By Katie Zeng (*). As democratic institutions and global power dynamics shift, South and Southeast Asia stand at an inflection point. Countries like Indonesia and the Philippines have emerged as leaders in the fight against climate change, while the adoption of AI and a digital economy remain top priorities for ASEAN as it engages in political and economic developments. [1]
South and Southeast Asia, however, also offer a rethinking of democratic participation, as some of the most resilient democracies have thrived there, and U-turns for countries once thought lost to authoritarianism have emerged. As the United States and the West’s democratic stability start to crumble, a look to the East offers new hope and new ways to protect the structures long lauded as inherent in the balance of power.
Timor-Leste’s path to statehood has been marred with conflict and has little of what political scientists usually cite as democratic prerequisites, with wealth, education, and institutional continuity indicators far below the usual threshold. Four hundred years under Portuguese rule ended in 1975, but independence lasted only nine days before Indonesian forces invaded. [2] The occupation that followed saw mass displacement, violent crackdowns, and a death toll historians estimate in the hundreds of thousands, out of a population that numbered under a million. Independence finally arrived in 2002, under the watch of UN peacekeepers. However, this independence was far from peaceful. In 2006, a dispute within the security forces spiraled into a full political crisis: gang violence, mass displacement in the capital, and a bitter power struggle between President Xanana Gusmão and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri that nearly unraveled the government entirely. [3]
As the international community watched, the country seemed destined to relapse into instability. Instead, democracy took root, and it has remained the strongest democracy and only “free” nation in Southeast Asia since 2020-2021. [4] In its 2023 and 2024 parliamentary elections, it posted 79% voter turnout, and 69% of its population believes the country is headed in the right direction, despite ongoing poverty, corruption, and economic and political vulnerability [5][6]. These numbers are a far cry from the United States, where trust in institutions has depleted significantly.
The 2006 crisis could easily have sent Timor-Leste down a road that, these days, looks far more traveled: a state of emergency that spirals until a strongman leader takes power to exert authoritative rule. Instead, Australian-led international intervention, Operation Astute, stabilized the immediate security situation, buying space for a political process rather than a military takeover. [7] But outside stabilization only explains how the fighting stopped. It doesn’t explain why the democracy that followed actually held. That answer lies in who did the rebuilding once the peacekeepers created the space to do it. In the years after the crisis, the heavy lifting of restoring trust in government fell not primarily to international donors but to local institutions with standing in Timorese society, including village-level customary councils that mediated local disputes using processes that predated Portuguese and Indonesian rule. [8] International donors funded reconstruction and helped design formal institutions, but the actual work of convincing ordinary Timorese that elections and courts were worth trusting was done by people the population already trusted. [9]
Compare it to Myanmar, where decades of on-and-off military rule never produced a genuine settlement between civilian and military power; the army retained a legal veto over the government through its own constitution, and when a 2021 election outcome threatened that veto, it took power back by force. [10] Or Thailand, where repeated coups have been followed by nominal returns to civilian rule, but the military has never fully ceded its position as final arbiter of the political system. [11] In both countries, moments of crisis reinforced the very actors and structures they might have been expected to weaken, in part because the institutions that emerged were negotiated among elites and outside powers, not owned by the public. Timor-Leste’s constitution, drafted in the direct aftermath of the crisis, placed strong emphasis on civil society and press freedom as a direct response to a specific, recently remembered failure. [12] That memory, reinforced by local ownership rather than imposed from outside, has offered a buffer against the democratic backsliding many of its peers have fallen into.
None of this erases Timor-Leste’s problems. It remains one of the poorest countries in the region, with persistent challenges in poverty reduction, social welfare delivery, and corruption. However, it offers important lessons to the world, specifically us in the United States. Despite being the richest and most powerful country in the world, confidence in its democratic future has been declining for years. Trust in institutions, belief that the system responds to ordinary people, and a sense that the country is headed in the right direction have all eroded in a country with every material advantage. [13] If institutional resilience were simply a function of wealth or age, the US should have little to learn from a half-island nation of 1.4 million people. It’s precisely because Timor-Leste lacks those advantages that its civic confidence is instructive: it suggests that trust in democratic institutions is less about material conditions and more about whether people have watched those institutions actually hold, under pressure, within living memory and what they are willing to do to prevent the past.
That last point matters beyond Timor-Leste itself. Critics of US democracy assistance abroad, whether external or internal voices, have long argued that democratic institutions imported wholesale, with unfamiliar actors and timelines set by outside powers, are ineffective, exploitative, and neocolonial. [14] Timor-Leste’s experience suggests the inverse also holds domestically: institutions survive not because they are well-designed on paper, but because the people living under them helped build them and remember why they were built. The United States hasn’t faced a test like 2006 in generations. Whether that absence is a strength or a quiet vulnerability is worth asking. Timor-Leste suggests it might be the latter: institutions never tested by crisis, and never rebuilt by the people who depend on them, are among the most vulnerable. If American institutions are going to survive what’s coming, and want to rebuild the democracy assistance institutions it once had, they will need to learn from this country, 9,200 miles away.
(*) Katie Zeng is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Democracy and Governance at Georgetown University, with a previous Bachelor degree in Political Science and International Affairs from Wake Forest University.
Works Cited
[1] “ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA),” Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
[2] Hill, Helen. The Timor Story. Melbourne, Vic.: Timor Information Service, 1975.
[3] Hill, The Timor Story.
[4] Kurlantzick, Joshua. “Why Has East Timor Built the Strongest Democracy in Southeast Asia?” Council on Foreign Relations, 2021.
[5] The Asia Foundation. “Amid Persistent Challenges and Growing Expectations According to New National Survey.” 2025.
[6] BTI Transformation Index. “Timor-Leste Country Report 2026.” Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2026.
[7] Australian Federal Police. “AFP Missions and Operations in Timor-Leste.” Platypus Magazine 4 (2013). Accessed August 24, 2022. http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/journals/AUFPPlatypus/2013/2.html.
[8] Bermeo, Nancy. “The Puzzle of Timor-Leste.” In Democracy in Hard Places, edited by Scott Mainwaring and Tarek Masoud, [pp. XX–XX]. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197598757.003.0006.
[9] Swenson, Geoffrey. “From Competition to Cooperation: Building a New Legal Order in Timor-Leste.” In Contending Orders: Legal Pluralism and the Rule of Law, [pp. XX–XX]. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197530429.003.0004.
[10] “Civil War in Myanmar.” Council on Foreign Relations.
[11] Kurlantzick, Joshua. “Is a Coup Coming Soon in Thailand?” Council on Foreign Relations, 2025.
[12] BTI Transformation Index. “Timor-Leste Country Report 2026.” Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2026.
[13] Pew Research Center. “On the Country’s 250th Anniversary, the American People Are in a Sour Mood.” June 12, 2026.
[14] National Endowment for Democracy. “The Backlash against Democracy Assistance.” 2006.
