Myanmar’s military takeover in February 2021 and Thailand’s last two coups in September 2006 and May 2014 have dramatically undermined democratisation in both countries, significantly accounting for the democratic “rollback” around the world. As a first in Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s coup succeeded in its execution but is failing in its implementation and consolidation. The ensuing civil war there – what local anti-coup insurgents deem a ‘revolution’ – is tipping in favour of a resistance coalition comprising the inchoate civilian-led National Unity Government, Ethnic Armed Organisations and ubiquitous squads of People’s Defence Force. That Myanmar’s future is up for grabs should behove Asean member states and the wider international community to help broker dialogue and negotiations to reimagine and reconstitute a viable new country. While Thailand’s twin coups ended up with new constitutions and general elections, conservative forces have held sway. Thailand has entered an unmistakeable endgame that pivots around the military’s and monarchy’s roles in a contested constitutional order with rising disenchantments and demands from below for reform and modernisation. This seminar will aim to tease out issues and implications from what’s happening in both Myanmar and Thailand for Asean and the Southeast Asia neighbourhood on the dynamic spectrum between autocracy and democracy in view of the geostrategic conflict between the United States and China.
Please register to attend in person (SAL.LG.18). Register to attend online via Zoom.
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is Professor of International Relations at Chulalongkorn University’s faculty of political science and Senior Fellow at its Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok. Thitinan has held visiting positions at Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, University of Victoria in New Zealand, and Yangon University, and currently serves on several editorial boards of academic journals, including Journal of Democracy. He has authored a host of articles, books, book chapters and over 1,000 opinion articles in mass media such as Project Syndicate, The Bangkok Post, Nikkei Asian Review, The Straits Times, South China Morning Post, International New York times, and Financial Times. As an analyst on Thailand/ASEAN-Southeast Asia, his comments and views have appeared regularly in international media, including Aljazeera, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, NHK, DW, among others. Prior to his academic and think-tank career, Thitinan worked at The Nation newspaper in Bangkok, the BBC World Service and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in London. His current work focuses on the comparative politics and geopolitics/geoeconomics of ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific in view of the US-China rivalry and competition. In 2015, he was recognised for excellence in opinion writing by Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA). During 2017-present, he holds the appointment as International Advisory Board Member of Asia-New Zealand Foundation (ANZF). In March 2018, he was appointed ASEAN@50 Fellow by New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade. In May 2019, he was selected as Australia-ASEAN Fellow at Sydney’s Lowy Institute. From 2021-present, he is senior advisor for geopolitics with Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES). From January 2023-present, he is appointed an independent expert of ADMM+ Cybersecurity and Information Centre of Excellence (ACICE). In January 2024, Thitinan was awarded a commendation by the Japanese government for his work on Japan-Thailand and Japan-ASEAN relations. For the past two decades, he has been a columnist with The Bangkok Post. He completed degrees at the University of California at Santa Barbara (with Distinction) and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, with a PhD from London School of Economics which won the UK’s best dissertation prize in 2002.
Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (2007), Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines (2020, with Jaime Faustino) and Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (2021).