IR314      Half Unit
Southeast Asia: Intra-regional Politics and Security

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

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This class-only half unit course examines key aspects of the contemporary international relations of Southeast Asia, with the primary focus being on the intramural relations of the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In order to contextualise these intramural relations, the course first explores the different domestic political settings in which Southeast Asian decision-makers have operated, including ethnic politics and insurgencies. It also examines some of the past interstate tensions and disputes in Southeast Asia and more recent transnational security challenges. The course then, secondly, analyses the foreign and security policies of select ASEAN states. This will involve taking account of a range of additional factors, such as geography, leadership, state-society relations, and economic interests. Thirdly, the course explores how the domestic backdrops and foreign policy outlooks of Southeast Asian states have shaped the nature, effectiveness and limits of ASEAN as a vehicle for intramural political-security cooperation. Specifically, the course assesses the grouping's efforts to establish an ASEAN political-security community. Fourthly, the course focuses on defence modernisation amid wider regional security challenges that maritime Southeast Asian states in particular are facing in the contemporary period. Concepts and theories drawn from International Relations, and especially Foreign Policy Analysis and Security Studies, will be applied as appropriate.

2 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Students will write one essay with a maximum length of 2,000 words and present on class topics. The formative assessments provide students with the opportunity to consider the substance of the course material ahead of the e-Exam 

• Ba, Alice D. and Beeson, Mark (2018). Contemporary Southeast Asia, 3rd ed. (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
• Acharya, Amitav (2014). Constructing a security community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the problem of regional order, 3rd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge).
• Croissant, Aurel and Philip Lorenz (2018). Comparative Politics of Southeast Asia: An introduction to Governments and Political Regimes (Springer).
• Ganesan, N. and Ramses Amer, eds (2010). International Relations in Southeast Asia: Between Bilateralism and Multilateralism (ISEAS).
• Leifer, Michael (2000). Singapore's Foreign Policy: Coping with Vulnerability (Routledge).
• Saravanamuttu, Johan (2010).  Malaysia's Foreign Policy: The First Fifty Years-Alignment, Neutralism, Islamism (ISEAS).
• Severino, Rudolfo (2006). Southeast Asia in Search of an ASEAN Community (ISEAS).
• Slater, Dan (2010). Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press).
• Tan, Andrew T.H., ed. (2007). A Handbook of Terrorism and Insurgency in Southeast Asia (Edward Elgar).
• Till, Geoffrey and Jane Chan, eds (2014). Naval Modernisation in South-East Asia: Nature, causes and consequences (Routledge).
• Weatherbee, Donald E. (2015). International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy. 3rd ed. (Rowman & Littlefield).

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period