International Norms And Local Politics In Myanmar

Nishikawa explores how international norms have been adopted in the local context in Myanmar to project a certain international image, while in fact the authorities are exploiting these norms to protect their own interests. In the liberal international world order promoted since the end of the Cold War, democracy, rule of law and human rights have become key components in state and peace-building around the world. Many donor governments and international organisations have promoted them in their aid and assistance. However, the promotion of these international norms is based on a flawed understanding of sovereignty and the world. For this reason, the enforcement of these international norms in Myanmar not only fails to protect vulnerable people but also, in some instances, exacerbates the situation, thereby generating critical insecurity to the most vulnerable people. A vital resource for scholars of Myanmar’s politics, as well as a valuable case study for International Relations scholars more broadly.

Burma also known as Myanmar is presently best known for political repression and extreme poverty, yet at one point it was a powerful Southeast Asian Kingdom and a thriving part of the British Empire. This chapter interprets Burma's post-independence history through the lens of the Mode of Harmony through Holistic Engagement and concludes that the model fails to explain the country's foreign policy. Burma's foreign policy behavior does not fit the model due to the influence of a virulent type of Nationalism influenced by international ideological trends imposed first by the leaders of the independence movement and later on by military leaders. The chapter concludes that Burma's best hope for stability and development is a transition to a truly emic form of nationalism that is more attuned to local values and less reliant on sharp dichotomies.

This book argues that global rule-of-law standards in post-conflict states are reshaped in interactive translation processes between external and domestic actors.

This Adelphi Paper examines Myanmar's foreign policy, which is predicated on state-building and development, as well as on defending the regime's priority of establishing an enduring constitution over democratization.

This book explores middle power engagement in peace processes through the cases of Australian, Japanese and Norwegian engagement in Myanmar’s peace process, a core event in Myanmar’s contemporary recent political history. The book asks to what extent, and how, middle powers have engaged in Myanmar’s peace process as a form of peacemaking entrepreneurship. Underpinning this study is a concern for the lack of clarity surrounding the middle power concept. Traditional conceptions of middle powers, steeped in idealist thinking, locate such states as capable peacemakers, without elucidating the motivations that drive middle powers to peacemaking beyond mere status seeking. Drawing on recent fieldwork interviews from within Myanmar as well as political economy literature, the author scrutinises this notion while concomitantly offering an incisive analysis of Myanmar’s peace process. Based on the Myanmar context, the book argues that middle powers can better be conceptualised as "peace-making entrepreneurs," as actors that use peacemaking as an instrumental tool to cement their status and craft an image, which they can then trade upon to secure additional, namely, commercial, benefits. Significantly, this notion of peacemaking entrepreneurship problematises core theoretical assumptions of middle powers as capable peacemakers, presenting implications for future scholarship on middle powers. A timely addition as Myanmar continues to grapple with its own future, the book is located within the fields of International Relations and Development Studies. It will be of interest to researchers studying Asian Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Myanmar Politics.

NGOs and Civil Society in Thailand critically examines the relationships of civil society to nongovernmental organisations in Thailand, and examines the ‘NGOisation’ of civil society, how NGOs are funded and governed, and in what way the NGOs has been shaped to work with the funder. NGOisation is a phenomenon by which the funded organisations are impelled to transform suit their funder as reliable partners. Focusing on Thailand, an Asian country where NGOs have been heavily relied on the public sector for funding, the book analyses the relations between NGOs and their significant funder, Thailand Health Promotion Foundation (THPF), one of the biggest and most influential players in the NGO sector. As the NGO funded organisations are impelled to transform and adapt to become more professionalised, institutionalised, bureaucratised, and depoliticised to suit their funder as reliable partners, their characteristics and relations with the state are complex and interactive. Engaging with key stakeholders in the field of NGO and public governance in Thailand, the book demonstrates how THPF changed the NGO landscape, integrating them and innovatively coordinating non-state initiatives into public governance system. A novel contribution to the study of NGOs and the state, the book also addresses NGO transformation, politics, and governance. It will be of interest to academics working on Asian Politics, civil society, public policy and public management.

In this empirically rich collection of essays, a team of leading international scholars explore the way that economic transformation is sustained and challenged by everyday practices across Southeast Asia. Drawing together a body of interdisciplinary scholarship, the authors explore how the emergence of more marketized forms of economic policy-making in Southeast Asia impacts everyday life. The book's twelve chapters address topics such as domestic migration, trade union politics in Myanmar, mining in the Philippines, halal food in Singapore, Islamic finance in Malaysia, education reform in Indonesia, street vending in Malaysia, regional migration between Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia, and Southeast Asian domestic workers in Hong Kong. This collection not only enhances understandings of the everyday political economies at work in specific Southeast Asian sites, but makes a major theoretical contribution to the development of an everyday political economy approach in which perspectives from developing economies and non-Western actors are taken seriously.

This book demonstrates how preserving ideology and relationships with other activists affords social movements to persist over time amid limited resources and political opportunities in Southeast Asia. Examining two peace movements in Indonesia – the largest democratic country in Southeast Asia – to illuminate discontinuity, continuity, and change in social movements, the author uses a cultural approach to understanding why social movements persist. He argues that the activists’ memory, relationship with others, collective identity, and emotion are reasons for social movements to ascend and peak. This is a direct response to the argument that the availability of resources and political opportunities is the main ingredient for any social movements to rise. While having different fates, the two movements studied arose in the midst of violence between Christian and Muslim communities in Ambon, Indonesia: The Kopi Badati movement and Filterinfo. The book extends the applicability of the cultural approach in explaining why social movements discontinue, continue, and change over time, without discounting the importance of available resources and political opportunities. Addressing a gap in the existing social movement studies, the book explains why a social movement disbands and why the other manages to continue and change after achieving its immediate goal. It will be of interest to academics in the fields of Asian studies, (new)-media and communications, civil society, and international development.

Introducing a re-conceptualized comprehensive hedging framework, this book analyses the relations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam with China in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the South China Sea dispute. The author argues that ASEAN and the three Southeast Asian governments pursue a hedging strategy towards the rising China. Hedging expands the strategic options of smaller powers which are in Neorealism often restricted to bandwagoning and balancing. A hedging strategy, however, can simultaneously contain both elements of bandwagoning (e.g., in economics) and balancing (e.g., in security affairs). Even though the four hedging strategies and their implementation vary, in principle they all seek closer economic relations with Beijing, while maintaining strong security relations with Washington. A major innovation of the new hedging concept is the inclusion of the perceptions of the hedger on the risks and opportunities stemming from the relations with the hedging target and of the strategic value of potential hedging partners. The comprehensive hedging concept and the important empirical findings will be of interest to researchers in the fields of International Relations, Security, Political Geography, Economics, History, and Asian Studies.