This paper explores the Prayuth regime, which began with a military coup in May 2014. Politically, we indicate how the junta has embedded its power in ways different from the past. It does not pursue a power-sharing governance as in the Prem and Surayud governments, but tries to militarise the cabinet, parliament, and even state-owned enterprises. The new constitution is designed to institutionalise the power of the military and the traditional elite vis-à-vis the electoral forces. Ironically, however, the junta's rule by military decree and discretionary power have weakened the bureaucratic polity, rather than strengthening it. Economically, the Prayuth regime forms a partnership with a group of Sino-Thai conglomerates to establish the Pracharath scheme, with an aim to differentiate its grass-roots development policy from Thaksin's populism (Prachaniyom). Nonetheless, it has become a platform through which the giant firms perform the leading role of ‘Big Brother’ in supervising small businesses in their sectors. Pracharath therefore reflects the collective endeavours of the conglomerates to replace competitive markets with hierarchy, rather than encouraging local firms to catch-up with them.

Under what conditions do states strive to homogenise their populations, rendering them ‘legible’ for state-making projects? Virtually all conditions, according to James Scott's landmark treatise, The Art of Not Being Governed. Whereas Scott sees states’ appetites to standardise their populations for purposes of control and extraction as practically universal, we see this appetite as radically and fascinatingly uneven. Much as Scott sees mobile populations as ‘nonliterate’ due to their disinterest in (and not their ignorance of) the purported fruits of civilisation, we see Leviathans as frequently ‘nonliterate’ in their disinclination (and not simply their incapacity) to actively administer their subjects and territory: even in Southeast Asia, the region that has done more than any other to generate Scott's theories of state power and practice. We thus argue that the world is riddled with standoffish states, not just standardising states. Even in the zones where the potential costs of eschewing the pursuit of legibility appear highest – those containing violent insurgencies – states can prove surprisingly disinterested in pursuing centralised governance in a highly administrative manner. We highlight four alternative strategies – indirect rule, divide and conquer, militarised pacification, and forcible expulsion – that states commonly deploy to fulfil what we see as their most fundamental objective: preventing political challenges to the ruling centre.

Migration, mobility, and movement are the inter-linked processes which provide the empirical scaffold for this paper. The paper uses this empirical framing to reflect on a series of methodological, conceptual, and theoretical challenges for scholars of Southeast Asia. Mobility and associated geographical (spatial) boundary crossings have raised questions about the analytical units employed in research; the unsettling of these analytical units has challenged whether conceptual categories still have explanatory purchase; and the fracturing of conceptual categories has implications for the theoretical frameworks that scholars have traditionally deployed. Drawing on field research undertaken in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam the paper argues that evolving mobilities in the region, particularly in rural areas, require a degree of explanatory ‘catch-up’ on the part of scholars as we try to keep pace with the rate of change in the countryside. Instead of focusing on households in space, we should be trying to map out the networked relations that link lives and individuals across national and transnational space. The paper further argues that we should focus our attention on local-level dynamics associated with societal change, settlement dynamism and sustainability, population turbulence, and evolving cultural preferences which operate partly independently of the rural development project, thus highlighting the shifting web of mutual dependencies and interdependencies that shape lives and living patterns.

The successful ‘Defending Islam’ rallies of 2016–2017 provide clear evidence that Islamism is on the rise in contemporary Indonesia. Mainstream Islamic authorities, including groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, are increasingly losing their authority to newer, more conservative Islamic preachers and groups. What explains this phenomenon – and what does it mean for the moderate perspectives that many predicted would dominate Islam in Indonesia in the post-Reformasi era?

This article argues that three main mechanisms can explain the rise of Islamism in Indonesia: 1) the creation of a ‘marketplace of ideas’ in post-Reformasi Indonesia and the way in which this marketplace has contributed to the rise of Islamism and the breakdown of Islamic authority; 2) the ascent of new Islamic authority figures, who propagate their views using new methods, ranging from social media to campus da'wa organisations and community-based activities (majelis taklim); and 3) the growing influence of new Islamic groups and preachers, who are building alliances with established religious elites and politicians. Such alliances strengthen the influence of new Islamic authorities, while further marginalising religious minorities, such as Ahmadi and Shi'a Muslims.

