Online Session B2

Branding Culture and Policing Perceptions : Contemporary East Asian Narratives

Informal candidate selection criteria and women candidates in general seats: Comparing Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) 

Garima Sarkar 

This article systematically analyzes and compares the informal attributes of all candidates based on their gender binary categories nominated to the general seats across national elections by the two major parties i.e., the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) between 2004 and 2019. To investigate the lack of general women candidates nominated by the parties across national elections in the past two decades, it engages in an intra-party analysis of informal attributes of all candidates nominated to the general seats. Furthermore, to assess which informal attributes of general women candidates are preferred by the two parties, an inter-party comparison of the informal attributes of general women candidates are conducted. This has deduced why the informal candidate selection criteria and informal institutional sexism in both the parties have limited the supply of general women candidates nominated to the general seats for contesting national elections in India across the past two decades.

Who Can Receive Authoritarian Sponsorship? Determinants of Chinese Export of Police Training 

Lin (Kirin) Pu 

What determines an authoritarian power to buttress non-democratic countries? What motivates countries to accept authoritarian sponsorship regionally and globally? This study aims to use China's export of police training to the world as an example to illustrate externally sponsored repression from a powerful autocracy in recipient countries. First, countries that heavily rely on China's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) are prone to have repressive regimes, leading to greater demand for policing with Chinese Characteristics in dealing with protests or political dissent. Since Chinese FDI is more likely to flow to resource-abundant countries where human rights violations frequently occur, recipient countries welcome police training from China to equip their security forces to be more capable of cracking down on social unrest. The second factor is regional cooperation vis-à-vis crime prevention because strengthening enforcement cooperation between Beijing and regional countries can jointly promote border management and combat cross-border crimes, including arresting political criminals from China. I employ fixed-effects regression to investigate the determinants of Chinese police training exports with a unique dataset of Chinese foreign police training programs. The research outcomes demonstrate that both economic interests and crime prevention—factors that significantly connect to regime stability and survival—underpin authoritarian sponsorship.

When Do Autocrats Redistribute? Repression, Redistribution, and Institutionalization in Southeast Asia 

Yi-Jhan (Shaka) Li 

What dilemma do autocrats have in using certain policy tools to sustain regime stability? How do autocratic regimes navigate the trade-off between redistribution and repression when they face political challenges from the masses? Empirically, some autocratic regimes are more likely to employ repression in dealing with protests, whereas others are prone to use redistribution to address popular grievances. In this paper, I argue that the degree of institutionalization plays a crucial role, and is often neglected in debates regarding the relationship between repression and redistribution in autocratic regimes. Building on event data with a time frame from 2002 to 2022, I use Chinese FDI in Southeast Asia and related protests as an example to discuss political rulers' use of policy tools in a non-democratic context. Since most Southeast Asia countries receive a large amount of FDI from China, it is a perfect regional case to examine how autocrats resolve the dilemma between attracting Chinese FDI and mitigating public grievances with policy tools. The findings suggest that autocratic leaders with less institutionalized power tend to resort to repression because they are less constrained, while a higher level of institutionalization motivates non-democratic regimes to allocate resources as compensation to address popular dissatisfaction.

Addressing Local Knowledge and Gender Equality in Peatland Restoration Programs: Case Study in Indonesia 

Sri Lestari 

Peatland degradation in Indonesia has caused ecological, economic, and social losses for the people. The government, supported by various stakeholders, has implemented several programs to restore peatland ecosystems through rewetting, revegetation, and revitalization activities. This paper aims to investigate the involvement of local knowledge and gender equality in supporting the success of peatland restoration agendas. Field observation and deep interviews with key stakeholders and communities in Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra were held to gather data and information. Furthermore, descriptive qualitative analysis was implemented to analyze the data. The study found that local communities were still excluded from the selection and planning activities due to the limited time frame for program implementation and overly ambitious restoration targets. The integration and involvement of local community knowledge and wisdom in program implementation were still not optimal because most of them were top-down. Additionally, the community was often treated as an object rather than an actor. Gender inequality was also identified in the field where the majority of restoration programs were intended for men, women’s training and capacity building were severely limited, and there was still a lack of space and media for women to convey their views and thoughts.