Part 1

• Towards a Neo-New Order? Re-assessing embedded authoritarian legacies in Indonesia´s democratic decline Tomáš Petrů Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences

  Since the fall of Suharto’s New Order in May 1998, Indonesia has been widely regarded as a leading case of democratization in the Global South. However, after peaking around 2008, the quality of its democracy has steadily declined. This paper argues that Indonesia’s contemporary democratic regression cannot be explained solely by institutional authoritarian legacies; rather, it reflects a complex interplay of historical, ideological, and structural factors. Drawing on Juan Linz’s regime typologies and the concept of executive aggrandizement developed by Wolfgang Merkel and Nancy Bermeo, the study situates Indonesia’s trajectory within debates on competitive authoritarianism and electoral autocracy.
  The brief parliamentary democracy of 1950–1957 provided no durable democratic baseline. Guided Democracy (1957–1965) and the New Order (1966–1998) entrenched hierarchical governance, militarism, anti-leftist ideology, and elite patronage. The reforms of zaman reformasi – including decentralization, constitutional limits on the presidency, and competitive elections – produced an elitist transition, preserving oligarchic influence and former regime networks. In the post-2014 era, particularly under Presidents Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto, executive power has expanded through legislation favoring dominant parties, corporations, and state security prerogatives, while institutional checks remain weakened. At the same time, militarist revival, elite collusion, and media concentration have hollowed accountability and normalized coercion.
  The convergence of entrenched anti-liberal ideology, oligarchic capture, the growing influence of the army, and legislative manipulation has transformed Indonesia into a “democritarian” regime: formally electoral, yet substantively re-centralized, illiberal and increasingly coercive. The paper seeks to explain that Indonesia’s democratic future depends on elite fragmentation, civil society resilience, and the military’s long-term political ambitions. While the country retains core democratic mechanisms, the Reformasi era’s promises and achievements are under significant strain, suggesting a trajectory towards a hybrid regime, backsliding from a once-promising democracy towards competitive authoritarianism.

• Youth Protests vis-à-vis Military Repression Dialectics in Civil-Military Relations in Indonesia and Madagascar Mark Philip Stadler University of Bonn

  In recent years, youth protest related to the ‘Gen Z’ took to the streets in various contexts globally. The cases of Indonesia and Madagascar show diametrically different outcomes. Or are they not?
  Already before the inauguration of the new President Prabowo Subianto in October 2024, the streets of the Indonesian capital Jakarta as well as other major cities of the archipelagic state have been the arena of protests, with support from abroad. What started out as the Indonesia Gelap movement by young people and students, critical civil society and anti-government activists, continued through in 2025 and developed into severe riot-like clashes between protesters and the military police. A motorcycle delivery driver was killed by a police car driving towards the protesting crowds heating up the protests even further. Eventually, the protests subsided as (partial) demands of the crowds were met.
  The street protests against President Andry Nirina Rajoelina, who held office since 2019, took place in Antananarivo and worldwide. The actions were swift and resulted in the President’s impeachment and removal from office. The demands by the Malagasy youth protesters included his removal from office. The riots initially were met with police and military repression resulting in more than 20 casualties. However, the tables turned and the military sided with the protesters. Rajoelina had to leave the country as his security could not be guaranteed by the military and national police anymore. Right on, Colonel Michael Randrianirina assumed office and is now incumbent President.
  What are the different outcomes of the protests saying about the state and stability of democracy in Indonesia and Madagascar? What is the role of civil society in channeling political discontent and shaping the course of politics in both cases? What are the implications from these findings for Civil-Military Relations (CMR) theory development?

