IR488      Half Unit
International Politics of Southeast Asia

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

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This half-unit course examines the contemporary international politics of Southeast Asia. It is particularly concerned with the construction and maintenance of regional order against the backdrop of Southeast Asia’s complex and changing politics and intra-regional relations as well as the wider geopolitical shifts associated with the rise of China and the often-competitive policies of external powers towards the region. The course will thus focus both on the different contexts in which Southeast Asian governments operate and the strategies they pursue to manage the multiple challenges they confront, not least vis-à-vis the great powers. Topics covered include ASEAN’s institutional design and the nature of intra-regional political-security cooperation; the characteristics of economic regionalism; the US role in and policies toward Southeast Asia; China’s relations with and influence in Southeast Asia; Indonesia’s foreign policy; as well as the alignment and risk-management (hedging) strategies adopted by maritime and continental Southeast Asian states.  The course also explores the case of political conflict and violence in Myanmar with reference to the responsibility to protect, ASEAN involvement, and wider geopolitical competition.

10 hours of lectures and 13.5 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

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

Students will be expected to produce one 2,000-word essay in the WT in preparation for the e-Exam in the ST. The formative essay provides students with an opportunity to engage critically with key readings on course topics, and to receive constructive feedback to support their preparation for the summative e-Exam.

• Michael Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific, 1945-1995 (Routledge Curzon, 4th edn, 2019)
• Amitav Acharya, The Making of Southeast Asia (Cornell University Press, 2013)
• Joseph Chinyong Liow, Ambivalent Engagement: The United States and Regional Security in Southeast Asia after the Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2017)
• Christopher Dent, East Asian Regionalism (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2016)
• Evelyn Goh The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia (Oxford, 2015)
• Maung Aung Myoe, In the Name of Pauk-Phaw: Myanmar’s China Policy Since 1948 (ISEAS, 2011)
• David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
• Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century (Atlantic Books, 2020)
• Ulla Fionna, Siwage Dharma Negara and Deasy Simandjuntak, eds, Aspirations with Limitations: Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (ISEAS, 2018)
• Weatherbee, Donald E., ASEAN’s Half Century: A Political History of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)

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