be amended. As the general principle had been agreed on, the focus at this stage is the contents of the bill. Amendments are possible. After the Second Reading, the bill will be sent to one or several committees. Experts can be invited to be heard and questioned

Challenges of Studying Political Institutions in Southeast Asia
From studying these three parliaments, the institutions' traditions indeed reflect heavily on the country's political culture and confirm the role of leaders as the key position holders and decision makers (Case, 2002, p. 20). In fact in Malaysia's case, "the personalization of the political scene" between three figures: Mahathir, Najib and Anwar, is obvious (Lemière, 2018, p. 115). I think in Southeast Asian in general, the political events with their continuities and changes depend on these leaders and elites. Also, from the proceeding described in the parliamentary plenums above, the procedure, structure and tradition, which derived from the historical legacies and cultural orientations are clearly visible for public. It depends on the role of national leaders and elites who may lead their regime to be more democratic or not, a view that has already been discussed by William Case (2002, p. ix). The (in) efficient practices were also seen from leaders.
As stated above, networking and connection matters for researching the parliamentary institutions. It is relevant to Indonesia and Malaysia, which appreciate "clientelist" relations, and are known to have long bureaucratic arrangement for visiting the parliament or observing the plenary. People appreciate more if you have connections.
It is not happening in Singapore, due to its effectiveness and readiness to receive (public) guests to visit the parliament. Singapore has series of security processes before entering the plenum, processing the identity card and that kind of process. I needed to pass at least four check-up points before I reached my seat in the plenum balcony, but at least I could enter and see the plenum. I was not sure if I could visit the plenary of Indonesia and Malaysian parliaments without the help of insiders. Such lack or efficient arrangement reflects the society.

Social Science Research in Southeast Asia
Once inside the plenum, all the institutions' structures, procedures and ceremonies are seen in real live, and this is when the institutional theory and parliamentary ethnography are suitable.
During the break or in an informal chat, I can see how higher positions are always appreciated. In these three countries, certain attention is given to senior MPs: speakers or leaders of the committees. The journalists will run to follow these elites to ask for statements. In Malaysia, even the elites UMNO MPs still had a place, even when they are now sitting in the opposition seats. In Indonesia, the speaker can decide on certain matters, including to omit the speaking time of MPs.
The important role of the elites is probably one of features in the Asian model of democracy.
The adoption of a Westminster parliamentary style of government, in both Malaysia and Singapore, also show that these parliaments are "speaking government". From the Speaker's seat, the government party (including the ministries) is sitting on the right side, while the Opposition sits on the left side. The lay-out of their Plenary Rooms is designed for speaking and debating. In Malaysia, the room is surrounded by camera so anyone who speaks can be seen on the screen up front before the public. Additionally, they are known from their constituent names. In Singapore, the balcony is above the plenum, so viewers can see everything down below to the MPs, so the MPs who speak are seen clearly, and the map will show who is sitting on such particular seat (and from which constituent stated in the Hansard paper). This is different from Indonesia, whose parliamentary plenum is set to listen to speeches, with the podium in the front, next to the speakers' seats. It is not designed for debating at all. When there is a question from an MP, it is not clear who is speaking (from which faction nor constituent). Only the Speaker will know who is talking from the light of the microphone. It is likely referring to many numbers of MPs too. It is clear that from the Indonesia's plenary meeting, constituents and speaking in the plenum are the least priority. It places more emphasis on the ritual series of events (for example, the minister's speech and inauguration) and passing the legislation (if any), but not accountability before the public. This section summarizes that as a researcher studying the political institutions as parliament in Southeast Asia, one needs to have credible affiliation and good connection or network from the inside the institution. This is likely to happen in other parliaments too in Southeast Asia. This study also confirms the importance of elites (leaders and decision makers) and the importance of parliamentary structure (and procedure), such as the emphasize on "legislative" work (Indonesia) or "representative" or speaking institutions (as Malaysia and Singapore show).

Conclusion
This paper shows the challenges of studying the parliamentary institutions in Southeast Asia. Using Institutionalism theory and applying parliamentary ethnography research method (knowing how the institutions works, the key persons to approach, and careful observation) I show how connection, research topic and affiliation are important and needed to help get through the layers of bureaucracies, which usually consume time. Have references or friends who can connect to the insiders (the secretariats or the MPs) will be an advantage. Once such bureaucratic preparations are overcome, the art of observing of the events is needed to get data for the research. Based on the three national parliaments that I study: Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, the institution's structure and procedure explain the lack or good arrangement of the institutions. Leaders or those holding key positions in decision-making play a great role in guiding the outcome or legislative results. It is important that these leaders as parliamentary members or as the representatives of the people or constituents.
When MPs realize their roles as the channel of people's voice, it is important to voice out the grievance of people publicly, rather than reiterate the works of the executive government solely. Understanding

Social Science Research in Southeast Asia
the role as parliamentarians, including the game of procedure within the institution, is apart form that needs to be comprehended by most parliamentary members. Hopefully, this approach will also applicable for other parliaments in Southeast Asia.