With the resignation of President Soeharto in 1998 and subsequent democratization, Indonesia's foreign policy underwent major changes. More stakeholders than under Soeharto's New Order regime are now participating in foreign-policy making. The country seemed to make democracy promotion a hallmark of its foreign policy, especially under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014). This raises the questions of whether and, if so, to what extent Indonesian democratization changed the country's established foreign-policy role conceptions and how much impact Indonesia's democratization had on the democratization of regional governance. The paper seeks to answer these questions by developing a theoretical framework based on a constructivist version of role theory. On the basis of speeches held by Indonesian political leaders in the United Nations General Assembly and major domestic foreign-policy pronouncements, it documents changes in Indonesia's foreign-policy role concepts. It shows that, indeed, in the Era Reformasi, democracy became a major component in the country's foreign-policy role concept, although many elements of the role concept such as development orientation, Third Worldism, peace orientation, and a mediator's role remained constant. However, the litmus test for a democracy-oriented foreign policy, that is, the democratization of regional governance in Southeast Asia, remains ambiguous, and concrete policy initiatives often declaratory.

The processes of democratisation and liberalisation initiated during the course of the Indonesian Reformasi era (1998-) generated a stronger porosity in the State's frontiers and led to the formation of certain semi-institutionalised organisations. The approaching 2019 presidential elections have enabled these organisations to position themselves as political and moral brokers. The Islamic Defenders Front militia (FPI) appears to be one of the main actors in this process. It has succeeded in imposing itself in the public sphere, channelling political support and utilising extensive media coverage.

While avoiding providing direct opposition to the ruling government and the Constitution, this organisation promotes the social morals followed by a large part of the population and encourages radicalism and violent actions in the name of Islam. The organisation collaborates with a section of the regional and national political elites, some sections of the army and police, several groups that are—more or less—criminal in nature, a number of local communities in different areas, and a variety of violent Islamist groups. Thus, it is at the crossroads of multiple political, economic, social, and religious interests.

At the same time, the organisation's leaders maintain their own political objectives. They manipulate the dynamics of the electoral decentralised system to their advantage by obtaining political concessions that serve their personal goals. The capacity of the organisation to impose its discourse on the public stage has led to an urgent need to interrogate both the institutional and ideological transformations initiated by the Indonesian decentralisation since 1999.

This article argues that ‘would-be migrants’ – people who prepare for migrating overseas to the extent that their present lives are significantly changed – should become a central figure in migration studies. There are many more would-be migrants than actual migrants, and they also have deeper impacts on migration processes and local societies. Instead of treating the would-be migrant as a derivative of the category of ‘migrant’, this article establishes it as the primary figure, and argues that migration is a contingent outcome of being a ‘would-be’. In order to do so this article delves into the living conditions of would-be migrants in northeast China, with a focus on two aspects that concern them the most: the exorbitant intermediary fees and the high risks involved. The would-be migrants' experiences suggest that the prevalent pattern of unskilled outmigration since the 1990s should be understood as a result of developments inside of China, particularly a condition that I call the ‘displacement of the present’. The figure of would-be migrant is not only methodologically revealing for migration studies, but also urges us to rethink how we may engage with rapid social changes.

The familialist orientations of the Singapore state on issues of social welfare ought not be taken for granted as static reflections of ‘culture’. Instead, it is a dynamic realm, and a useful site for analysing how and what sorts of state-society relations are forged. We can, moreover, deepen our understanding of governance in Singapore by looking beyond repression and discrimination and paying more attention to the processes of production and differentiation. In this article, I draw on examples from housing, healthcare, and childcare support, to understand how specific social identities and practices are marked as deserving public support. I argue that the logic and practices embedded in policies – what I call ‘differentiated deservedness’ – can be read as a productive and profound form of governance in which specific performances of the familial are generated, and through which norms about state-society relations and citizenship are forged. Scholars and activists who are oriented toward expanding social security and social justice should scrutinise reforms for the extent to which the logic of differentiated deservedness persists or changes.

