SEAREG 2025 Winter Conference Agenda

Robinson Building 3, Room 3201  

Vietnam’s Communist Party remains one of the most resilient authoritarian regimes in the world. This panel explores the inner logic of political recruitment, elite rotation, and state repression across different arenas. From party youth recruitment under economic liberalization to the subtle shaping of dissent through protracted repression, these papers reveal how formal and informal institutions interact to manage careers, suppress opposition, and centralize power in an evolving authoritarian context.

Discussant

Edmund Malesky, Duke University; Paul Schuler, University of Arizona.

Panelists

Mai Truong, Assistant Professor, Marquette University. Choosing the Party or the Market? FDI and Youth Recruitment in Communist Party Regimes: Evidence from Vietnam

Tuan-Ngoc Phan, Assistant Professor, Fulbright University Vietnam. Promotion Determinants of Vietnamese Bureaucrats

Duy Trinh, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Musical Chairs: The Logic of Cadre Reassignment in Vietnam’s Administrative Reforms

Nhu Truong, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Protracted Repression: Nhân Văn Giai Phẩm and the Vietnamese Communist Party’s Corrosion of Intellectual Dissent

Robinson Building 3, Room 3202

This panel investigates how sovereignty—whether Indigenous, authoritarian, or ideological—is constructed and contested through local social structures in Southeast Asia. Drawing on cases from the Philippines, Indonesia, and the broader region, the papers trace how networks, violence, and transnational ideologies shape governance and legitimacy. The panel brings together macro-comparative perspectives with grounded, empirical insights to explore how informal power, embedded authority, and international currents affect the lived experience of sovereignty.                                                                                

Discussants

Nina McMurry, Vanderbilt University; Darin Self, Brigham Young University.

Panelists

Shane Barter, Professor of Comparative Politics, Soka University of America. Towards Indigenous Territorial Autonomy in Asia

Dotan Haim, Assistant Professor, Florida State University. Social Networks and Gender-Based Violence

Matthew Nanes, Associate Senior Instructional Professor, University of Chicago. The Rising Tide of Islamist Extremism in Southeast Asia

Nicholas Kuipers, Assistant Professor, Princeton University. Social Media and Offline Social Spill-ins: A Cluster Deactivation Experiment in Indonesia (Pre Analysis Plan)

Robinson Building 3, Room 3201

This panel examines how citizens understand, interpret, and emotionally respond to political institutions and narratives across Southeast Asia. From critical assessments of dominant scholarly frameworks in the Philippines to experimental interventions on democratic accountability in Indonesia and public reactions to electoral distortion in Malaysia, these papers reveal the power of language, affect, and digital media to shape political engagement. Together, they explore how political meaning is constructed, contested, and mobilized in deeply plural societies.

Discussants

Kikue Hamayotsu, Northern Illinois University; Mary Anne Mendoza, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Panelists

Marco Garrido, Associate Professor, University of Chicago. ‘Bad Words’ in the Study of Philippine Politics

Piero Stanig, Associate Professor of Political Science, Bocconi University. You Are Fired, My Lord: Democratic Narratives and Accountability in the World’s Third Largest Democracy

Hilary Izatt, Assistant Professor, Binghamton University (SUNY). Emotions Under Suppression: How Malapportionment Systemically Excludes and Emotionally Mobilizes Political Engagement in Malaysia

Dimitar Gueorguiev, Associate Professor, Political Science, Syracuse University. TikTok Ticket: Philippine Electoral Alliances in the Digital Era

Robinson Building 3, Room 3202

Human security in SE Asia is shaped by traditional concerns of state sovereignty and conflict and also by the entanglement of technological, bureaucratic, ecological, and labor dynamics that profoundly impact the everyday lives of people. This panel brings together four perspectives that highlight diverse, interconnected challenges to human security.

Discussant

Amy Freedman, Professor of Political Science, Pace University

Chair

Alexa Boesel, University of California, Los Angeles

Panelists

Amy Freedman, Professor of Political Science, Pace University. Labor Migration, Human Trafficking and the Tension Between Human Capital and Human Rights in Malaysia

Pujo Semedi, Fulbright Scholar, University of Colorado, Boulder and Department of Archaeology, Universitas Gadjah Mada. A millennium of interspecies affairs: Javanese farmers and the Arenga sugar palm, the 900s-2010s

Lieba Faier, Professor of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles. Limitations of the UN Trust Fund for Human Security in Empowering Trafficking Survivors in the Philippines

Sophal Ear, Associate Professor, Thunderbird School of Management, Arizona State University. Surveillance and Governance in Cambodia