Description

The focus of this presentation is ethnic conflict management in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Burma. The main academic theories of conflict management, the consociational and the centripetal, have rarely been implemented in Southeast Asia, except insofar as Malaysia inadvertently practiced centripetal politics because of its heterogeneous electoral constituencies from 1952 to 1969. Indonesia, on the other hand, created a separation-of-powers democracy after the fall of Suharto. It opted for a directly elected president, a strong, if highly fallible, constitutional court, and an electoral system that has produced a regime of multipolar fluidity. Because proportional representation supported a plurality of parties, adherents of the main alirans could find congenial candidate lists to support. Again because of exigencies created by the electoral system, they have gradually begun to vote across streams as well. In Burma, minorities are determined to create a strongly decentralized federal system, but they are not yet fully aware of the hazards of configuring it in ways they seem to prefer or of the need for legal and electoral institutions that will sustain both decentralization and a national market as well as efforts to reduce conflict and protect the rights of minorities in the states. Three countries: different specific problems and paths, but some common themes.

About The Speaker
Professor Horowitz is the James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science Emeritus at Duke University and author of, among other works, Constitutional Change and Democracy in Indonesia (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
For more information please go to https://goo.gl/rR3W3Y