• Young Middle-Class Indonesians Navigating (Anti)Corruption Zulfadhli Nasution Leiden University

  My paper will offer nuanced discussion that is, to some extent overlooked within the theme of youth activism. Scholars often focus, on the one hand, on the moralised youth as “the future of the nation” with their (digital) sub-culture and resistance toward corruption and authoritarianism, or on the other hand, on the state/regime and the interlinkages of elites-oligarchs as opposing side of youth activism. However, how youth (both activists and non-activists) encounter (anti)corruption while navigating their life-course through the multiple roles including as citizens, consumers, and users of public services, remains largely unexplored.
  In reality, many of young middle-class Indonesians face corruption-related dilemmas and hold ambivalent positions toward the state, bureaucracy, including informality networks. Thus, young people are simultaneously seen as the hope for anti-corruption reform, but also victims and, at times, even (reluctant) participants of corrupt practices. Many of them ultimately still depend on and support the state from which they benefit politically and economically (van Klinken, 2014). As Baker (2023) argues, the massive growth of the precariously non-poor middle-class, who are more concerned on economic security, is one of structural drivers of democratic decline. By co-opting this group into the populist development programs, the state hinders their mobilization and narrows the opposition space (ibid).
  Against the backdrop of Indonesian reform aspiration particularly driven by youngster since 1998, and the juxtaposition of youth’s (anti)corruption participation with their (aspiring) middle-class status, my main objective is to disentangle the logics, motives, and factors underlying corruption and anti-corruption as experienced by young people. By using everyday corruption lens, I aim to draw into a complementary insight on why youth mobilizations to push reform are still elusive in their achievement. This proposed paper will be based on my preliminary PhD research findings, using an ethnographic approach in two cities in Indonesia.

• Prefigurative Politics and Youth Uprisings in Indonesia’s Democratic Decline Annisa Hartoto University of Zurich

  Amid growing concerns over democratic backsliding and authoritarian resurgence in Indonesia, youth political engagement has become increasingly visible through waves of protest, including the August 2025 youth uprisings marked by spontaneous and militant forms of contention. This presentation juxtaposes these high-intensity mobilisations with less visible, yet politically significant, forms of youth activism by examining feminist leadership schools as alternative sites of contention.
  Drawing on ethnographic research with Sekolah Kepemimpinan Feminis (SKF), a grassroots feminist education initiative led by Solidaritas Perempuan, I explore how young women activists cultivate political subjectivities and collective identities outside formal arenas of protest. I argue that feminist leadership schools enact a form of prefigurative politics, in which participants do not merely demand change from the state but actively embody alternative visions of citizenship through feminist pedagogies, collective care, and everyday practices.
  By placing these processes alongside the August 2025 uprisings, the presentation develops a comparative lens on divergent repertoires of youth resistance—one episodic, confrontational, and publicly visible; the other slow, relational, and often operating under the radar. Rather than treating these as oppositional, I show how they reflect different temporalities, risks, and infrastructures of activism in an increasingly constrained political environment.
  This comparison contributes to expanding social movement theory beyond its focus on contentious events, foregrounding the role of prefigurative and affective practices in sustaining political mobilisation over time. It also complicates dominant representations of youth activism in Southeast Asia as primarily urban, digital, and male-dominated, by highlighting the centrality of feminist and community-based organising in shaping alternative futures of citizenship.

Part 2

• Fandomizing Contention: The Aesthetics of Outrage, Hope, and Precarity in Thailand and the Philippines Gil Turingan University of Warsaw