Over the last two decades, research on world cities and global cities has unsettled the nation-state as the default unit of analysis in many disciplines in Anglophone social science. Rather than seeing the world as comprised of a mosaic of national political and social units, alternative geographies of networks connecting cities and urban regions have risen to prominence. In this paper, I consider the implications of such alternative mappings for Southeast Asia, bringing urban studies and area studies into critical conversation with each other. Geographies of urban networks extending across national borders challenge the ingrained methodological nationalism of conventional area studies, not least in Southeast Asia. However, to what extent do framings of trans-national urban connections among Southeast Asian or Asian cities mean that methodological nationalism has simply been up-scaled to methodological regionalism? In the first of the two main sections of the paper, I look in detail at the network spatialities brought into view by global and world cities scholars and consider their implications for regional urban systems frameworks. Flows of people, money and ideas extending from cities in Southeast Asia to cities beyond that region, and even trans-continentally, arguably imply that areal framings melt into network geographies which are global in scope. In the second section of the paper, I consider three types of regional formations that have been identified in research on globalization: the global triad regions, region states, and inter-Asia flows of capital; models and people which I examine do not map onto conventional cartographies of Southeast Asia. Together, these two sections of the paper serve as a reminder that in future research regions need to be specified empirically rather than assumed to exist as a priori framings for research, and that the geographies of ‘actually existing’ regionalizing processes are often very different from area studies mappings of the world.

Scholars have recently argued that globalisation processes have significantly altered not just the productive but reproductive sphere. ‘Reproduction’ is formulated to include both biological and social reproduction, and which at the individual level requires ‘care’ throughout the life-cycle – that is, from cradle to grave – in sustaining the body in its corporeal and affective aspects. Concepts that have emerged in the literature in recent decades such as the ‘transnational family’, ‘global householding’ and ‘global care chain’ draw attention to the observation that the formation and sustenance of households is increasingly reliant on the international movement of people and transactions among household members residing in more than one national territory. Applying these notions to the context of the city-state of Singapore where the predicament around eldercare (resulting essentially from rapid fertility decline, shortages of Singapore women's reproductive labour and rigidities in the gender household division of labour) accompanies rapid globalisation, this paper examines strategies of care substitution which draw on the lowly paid labour of two groups of transnational subjects (mainly women) – transnational domestic workers working in the privatised sphere of the home, and transnational healthcare workers in institutionalised settings. The paper reflects upon the interdependencies between flows of transnational care migration and delves into the gender and class implications of these flows for an understanding of the links between transnational migration and social change.

On 31 December 2015, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). In theory, this agreement has produced association-wide economic integration. However, following the announcement and for the foreseeable future, ASEAN member states will continue to have significantly less than full regional economic integration. Why? Some observers believe that the AEC plans involve an overly ambitious timeline and too many ill-thought-out initiatives. Others point to ASEAN's traditional aversion to legally binding agreements. While progress has been made in reducing or eliminating intra-ASEAN trade tariffs, substantial non-tariff barriers to trade persist. However, for most member states, the ASEAN market is relatively small, while external markets, especially China, are growing rapidly. Given this outward orientation for ASEAN trade, is the lack of an unhindered regional market really a problem?

