Date/time: Monday 8 April to Tuesday 9 April 2019, 9am-5pm
Venue: The Auditorium, China in the World Building 188, Fellows Lane, Acton, ACT 2601
Speakers: Pasuk Pongpaichit, Prajak Kongkirati, Ou Virak, Naruemon Thabchumpon, Chit Win, Kimly Ngoun, Chris Baker, Anne Hennings, Melissa Crouch, Costas Laoutides, Khin Zaw Win, Christoph Sperfeldt, Myat Thet Thitsar, Kevin Hewison, Aim Sinpeng, and Alice Beban
In the mid-1990s Myanmar was a dark spot on an otherwise increasingly bright outlook for liberal democratic change in mainland Southeast Asia, in particular, in Thailand and Cambodia. Today things appear very different. While an elite pact in Myanmar has brought with it genuine change for the better, it also has kept the country’s army in a position of strength. Thailand seems caught in an interminable cycle of military interventions. And Cambodia is under a de facto one-party, if not one-man, dictatorship.
What happened to the promise of liberal democracy in mainland Southeast Asia that the 1990s held? Was it ephemeral, or imagined? And what can be done to restore that promise? This international conference will address these questions through dialogue between scholars and experts working on and in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia, under five rubrics: agency, repression, security, activism, and sovereignty. These are familiar topics and questions for students of Southeast Asia, but rarely are they discussed across these three countries at once. The conference will present a unique opportunity to do so, by bringing academics and policymakers into conversation about points of similarity and difference across the three, so as to get at how and why illiberalism remains inherent to political order in mainland Southeast Asia, and about what might be done about it.
This event is hosted by the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU. For any enquiries, please contact the convenor, Dr Rebecca Gidley.
Conference program and registration at http://bellschool.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/6687/conference-entrenched-illiberalism-mainland-southeast-asia?#tab