  In the early 2020s, Southeast Asia reached a turning point in organizing mass mobilizations. Building on the 2020 Thai pro-democracy movement and long-standing student activism in the Philippines, these mobilizations crystallized into new repertoires of contention that came sharply into view during the 2022 Philippine and 2023 Thai general elections. This paper provides a comparative analysis of Thailand’s “Orange” movement (supporting Pita Limjaroenrat) and the Philippines’ “Pink” movement (supporting Leni Robredo), asking how youth-driven “aesthetics of outrage and hope” came to redefine what it means to participate in elections. Drawing on Manuel Castells’ (2012) networks of outrage and hope and W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg’s (2012) connective action, I argue that these movements functioned as “political fandoms” that operated around, rather than within, traditional party systems. Through multimodal discourse analysis of campaign memes, TikTok trends, and “pop-up” rally aesthetics, the study shows how these repertoires of contention transformed abstract policy goals into highly personalized identity brands. In Thailand, the now-dissolved Move Forward Party’s minimalist “Orange” aesthetic signaled a clear break from military authoritarianism; in the Philippines, the “Pink” movement mobilized “Radical Love” and Korean-pop-inspired volunteerism to challenge a deeply entrenched ecosystem of state-sponsored disinformation and the Marcos restoration. Situated within Southeast Asian social movement studies, the paper foregrounds a central paradox. The same aesthetics that allowed these movements to mobilize millions and “fandomize” democratic participation also exposed the difficult socio-political conditions in Thailand and the Philippines, making pervasive precarity impossible to overlook. I propose that examining the “Orange” and “Pink” movements through the lens of fandom and connective action reveals not only the innovative potential of youth activism but also the fragile limits faced amid institutional and societal pushback.

• Containment by Design: Calibrated Coercion, Dampened Efficacy, and the Absence of Youth Mobilization in Vietnam (2011–2025) Dien Luong University of Michigan

  Across Southeast Asia, digitally connected youth have powered mass mobilizations from Thailand (2020) and Myanmar (2021) to Indonesia’s recurring student-led demonstrations and Malaysia’s episodic youth protest. Yet Vietnam remains the regional outlier: young people are highly networked and civically expressive, but large-scale youth contention has not emerged. This paper explains Vietnam’s “missing” youth protest wave as an engineered incentive equilibrium rather than apathy. Using a cost–benefit lens, I argue that the party-state simultaneously raises the perceived costs of contention and lowers expected benefits, shaping participation before movements can scale.
  On the cost side, Vietnam deploys calibrated coercion—selective punishment under legal ambiguity, amplified by public deterrent signals that make red lines uncertain and ever-present. I trace how this strategy shifts from signalling (2011–16) to system-building (2016–mid-2021) and routinized socialization (mid-2021–present), as regulatory tightening, platform pressure, and “control parables” embed risk in everyday life. On the benefit side, performance- legitimacy and stability narratives—backed by state-curated patriotic participation and issue-corrective volunteering—cast protest as unnecessary, futile, or costly; selective concessions on “safe” grievances further sustain the belief that change is possible within the system.
  Empirically, the paper combines process tracing of enforcement shifts with discourse analysis of prominent youth-led campaigns. These cases mobilize attention but remain non-systemic, illustrating repertoire substitution under constraint.
  Regionally, Vietnam contrasts with Thailand and Myanmar, where regime crisis raised perceived benefits and repression often backfired into broader coalitions, and with Indonesia and Malaysia, where concrete policy threats and episodic openings generated “success signals” that made mobilization appear worth the risks. In Vietnam, high costs and dampened efficacy redirect contention into culturally vibrant but politically non-threatening repertoires.
  The paper contributes to social movement studies by theorizing quiescence as an outcome of incentive design: calibrated coercion and managed efficacy expectations reshape youth identities and repertoires, preventing contention from scaling even amid high connectivity.

• Not keyboard warriors but street protesters against authoritarianism: How did July Revolution 2024 shape youth identity in Bangladesh? Abdul Wohab North South University Hasan Muhammad Baniamin North South University Ishrat Sultana North South University Mizanur Rahman The Arctic University of Norway Mohammad Musfequs Salehin The Arctic University of Norway