The article examines the idea of a ‘floating’ ummah in Indonesia today that affects the workings of Indonesian Islamic politics and democracy itself. It is asserted that the ummah, or community of believers, are more disconnected from the large mainstream Islamic organisational vehicles in Indonesia than is often claimed. A considerable cross-section of this community has become increasingly disaffected with the status quo, as social inequalities sharpen and educated youths who face uncertain futures find appeal in the tough rhetoric of fringe Islamic organisations. This rhetoric emphasises absolute standards of morality as a solution to social and economic predicaments, thereby resulting in the mainstreaming of rigid religious attitudes. Consequently, organisations seen as guardians of ‘religious moderation’ have also picked up on them in an attempt to remain relevant to their increasingly socially heterogeneous constituencies. The overall result is an Islamic politics that has become more intolerant, especially when identity politics gets absorbed into conflicts between different oligarchic factions. This was seen in the dramatic fall of the ethnic-Chinese and Christian former governor of Jakarta known as ‘Ahok’ in 2017.

The paper explores whether the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has matured from a weak cooperative arrangement in its early days into a functioning security community by 2016. It first introduces a Deutschian and a constructivist understanding of security communities before examining ASEAN's involvement in the security realm since 1967. The paper claims that the regional body is not yet a security community, partly due to residual mistrust among its members, which undermines ASEAN's ability to address a series of ongoing inter-state disputes in Southeast Asia. While it has contributed to conflict avoidance, the Association has so far failed to conduct conflict resolution in spite of the ASEAN Political and Security Community initiative. The paper concludes that the failure to directly address and ultimately resolve sources of conflict in Southeast Asia has undermined the establishment of a security community in the region.

From its inception, ASEAN has been shaped by the evolving structure of the international system and the activities of more powerful external actors. This is still the case. What is different now is that the nature of the region of which ASEAN is a part has changed in significant ways. Indeed, the entire structure of the international system has undergone a number of profoundly important changes which have forced ASEAN to adjust and recalibrate its own policies. This paper explores this adjustment process and maps the most important forces and actors that are compelling change. By placing the ASEAN experience in a comparative conceptual framework, it becomes possible to identify the key drivers of change and to speculate about their future impact on an organisation that has proved remarkably resilient thus far. The nature of contemporary regional developments and the continuing evolution of the wider international system mean that ASEAN is currently facing major new challenges and questions about its relevance in an era when other regional organisations are emerging to challenge its authority and role.

Studies of political families in the West focus on political inheritance, or the pattern of children following the careers of their parents. In contrast, studies of political families in other parts of the world focus on nepotism, corruption, and capturing of the political system in a particular area. In this study of political families in Thailand, I seek to distinguish between political inheritance and capturing a local political system. I then focus on political inheritance, finding that it is much more common than capturing a locality in Thailand. Working with a database of all members of the Thai parliament since 1932, I find that political inheritance benefits younger candidates and female candidates, with members of political families able to enter parliament at a younger age, and with women members of parliament more likely to come from a political family than men. I find further that political inheritance is found in all regions of Thailand, including Bangkok, and is not associated with different levels of development or regional cultures. With the strengthening of political parties and a declining birth rate, the number of families in the Thai parliament has declined, but has stabilised at a lower level. This indicates that political families are adapting to change, and can be expected to continue to play an important role in Thai politics.

The currently popular practice of propitiating, or ‘adopting’, child spirits in Thailand reveals an ambivalent attitude towards childhood. According to Buddhist scholars on childhood, Buddhist conceptions of children do not differentiate children in significant ways from adults in terms of their relative purity or innocence, as both children and adults possess countless lifetimes of karma; children are thus agentive beings, although not yet fully realised as adults. The child ghosts reflect the complex, competing conceptions of childhood, where they are both valuable resources to be deployed in the assistance of their families, and vulnerable beings in need of adult caretaking. Child ghosts are markers of both material and sentimental resources for their adoptive parents, or ‘guardians’. This article explores representations of child ghosts in popular media, and investigates child ghost propitiation practices through interviews with child ghost guardians. In addition, an overview is provided of the various categories of child ghosts, including kumanthong, kuman-thep, kuman-phrai, luk-krok, and rak-yom.

