Area Politics B (Politics of the Southeast Asia)
Faculty
Description
This seminar discusses the origins and the development of the state and political regimes in the Southeast Asian region. After a brief introduction on the construction of a maritime world that we now call Southeast Asia, the structure of the colonial state and its legacies and the decolonizing process, I will draw your attention to the following three sets of questions.
(1) What was the structure of the cold war in peripheral regions? What were the differences between the cold war geopolitics coined out in Washington and Moscow, on the one hand, and the actual conflicts that took place in peripheral regions such as Southeast Asia?
(2) What was the relationship between spectacular economic growth and political authoritarianism, a combination of which seemed so universal in the region during the 1970’s and the 1980’s? Is authoritarian rule a necessary evil for industrial growth?
(3) How and why did those strong-man regimes in Indonesia and the Philippines collapse? Why did authoritarian rule persist in Malaysia and Singapore, while it collapsed in others?
By tackling these questions, you will learn to combine insights from comparative politics and the down-to-earth analysis of actual political change.
This is a lecture course, and the class size will be fairly large, making it difficult for you to participate in discussions. You are strongly advised to make use of my office hours as well as send e-mails to me for further learning. Grades will be based on written examinations.