Organizer: University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies 

Lecture Series: Thinking Rights, Writing Justice: JSEALab Spring 2022 Lecture Series

Description:

This talk explores variations in the repressive and responsive elements of authoritarianism in the context of China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. In so doing, the talk seeks to undo blunt dichotomies between “good democracy” and “bad authoritarianism” that have dominated contemporary policy debates in Asia. The talk specifically demonstrates how such dichotomies do not fit squarely in how and why China, Vietnam, and Cambodia differ in their ways of addressing societal demands for protections against arbitrary land expropriation, on the one hand, and their ways of suppressing civil and political rights, on the other. Of the three countries, Vietnam has institutionalized responsiveness to societal calls for strengthened programmatic mechanisms against arbitrary land seizures, while it has reactively repressed calls for freedom of assembly and association. In contrast to Vietnam, China has opted for reactive responsiveness to land expropriation through ad-hoc reforms, while it has also institutionalized stringent repression of freedom of assembly and association. Despite its nominal democratic status, Cambodia presents the case of strongly negative and reactive responsiveness, even compared to China. Disclosed through analytical differentiation of the repressive-responsive parameters of authoritarianism in Asia, these differences raise challenging and troubling questions about the recalcitrance of authoritarianism and the meaning of democracy.

Speaker: 

Nhu Truong is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Affairs at Denison University and a Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholars Network Fellow. 

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