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Democratization has often gone hand in hand with decentralization, but how do the two processes relate to each other? To answer such questions one needs fine-grained data on decentralization, and these have been hard to come by in South East Asia. This paper provides a careful estimation of the formal authority of regional governments in five Southeast Asian countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand - on an annual basis from 1950 to 2010. We estimate nine dimensions of subnational authority and find wide variation both across countries and across time. We detect a close temporal relationship between democratization and decentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do certain militaries comply with government orders to use force on demonstrators during political crises while others do not? This is the central question of this paper which seeks to explain the conditions under which armed forces are likely to be subordinate or insubordinate to orders to shoot protestors. I test three propositions in this study. The first applies principal-agent models and suggests that militaries are likely to be subordinate to orders to use force on domestic opposition if governments possess the institutional capacity to monitor and deter errant behavior within the armed forces. The second contends that the degree of military subordination is contingent on the existence of an organizational culture that prescribes such actions. The third proposition suggests that inter-factional conflict within a military organization leads to the insubordination of government orders to use force against demonstrators. I test these propositions by examining military actions in Thailand 1973 and Indonesia 1998. I argue, that of the three propositions, the inter-factional competition hypothesis best explains the extent of military compliance with orders to shoot on domestic political opposition. The inter-factional conflict hypothesis consistently explains the variance on the dependent variable (the level of military subordination) in the cases while the other two models fared less well. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative scholarship suggests that democracy in ethnically-diverse societies is likely to be fostered by the development of broad-based, aggregative and multi-ethnic political parties, rather than fragmented, personalised or ethnically-based party systems. However surprisingly little attention has been given to how party fragmentation can be addressed or how broad-based parties can be sustained, despite institutional experiments in conflict prone societies including Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Fiji and Papua New Guinea aimed at influencing party system development. Drawing on these various cases, this paper identifies four strategies of political engineering that have been used to promote broad-based, cross-regional or multi-ethnic political parties in new democracies around the world. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1967 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created primarily as a security alliance to function as a bulwark against communism. The founding members were Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. Today ASEAN has grown into a comprehensive regional organization whose functions include not only security issue but also political, social, economic, and cultural matters. In the subsequent years Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar have joined. As a result, the ten-nation ASEAN contains a population of about 500 million. The characteristics of ASEAN as a regional organization are that it is a highly state-centric organization stressing state sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs of member states. This article, first, briefly explores theoretical framework of regional organizations. Secondly, the examination is made on regional integration in Asia in the area of human rights. Thirdly, an assessment is made on ASEAN region's efforts to create a regional human rights ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]