Thesis (M.A.)--Dalhousie University, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-174).

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Bachelor's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Since the beginning of the millennium, Southeast Asia has become one of the fastest growing regions in the world. After recovery from the slowdown caused by the Asian financial crisis, most of them achieved significant growth and Asian miracle was created. Thanks to the liberalization of trade, export supporting policies, cheap labour and foreign investment, many of the southeast Asian countries entered the middle income countries group, which the World Bank defines with the Gross National Income per capita in the range from 1 045 USD to 12 760 USD. However, some countries in Southeast Asia are experiencing economic slowdown now and some of them fell into so called middle income trap. It is an economic phenomenon, which describes the situation when the country is no longer able to use its comparative advantages in the form of labour intensive production and its economic growth stagnates. Such economies find themselves on the edge between poor countries with cheap labour and advanced economies with high income. The main goal of the diploma thesis is to examine the topic of middle-income trap on chosen economies of Southeast Asia - Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. The thesis is focused on the evaluation of their economic situation, the depth of the middle income trap and possible solutions for each of these countries.

Following the announcement of the establishment of a Caliphate in 2014, individuals and groups from all corners of the world pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State. Of particular interest to this study are violent terrorist groups based in Southeast Asia. The thesis focuses on this region as, despite obvious geographical constraints, local bay'ah pledges have allowed ISIS to suddenly emerge in the region with a large and well organised force allowing for an increase in terrorist activities and ultimately the capture of Marawi, the largest city to fall under the ISIS banner outside of Syria and Iraq. But a question remains too often unanswered - why do terrorist groups ally? While the dynamic is rare and paradoxical due to groups' illicit and clandestine nature, strategic alliances between terrorist groups are far from being a new phenomenon. While a handful of scholars dared to explore this complex field, it remains under-theorised to this day. This thesis uses an available list of studies and analyses on terrorist alliances and complements it with theories related to alliances between states in order to understand the rationale behind Southeast Asian Islamists alliance with ISIS. While there lacks a consensus as to why groups ally, the study finds it to be a multi-dimensional and mutually...

What causes post-conflict violence to occur in some places emerging from extended violent conflict and not in others? Why does episodic post-conflict violence take different forms? And what causes episodic violence to escalate into larger renewed extended violence? This thesis contributes towards answers to these questions by examining the experience of Indonesia. Six provinces saw civil war or large-scale inter-communal unrest around the turn of the century. In each, war ended. Yet levels and forms of post-conflict violence vary significantly between areas. The Indonesian cases are used to build a theory of the sources of spatial and temporal variance in post-conflict violence. Multiple methods are employed. A new dataset, containing over 158,000 coded incidents, maps patterns of extended and post-conflict violence. Six districts in three provinces are then studied in depth. Comparative analysis of districts and provinces—drawing on over 300 field interviews—identifies the determinants of variations in post-conflict violence levels and forms. Adopting a political economy approach, the thesis develops a novel actor-based theory of post-conflict violence. Violence is not the result of failed elite bargains, dysfunctional inter-group relations, enduring grievances, or weak states. Instead, it flows from the incentives that three sets of actors—local elites, local violence specialists, and national elites—have to use violence for accumulation. Violence is used when it is beneficial, non-costly, and when other opportunities for getting ahead do not exist. How post-conflict resources are deployed, the degree to which those who use violence face sanctions, and the availability of peaceful means to achieve goals shape incentives and hence patterns of violence. Where only violence specialists support violence, post-conflict violence will take small-scale forms. Where local elites also support violence, escalation to frequent large episodic violence occurs. Extended violence only occurs where national elites also have reason to use violence for purposes of accumulation.

This dissertation examines how a group of street vendors in Yogyakarta City, Indonesia, experienced a government-organized relocation from Mangkubumi Street to a newly renovated marketplace. In particular, I explore the strategies taken by the leaders of a street vendor organization called Pethikbumi to refuse the relocation and claim their right to the street. Contestations over streets, street vending and street vendor relocations constitute important moments during which citizenship, democracy and belonging are negotiated in the city. I argue that the conflict over belonging and democracy took the form of a social drama and was shaped and structured by specific moral appeals, public performances, and processes of imitation (cf. Turner 1974). The study begins with an exploration of the history of street vending and the pedagang kaki lima (street vendor) in Indonesia. I outline how the pedagang kaki lima were viewed as “dirty”, a simplified code for the transgression of social, spatial and legal boundaries. I move on to explore the way the street vendors of Pethikbumi drew on ideas of “the people” (rakyat), democracy and transparency in claiming their rights. I analyze the ways that Pethikbumi drew on important moments in Indonesia’s past and present, situating this relocation conflict as significant and as part of “history”. The relocation was also rooted in an epistemology of “skepticism” derived from an awareness of the ambiguity and tension between appearances and realities (cf. Anderson 1990). Pethikbumi engaged in tactics to both reveal and conceal the “unseen powers” that were imagined as working behind the scenes to generate conflict. The conflict over the relocation to a marketplace was not only a fight over who had access to the street but also a struggle over what constitutes democracy, how to achieve transparency, and who belongs in post-Suharto Indonesia.

In the thesis "Electoral Authoritarianism in Comparative Perspective of Southeast Asia", while analyzing for cases of regime survival and fall, author develops the argument that certain subtypes of authoritarian regimes are better build to cope with change than others. Since the four cases are under new institutionalism generally classified as electoral authoritarianism, the text depicts some of the methodological problems related to this particular research perspective. Building on the systems approach and new institutionalism, the thesis analyzes the relation between institutional character of regime elite and its ability to cope with changes in the environment, i.e. adaptability. Author shows that at the time of crisis, personalistic regimes tend to react almost solely with repression a restrictions, whereas regimes with ruling parties exhibit a substantial degree of personal and policy flexibility, which positively informs their chances for survival. The conclusion also demonstrates the methodological weaknesses of regime typology based on the quality of electoral process. It diverts the attention from other features of regimes which significantly inform logic and inner dynamics of authoritarianism. As a result, under the banner of electoral authoritarianism, there are regimes which differ from each...