The three cities of Malacca, Penang and Singapore share a century-long history as the British Straits Settlements, with similar multicultural traditions and urban morphology of dense shophouse districts. In the post-colonial period, these have been the basis for the production of heritage for urban renewal, civic identity formation, and international tourism. Yet, each city has approached the production of its history as heritage in different ways. The differences have been specified in terms of whether heritage production has been led by the state, market or civil society, and criticised as ideology or ambivalently interpreted as formative of identity in the face of globalisation. As colonial port-cities integrating into or becoming a new nation-state, I argue that the production of heritage in the three cities is driven by the politics of post-colonial identity interacting with the political economy of urban redevelopment. I argue that the production of heritage is one facet in the production of space and an increasingly important one in globalising Asian urbanisms. We can specify the differences in production of heritage space in the three cities in terms of the orientation of imagination and the ends of production. I show that the three city-states have been interpreting its history for heritage production in either Asian or cosmopolitan imaginations and configuring its heritage production for either political identity formation or economic product development, or a mix of both. The differences, I demonstrate, are caused by the differing politics of post-colonial identity and economic development involving the three cities.

Recent scholarship on the shift to the right in Asian democracies has predominantly been focused on political organisations, leaving social movements outside of them largely understudied. This article brings forth the link between the rise of right-wing politics in Indonesia—often associated with Islamic populist narratives—and the role of the market. It studies the way halal consumerism has helped shape the narrative of the ummah, an idea that was mobilised during the largest religiously-driven demonstration in the capital city Jakarta on 2 December 2016. By explicating the melding of Islamic piety and consumerism, this study illustrates how halal consumerism aid middle-class Muslims in navigating the neo-liberal social world they live in. The article uses survey data to explore the social status and religious views of participants in the mass rally, and delves deeper through interviews with urban, middle-class female Muslims who envision a cross-class ummah that defends Islam against an imagined oppressor. This paper discusses their role in social process related to politico-religious conservatism, specifically in defending the ideal marriage and family through market mechanisms. Through this analysis, I find that the combination of Islamic morality and neo-liberal values politicises the domestic and traditional role of the female Muslim; this has contributed to social changes that hinder democratic developments.

Political parties in Indonesia and in other parts of Southeast Asia have become vitally dependent on the financial support of individuals or conglomerates with large private fortunes. A remarkable new development is that some of the billionaires who have long sponsored political parties have decided to out themselves as political leaders, and thus to adopt the style of oligarchs. I define an oligarchy as a society featuring systematic conflation of political and economic power within the same individuals or within small, elite groups of such individuals in a manner that is visible, tolerated and hence legitimated. The gradual shift from clandestine money politics to open oligarchy is a significant challenge for contemporary liberal democracies. Conflicts of interest between the demands of public office and their private interests would seem difficult to avoid for politicians who also run large business empires and own great estates. On the other hand, for billionaire sponsors of political parties to come forward and stand for public office personally also means that their hitherto clandestine influence is becoming more transparent, and their conduct and decisions more subject to public scrutiny and accountability. This article describes how both direct and indirect ways of conducting money politics operate and coexist within different types of political parties in Indonesia today, what the significance of these differences is and what is changing; with special reference to the 2014 parliamentary elections in Indonesia.

Within and across Southeast Asian national borders, there has been a growing circulation of labour, capital, people, and goods. Meanwhile, urbanisation, agrarian changes, and liberal economic restructuring have been drawing a large section of the rural population into mobile economies and trade networks. This special issue explores the linkage between mobility and the growing precaritisation of labour resulting from neoliberalised development policies, nationalist citizenship regimes, and discourses, and arbitrary state power. Arguably, the consequent insecurity and uncertainty have profound implications for the social and economic life of migrant labourers. Although these conditions engender dangers and risks, they also hold possibilities for crafting translocal livelihoods and social relations. In this introduction, we investigate the diverse trajectories of labour migration in Southeast Asia through a critical discussion on the concept of ‘precarity’ that underscores the resilience of labour migrants despite the precarious conditions of their lives. The special issue suggests that, while precarious labour has long been part of regimes of control and exploitation in the region, precarity today is shaped by the blurry boundaries between the legal and the illegal, between local and global lives, and between different worlds of belonging.