Southeast Asian Politics: Recent Developments
Zoom – Wednesday 10:30 am – Noon
Jan 17, 24, 31 Feb. 7, 14
We explore significant developments in the South China Sea: Thailand’s 2023 election; the Philippines’s 2022 election of Marcos, Jr.; Myanmar’s civil war following the 2021 coup and others. We address these events while the instructor explains the politics that govern the eleven countries of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar to Timor Leste. The emphasis will be on events since 1990, with brief histories added for background. This course should further a general understanding of the region and enhance any anticipated visit to the area.
Paul Sarno is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Columbia Law School. Through wide-ranging readings, sixteen visits since 1971 (the last for a month to Sulawesi and Sumatra in Indonesia in July 2019), membership in both the Association for Asian Studies and the Burma Studies Group, he has been engaged in a systematic effort at better understanding of these countries.