Political Elites in Coloninal Southeast Asia: an Historical Analysis

1965 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry J. Benda
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Individual State ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Nation States

Present-day political systems in the nation states of Southeast Asia can be classified in accordance with various criteria; they can, for example, be politically grouped on a spectrum ranging from parliamentary democracy to totalitarian dictatorship. The focus of the present inquiry is the sociology of political elites rather than the forms of polity which these elites have created or helped to create. It deals exclusively with the ruling “national” elites, leaving out of consideration secondary groups, such as territorially- or ethnicallybased local and regional elites, religious leaders, and other traditional elites. Two kinds of “national” elite can be discerned in contemporary Southeast Asia, which we shall call “intelligentsia elites” and “modernizing traditional elites”. Disregarding for the time being the constitutional frameworks and the degree of popular participation of each individual state, it may be said that both elites are in many respects oligarchies.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
International Level ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Mass Publics

How can democracies effectively represent citizens? The goal of this Handbook is to evaluate comprehensively how well the interests and preferences of mass publics become represented by institutions in liberal democracies. It first explores how the idea and institutions of liberal democracies were formed over centuries and became enshrined in Western political systems. The contributors to this Handbook, made up of the world’s leading scholars on the various aspects of political representation, examine how well the political elites and parties who are charged with the representation of the public interest meet their duties. Clearly, institutions often fail to live up to their own representation goals. With this in mind, the contributors explore several challenges to the way that the system of representation is organized in modern democracies. For example, actors such as parties and established elites face rising distrust among electorates. Also, the rise of international problems such as migration and environmentalism suggests that the focus of democracies on nation states may have to shift to a more international level. All told, this Handbook illuminates the normative and functional challenges faced by representative institutions in liberal democracies.

scholarly journals Masa-Depan Cerah, Bahaya Menunggu: Negara-Bangsa Baru dan Kekerasan Massal di Asia Tenggara

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Henk Schulte Nordholt
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

In this article the impact of the Cold War in Southeast Asia is evaluated. The region was turned into the hottest battlefields of this conflict which costed the lives of about seven million people. The Cold War also terminated fragile attempts to turn newly independent nation-states into democracies. Instead every country in Southeast Asia experienced authoritarian rule by either capitalist of socialist regimes. In the capitalist countries middle classes emerged which profited from economic growth under authoritarian rule. Since democracy was associated with instability and mass violence and economic growth with authoritarian rule, middle classes were very late in supporting new attempts to democratize their political systems.

Premises, Policies and Multilateral Whitewashing of Broad Security Doctrines: A Southeast Asia-Based Critique of “Non-traditional” Security

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2019) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Delphine Allès
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Policy Transformation ◽  
Semantic Evolution

This article highlights the formulation of comprehensive conceptions of security in Indonesia, Malaysia and within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), well before their academic conceptualisation. These security doctrines have been the basis of the consolidation of state and military apparatuses in the region. They tend to be overlooked by analyses praising the recent conversion of Southeast Asian political elites to the “non-traditional security”? agenda. This latter development is perceived as a source of multilateral cooperation and a substitute for the hardly operationalisable concept of human security. However, in the region, non-traditional security proves to be a semantic evolution rather than a policy transformation. At the core of ASEAN’s security narrative, it has provided a multilateral anointing of “broad” but not deepened conceptions of security, thus legitimising wide-ranging socio-political roles for the armed forces.

Conceptions of Community in Colonial Southeast Asia

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Stockwell
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Asian Values ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Unity In Diversity ◽  
Shared Commitment

It is a commonplace that European rule contributed both to the consolidation of the nation-states of Southeast Asia and to the aggravation of disputes within them. Since their independence, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have all faced the upheavals of secessionism or irredentism or communalism. Governments have responded to threats of fragmentation by appeals to national ideologies like Sukarno's pancasila (five principles) or Ne Win's ‘Burmese way to socialism’. In attempting to realise unity in diversity, they have paraded a common experience of the struggle for independence from colonial rule as well as a shared commitment to post-colonial modernisation. They have also ruthlessly repressed internal opposition or blamed their problems upon the foreign forces of neocolonialism, world communism, western materialism, and other threats to Asian values. Yet, because its effects were uneven and inconsistent while the reactions to it were varied and frequently equivocal, the part played by colonialism in shaping the affiliations and identities of Southeast Asian peoples was by no means clear-cut.

scholarly journals HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND LEGAL ANALYSIS OF SURVEILLANCE IN CRIME PREVENTION

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-209
Author(s):  
Nataliia Voitovych
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Generalization Problem ◽  
Xix Century

