Constructing Security Policies in Southeast Asia

: Historical and Social Dynamics

Abstract

This research sets out to analyse why security practices in Southeast Asian states vary. It critically explores by unpacking the origins and development of state structures to demonstrate why the region’s military spending is consistent with the historical trends. This thesis identifies that the contemporary security challenges are inherited by its specific histories that shaped the state’s threat perceptions in path dependent ways. Employing a comparative case analysis of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, the empirical findings demonstrate that the struggle for legitimacy during the initial formation of nation-state influences how the state institutional settings of governing elites influence the security policy outcomes.
This research identifies how security is a contested concept between social groups that inhabit the state. This research argues that security practices, and behaviours are socially inherited and shaped by social conflicts during the formation of the nation-state. To interrogate this puzzle, the thesis uses the Historical Institutionalist approach as an analytical framework through process tracing to examine a comparative analysis of the diverging state institutional structures which influence governing elites in security policy decision-making in Southeast Asian states. By unpacking the institutional variations across states in Southeast Asia and by drawing attention to the critical historical overview of the state structure, it helps explain how different socio-political groups are embedded in the political organisation and state institutions.
One of the key findings of this research is that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, security is a historical by-product of contestation between actors in Southeast Asia which arises principally, if not exclusively, from its own social and institutional legacies and the changes of the political environment of individual states. The institutional legacies also influence how national political elites address its security concerns in order to uphold and reinforce its political legitimacy. The primacy of historical legacies on institutional arrangements need to be acknowledged in explaining security behaviour as it affects how it facilitates or constrains national policymakers on its security policy outcomes.

Date of Award	19 Jul 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Yongjin Zhang (Supervisor) & Jeffrey Henderson (Supervisor)