  Bangladesh has historical records of challenging the authoritarian authorities, such as the language movement in 1952, the war of independence in 1971, the anti-authoritarian movement in 1990, and the road-safety protest in 2018. Ousting the authoritarian government in 2024 through a youth-led movement, however, was different in nature compared to all previous movements. In 2024, young people came out of the so-called label ‘keyboard warriors’ and turned into a great source of hope and inspiration through their protests on the streets against the authoritarian regime of Bangladesh. The government shutdown of the internet and print and electronic media could not prevent the youth from coming to the street. Rather, Bangladesh experienced a new pattern of youth movement that expressed their demands and rages, expectations and angers, hopes and dreams, etc. not just by verbal slogans and demonstrations but by graffities on the walls of the whole country. While the government media was busy in telecasting the bumper production of seasonal lemons even in the extreme level of government patronized, sponsored, and instructed violence and killing throughout the country in July 2024 pretending that governance of the country was in normal state, the youth adopted a silent yet creative and powerful approach to protest. They used graffities – as an art of protests – in expressing the need for justice and democracy, showing their courage, anger, rage, and readiness to sacrifice themselves for freedom to end inequality, corruption, and oppression embedded in the authoritarian regime. We analyzed 2300 graffities collected from different locations of the country employing Scott’s Weapons of the Weak (1985) and Blumer’s (1969) Symbolic Interaction theories to show how the youth’s protest shaped their identity from keyboard warriors to street protesters to combat authoritarianism in Bangladesh.

• At the Margins of Authority — Youth Resistance, Ethnic Identity, and Repertoires of Contention in Myanmar and Bangladesh Dipannita Maria Bagh Spring University Myanmar

  How does the nature of the authoritarian threat, whether military coup, electoral authoritarianism, or majoritarian nationalism, shape the collective identities and repertoires of contention adopted by youth movements in geographically contiguous yet politically distinct borderland contexts? Myanmar and Bangladesh form an underexplored comparative cluster in the study of contemporary youth resistance. Linked by geography, shared ethnic communities straddling porous borders, and histories of colonial administrative marginalisation, these cases nonetheless confront qualitatively different forms of authoritarian governance. Yet both have witnessed remarkable youth-led mobilisation within the same four-year window, making them analytically productive for cross-case comparison.
  In Myanmar, the post-coup Civil Disobedience Movement (2021–present) drew millions of young people into an initially non-violent, then increasingly armed resistance through the People’s Defence Force (PDF), following a military crackdown estimated to have killed over 5,000 civilians. In Bangladesh, the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement of July–August 2024 catalysed protests against a quota system for government jobs. It escalated into a mass uprising that resulted in the resignation and flight of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on 5 August 2024, after security forces and ruling-party paramilitaries killed an estimated 600 protesters.
  Drawing on protest event analysis, activist testimony, and digital discourse data from 2020 to 2024, this paper will apply Tilly’s repertoires of contention alongside intersectional and postcolonial frameworks to examine how ethnic composition, transnational solidarity networks, and the severity and form of state repression drive divergence in movement strategy and identity across these cases. The findings will contribute to theoretical study of youth resistance in South and Southeast Asia;s borderlands, where the boundaries between democratic dissent, ethnic mobilisation, and armed struggle are frequently blurred.

Part 3

• Constructing Feminist Contention: Youth Identity and Repertoires of Gender Equality Mobilization in Southeast Asian Regimes Alifia Moci Maritta University Colorado Boulder Lalu Ary Kurniawan Hardi Northern Illinois University

