290051 PS Transformations of Armed Conflicts in South and Southeast Asia (2016W)

South and Southeast Asia are shaped by a unique ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. The same holds true for the political systems of the regions' nation states that emerged in the era of decolonization after the 2nd World War. With India and Indonesia, South and Southeast Asia are home to two of the three largest democracies in the world. On the other hand, states like Brunei, Laos, Singapore, and Vietnam are still considered autocracies.

Despite the heterogeneity of the regions that might suggest relatively high potentials for societal conflicts, South and Southeast Asia are by no means more prone to armed conflicts than other regions in the world. Yet, the post-colonial nation building processes of the regions' states were, time and again, accompanied by the outbreak of armed conflicts in which liberation and resistance movement of different types and backgrounds tried to fight for secession and/or more self-determination and participation. As opposed to many transnational violent conflicts in the so-called "failed states" of Sub-Saharan Africa where private "violent entrepreneurs" often replace the state's monopoly on violence, in South and Southeast Asia, violent conflicts are predominantly domestic in nature. One exception of the case studies that will be discussed in the seminar will be the so-called Kashmir conflict that is shaped by domestic and transnational dimensions of conflicting interests between India and Pakistan.
From a comparative perspective, South and Southeast Asia show very different tendencies regarding the transformation of their armed conflicts from predominantly violent means of conflict management to peaceful or political means. In Southeast Asia, on the one hand, there is a clear tendency towards politically negotiated conflict resolutions. In South Asia, on the other hand, violent conflicts either take the form of extended crises or are "resolved" militarily.

The seminar aims at offering the students a theoretically grounded, comparative overview of causes, characteristics, effects and courses of armed conflicts in South and Southeast Asia as well as potential approaches to their peaceful resolution. In the first section of the seminar, we will jointly develop an analytical framework which shall be used for presenting and analyzing the different cases that will be discussed in the second (Southeast Asia) and third (South Asia) sections.

The working methods utilized in the seminar will include joint analyses and discussions of relevant texts and documents, own research of sources and materials, in class presentation of research results and the writing of a term paper. Cooperative methods of working will be used whenever adequate and possible.