The aim of the research is to study the historical preconditions and legal regulation of surveillance in combating crime in the XIX century. At the same time, the author's goal is to compare peculiarities of the instruments of system fight against crime (the method of operational search actions, hereinafter - OSA) and covert investigative activities in countries with different forms of government and diverse political systems.The methodology of the research is: adherence to the principles of objectivity, scientificity and historicism contributed to consistent disclosure of preconditions, content and principles of surveillance as a measure and a method of OSA and covert investigative activities in combating and preventing crime actions. Mutual enrichment with historical and legal methods provided systemity of the research. Historical study of surveillance in combination with the study of regulatory legal acts created new opportunities for interdisciplinary research. The application of general scientific methods, namely systematization, generalization, problem-chronological, comparative-historical, historical-legal methods allowed to trace the influence of the legal component on the history of introduction and development of surveillance in the "long" XIX century and peculiarities of its usage in the conditions of the newly formed states and political systems in the interwar period.The scientific novelty lies in a detailed historical and legal analysis of the content of regulatory legal acts concerning legal grounds for surveillance, a comprehensive study of its content, gaps and peculiarities of usage in non-democratic political regimes.Conclusions. The article provides historical analysis of evolution and usage of surveillance, which has experienced several stages connected with improving the performance of security functions, in preventing crimes. The attention is focused on the most characteristic features of  implementing surveillance as a universal measure of obtaining information and distributing tasks between the states' law enforcement agencies and a means of combating representatives of political forces and structures constituting a real and hypothetical threat to the state / regime. The similarity of performing functions by law enforcement agencies (and the role of surveillance) in the conditions of different state formations, despite fundamental differences in the forms of government and the nature of political systems, is proved.

Global civil society and the test of Kyoto: A theoretical extension

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-211
Author(s):  
Emma Anderson ◽  
Marina Zaloznaya
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Global Civil Society ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Civil Action ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Political Landscapes

What determines how successful global civil society is in promoting international governance norms within nation-states? Studies attribute the varied effectiveness of civil action to the capacity of non-governmental groups and organizations, the nature of global regimes that generate such norms, domestic political landscapes, or combinations of these factors. Yet, empirical cases, analyzed in this article, suggest that global civil society may lose or gain in domestic effectiveness even when these determinants remain stable. Using primary and secondary data on Kyoto Protocol negotiations in Japan, Canada, and Australia, we argue that changes in the Kyoto stances of these three countries between 2005 and 2012 stemmed from the realignment of domestic political actors engaged in the contestation of the protocol alongside civil society. Our data reveal that exogenous natural and political events led to shifts in the positions of local political elites, media, and the energy industry. As a result, the pro-Kyoto coalition, headed by global civil society, either lost or gained in bargaining power vis-à-vis the counter-coalition. We, therefore, theorize realignment as a mechanism that connects exogenous events to the changing effectiveness of global civil society. Theoretically, our study emphasizes the importance of embedding civil action into its concrete socio-historical contexts and advocates for a process-oriented study of agentic social change.

Muslim Legislators in India: Profile of a Minority Élite

1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore P. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Linguistic Minorities ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Western Concept ◽  
Privileged Status

Some attention has been paid in recent years to the sociological analysis of political élites in the “new nations” of Africa and Asia with a view to understanding better their political behavior. W. H. Morris-Jones and Myron Weiner have both considered the characteristics of some of the politicians in post-independence India. But little has been done on the leadership of minority groups.In many cases (eg., the Armenians, Copts, and Maronites in the Middle East, the Parsis in India, and the Chinese in Southeast Asia), the members of religious and linguistic minorities adapted more rapidly to modern ways than the majorities among whom they lived. Although the former sometimes enjoyed privileged status as go betweens for the European colonial rulers, they were also among the first to absorb the Western concept of nationalism. They even provided some of the early leadership for nationalist movements, until the mobilization of broader and lower levels of the population around neo-traditional religious symbols began to exclude them from the national self-definition.

Southeast Asia: A Very Short Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Rush
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
East Timor ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
World Region

The eleven countries of Southeast Asia are diverse in every way, from the ethnicities and religions of their residents to their political systems and levels of prosperity. These nations—Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, and East Timor—are each unique, yet shared traditions mean that each country is also typically Southeast Asian. Southeast Asia: A Very Short Introduction traces the region’s history from the earliest “mandala” kingdoms to the colonial era and the present day. Synthesizing the ideas of leading scholars, it provides an analysis of contemporary Southeast Asia that accommodates its bewildering ethnic, religious, and political complexities while exposing the underlying patterns that make it a unified world region.

Judicial Power and Consociational Federation: The Bosnian Example

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-644
Author(s):  
Alex Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Power Sharing ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Judicial Supremacy ◽  
Constitutional Meaning ◽  
Influential Theory ◽  
Core Features

An influential theory, sometimes called the ‘fragmentation hypothesis’, proposes that divided political systems will tend to empower courts because they make it more difficult for political elites to coordinate court-curbing retaliation. Another influential perspective proposes that federal systems are conducive to judicial empowerment because they create a demand for the authoritative adjudication of jurisdictional boundaries and/or they facilitate judicial supremacy over constitutional meaning. If both of these theories are correct, we might expect consociational (ie, power sharing) federations to be especially hospitable to the emergence of powerful courts. With reference to the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article questions this conclusion; it is theorized here that core features of consociational federation will tend to undermine the growth and maintenance of judicial power.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document