Sponsored by the South East Asian Institute for Global Studies (SEAIGS), PAYAP PRESENTS is a regular lecture series in English featuring scholars working on Southeast Asia and was founded by Dr. Paul Chambers, Senior Research Fellow in the Thai and Southeast Asian Studies Program at Payap University. For more information or to propose a future speaker, please send your inquiry to:
"Institutional changes and their impact on the quality of democracy in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines"
Speaker: Patrick Ziegenhain, Ph.D.
Dr. Patrick Ziegenhain is a senior research fellow (“Akademischer Rat”) at the department of Political Science at the University of Trier in Germany. He earned his Ph.D. from AlbertLudwigsUniversity in Freiburg, Germany with a dissertation on the role of parliament in the Indonesian democratization process. His main research areas are systems of government, regime transitions, political parties and elections as well as political, social, and economic developments in Southeast Asia. Beside various academic publications and presentations, Dr. Ziegenhain has worked as a freelance consultant for various German and international development agencies, mainly on good governance and decentralization in Southeast Asia.
When: Thursday, 23 September 2010 from 5pm-6pm
Location: Room 317, PentecostBuilding, Mae Khao Campus, PayapUniversity
Overview: For more than a decade, the various governments in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines tried to improve the quality of democracy by changing the role of the political institutions in their respective political systems. Arguing from an institutionalist perspective, my main hypothesis is that the democratization processes in these three Southeast Asian countries went into different directions because the various reforms to build and establish horizontal and vertical accountability were successful or failed. In my presentation, I will thus analyze how institutional reforms (the independent variable) had an impact on the quality of democracy (dependent variable). The vertical accountability dimension comprises two aspects. One is the attempt of strengthening inclusiveness via the party and election system, while the other is the enhancement of democracy at the local level via reforms strengthening local autonomy. The horizontal accountability dimension particularly refers to the reconfiguring of the systems of "checks and balances" between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Contrary to mainstream research on democratic consolidation, which mainly comprises status quo analyses, my approach is process-oriented and thus allows a different perspective on the achievements and difficulties of democratization processes in Southeast Asia.
