Asian Politics & Policy最新文献

Green grabbing has detrimental impacts on local communities. These impacts are potentially exacerbated when they resist the appropriation of resources. Thus, this study delves into the transformation of resistance strategies in the case of the Rempang Eco-City project in Indonesia to defend their land and reduce the risks they may face. Specifically, it explores the shift from violent to nonviolent strategies among local protesters, highlighting the roles of women's participation, NGO support, and the negative consequences of physical confrontation. Despite this shift, state coercion persists, posing a serious threat to the sustainability of nonviolent resistance.

In regions riddled with heightened security tensions from great power competition like Southeast Asia, why do states like the Philippines defy conventional rationality and hedge against their treaty ally? This paper seeks to answer this gap in the literature by arguing for a new definition of hedging that covers contemporary cases. Moreover, this paper proposes the theory of Offensive Hedging, a legitimate form of middle power grand strategy that weaponizes limited alignment to accrue relative gains from great power competition. These arguments shall be supported analyzing Sino–Philippine partnerships through quarterly reports, declassified documents, and official diplomatic rhetoric and compare this alongside Sino-Philippine tensions in the South China Sea (2016–2024). Finally, this paper shall briefly argue for the generalizability of Offensive Hedging by analyzing Vietnam's grand strategy, setting the foundation for future research using this lens.

At the present time there is a growing interest in strategic narratives. The United States and China, not surprisingly, receive most attention. In an increasingly multi-polar world, however, it is critical to consider the strategic narratives of India, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Significant work has already been focused on individual Southeast Asian states—and some also on ASEAN as a grouping. The present essay seeks to tell the ASEAN story in a manner that helps to formulate a succinct strategic narrative. It presents ASEAN historically in the framework of “Asia” regionalism—stressing the competition with “Pacific” regionalism. It then highlights ASEAN's ambitious region building—first in the “Southeast Asia” sphere and then in the wider “East Asia.” At a third, even broader level ASEAN seeks to contribute to an “Indo-Pacific” order—giving prominence to certain longstanding principles, such as inclusivity, non-intervention and the search for consensus.

The return of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States in 2025 has heightened strategic calculations across Southeast Asia. His approach to international relations—marked by a transactional logic, personalistic leadership style, and a general disdain for the rules-based international order (RBIO)—presents both immediate and long-term challenges to the region's security architecture, economic dynamism and diplomatic engagements. Unlike his predecessors that sought to embed Southeast Asia within a broader Indo-Pacific strategy premised on “ironclad commitment” or deeper engagement based on mutual interests, the Trump administration has prioritized short-term reciprocity over enduring relationships. This shift underscores the region's growing imperative to pursue strategic autonomy, recalibrate traditional alignments, and invest in regional mechanisms as buffers against the turbulence that Trump 2. has unleashed to the world.

Trump's foreign policy orientation represents a break from upholding the RBIO that underpinned American strategic engagement since the Cold War. His preference for bilateralism over multilateralism, and for economic coercion over diplomacy mostly based on normative values, reflects an overarching commitment to reasserting US primacy through transactional bargaining. In the context of Southeast Asia, this mode of diplomacy significantly alters the strategic calculus of regional states, many of whom have long relied on the consistency and predictability of US commitments to deter aggression and preserve a rules-based regional order (Tan 2024).

One of the most salient implications of Trump's foreign policy is observed in US–Philippines relations. Despite the long history of the alliance, the Trump administration's prior term revealed an inclination to instrumentalize security partnerships. Episodes such as the temporary suspension of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 2020 highlighted the fragility of bilateral commitments when subordinated to perceived asymmetries in cost–benefit terms. For Manila, the return of Trump renews concerns regarding the reliability of security assurances, particularly in scenarios where Philippine interests may not align with immediate American strategic calculations. Initial indications seem to assuage any worst case conditions. But in such a context, excessive dependence on the alliance could generate strategic liabilities, especially given the administration's erratic signaling and prioritization of short-term leverage over institutional continuity (Misalucha and Amador 2016).

The South China Sea disputes further underscores the limitations of a transactional US policy in Southeast Asia. While Trump's first administration pursued a confrontational posture toward Beijing, including increased freedom of navigation operations and rhetorical support for Southeast Asian maritime claimants, these actions often lacked the institutional follow-th

This article examines the politics of change and transition within South Korea's identity as an iconic emerging donor in the field of international development cooperation. From 2017, Korea's assistance policies witnessed a significant transformation under the liberal administration of Moon Jae-in, whose normative emphasis on democratic values contrasted deeply with the strategic approach taken by previous conservative administrations' assistance policies. We examine the sources of this transformation and its influence on Korea's development cooperation policies with a focus on the promotion of gender equality by its flagship international cooperation agency and the development of an official framework for civil partnership in international development cooperation. We argue that the influence of domestic drivers such as norm-oriented, “facilitator” institutions, “regime reformers,” and civil society organizations is key to understanding these changes and the limits they face: an analytic focus that can be useful for understanding dynamics of change in other emerging donors.

This study examines China's environmental governance through the framework of Althusser's Repressive and Ideological State Apparatuses, using the 2021 Shenzhen Blueway Ecological Belt Project as a case study. Despite the formalization of public participation, the authoritarian state employs legal, bureaucratic, and ideological mechanisms to suppress dissent while preserving legitimacy. The findings reveal how control over information flows and media narratives, coupled with legal and bureaucratic constraints on NGOs, systematically undermines public engagement and reinforces top-down governance. The Shenzhen case demonstrates the state's dual strategy of repression and ideological control, wherein environmental governance operates both as a political instrument and a means of consolidating state authority. By co-opting NGOs, restricting transparency, and framing environmental contention as a national security threat, the state effectively neutralizes opposition and fortifies its state-capitalist accumulation model. This study contributes to the discourse on authoritarian environmentalism, underscoring its long-term implications for sustainability, public participation, and state-society relations.