Editor’s Introduction: Southeast Asia Plus

Abstract

Southeast Asia – its politics, governance and foreign relations – is the strong suit of this 44th issue of Asian Politics & Policy. From May 2018 until May 2019, we witnessed several elections taking place in this region which is known for its very diverse political systems and lively internal power dynamics. For this edition of Praxis, editor Jacob Ricks has assembled brief essays providing analyses of elections in Malaysia, Timor Leste, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. All are written by young scholars working on these six countries. As Ricks notes, we have been bemoaning the decline of democracy at the global level in recent years. Both the government’s backtracking on the practice and promotion of multi-party democracy, and authoritarian China and Russia’s touting of their own model, represent threats to democracy. Whether or not influenced by these trends, how the Southeast Asian elites and publics try to grapple with their own challenges of governance and development through elections is as important to the future of democracy in the world. Governance in Southeast Asia is also given the spotlight in Hai Hong Nguyen's article which looks at state-society relations in Vietnam, mediated by the communist leadership that has to maintain strong central control for the regime to survive, and yet be responsive to demands from below. Gabriel Lele examines the effects of asymmetric decentralization, a situation where several subnational governments of the same level (e.g. provincial level) are allowed varying political, fiscal, and administrative arrangements by the central government. The experiences of four Indonesian provinces – Papua, Papua Barat, Aceh, and Yogyakarta – are offered as case studies of how asymmetric decentralization can succeed or fail. On another note, how domestic political factors affect the foreign policy choices of three countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, and China) in relation to the South China Sea territorial disputes, are the subject of three articles by Chow-Bing Ngeow, Yohanes Sulaiman and Mingjiang Li, respectively. These papers draw from a research project curated by Mingjiang Li and run from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. An accompanying contribution on the Philippines by Mark Bryan Manantan looks, not at the domestic factors, but at the geopolitical calculations of a weak country navigating relations with and between two competing great powers in this same maritime arena. Finally, to give us a breather from Southeast Asia Glenn Diesen takes us to the far opposite end of the continent as he writes about the economic interests and strategies undergirding Russia’s Greater Eurasia Initiative – a geopolitical project, too, no doubt, as Russia inches closer to the rest of Asia at this time of turbulent great power relations.