  This study develops a comparative framework to analyze how youth-led feminist and gender equality mobilization in Southeast Asia constructs and deploys distinct repertoires of contention under varying regime configurations. Rather than assuming that authoritarian constraints simply suppress feminist activism, the study conceptualizes repertoires as adaptive strategic practices shaped by the interaction between regime control, civic space, and the construction of collective identities within youth feminist networks. Using a most-different systems design across Southeast Asian regimes, the research compares contexts that vary in institutional openness, surveillance capacity, and tolerance toward civil society in order to identify patterned variation in feminist contentious strategies. The analysis proposes a multi-dimensional typology of repertoires structured along three interacting axes: institutional embeddedness, discursive framing, and tactical disruption. Institutional embeddedness captures the degree to which feminist mobilization operates through formal organizations, semi-institutionalized advocacy platforms, or decentralized informal networks.
  Discursive framing differentiates between movements that strategically employ state-compatible narratives—such as social welfare, protection, or development—those advancing norm-challenging gender equality claims, and those articulating intersectional frames linking gender justice to broader democratic or generational grievances. Tactical disruption, meanwhile, distinguishes repertoires according to the degree of contentious escalation, ranging from bureaucratic engagement, policy consultation, and public awareness campaigns to digitally networked mobilization, symbolic protest, and mass demonstrations. Combining these dimensions reveals a spectrum of feminist contentious practices across Southeast Asia, in which movements calibrate visibility, risk, and legitimacy depending on regime constraints. In more tightly controlled political environments, feminist activism tends to rely on embedded and discursively moderated repertoires that minimize overt confrontation while seeking incremental influence through institutional or policy channels. In regimes with partially open civic space, activists combine advocacy-oriented campaigns with networked mobilization, enabling selective forms of public contention. Where political contestation is more visible, feminist mobilization increasingly adopts decentralized and symbolically disruptive repertoires.

• How masculinity builds an army and restrains a movement: Deconstructing class and gender roles in Northeast Thailand Duangtip Kranrit Feminist Liberates Front Mekong-Chi-Mun Luisa Hahn Hamburg Museum of Work Sophie Marijam Grobe Khon Kaen University Vanessa Moll Khon Kaen University

  In late 2025 in Northeast Thailand, a small group of anti-war protesters, mostly women, drew widespread attention when they began gathering daily in front of Khon Kaen University to call for an end to the escalation between Thailand and Cambodia. On what would become the final protest day, a newly elected NGO leader joined them. But the group dispersed reluctantly for the final time after he and a Grab driver, who threatened the protesters, had a heated exchange.
  This anecdote is a microcosm of the dynamics on which our research focuses. Analyses of Thailand’s 2020/21 pro-democracy movement have highlighted the growing visibility and influence of women and the LGBTQIA+ community. Yet in Northeast Thailand in particular, masculinity continues to shape community dynamics, political organizing, and mobilization, often in contexts defined by structural inequality and resource scarcity. Historically, gender research in Thailand has been most associated with women or gender-diverse identities; masculinity and its effects on Thai movements remains understudied.
  Drawing on in-depth interviews with organizers and activists of varying ages and genders, we examine how those on the ground in Northeast Thailand understand class and gender and how these factors have informed both historical and contemporary pro-democracy movements in the region. Ideas surrounding what constitutes “good” leadership, the persistence of hierarchical or charismatic leadership styles, and challenges such as “founder’s syndrome” continue to influence movement sustainability. At the same time, determined youth are actively creating new spaces that emphasize diversity, adopt “gentler” forms of activism, and question traditional masculine norms. We expand significantly on our earlier work, “Masculinity in Movement,” published in the journal südostasien, and explore how concepts of masculinity have shaped the strategies, structures, and internal dynamics of pro-democracy organizing while mapping how alternative feminist or queer approaches promise to transform the movement.
  Grobe, Sophie Marijam.

• Quiet Performances, Loud Resistance: Youth belonging, Affect, and Political expression in Chiang Mai, Thailand Charlotte Hill Chiang Mai University

  In a city often overshadowed by Bangkok’s political stage, this paper examines how, in northern Thailand, Chiang Mai’s young performance artists create quieter, affective forms of protest that challenge state narratives and family expectations. Grounded in theories of space, affect, and performativity, the article conceptualises space as politically produced and emotions as ‘sticky’, binding bodies, objects, and places over time. Through three case studies, it shows how writing in bedrooms, silent street actions, and backstage labour create alternative spaces of belonging and resistance under authoritarian constraint. These practices rework generational power, family expectations, and state surveillance while sustaining collective infrastructures of care. By shifting attention away from capital-centric protest narratives, I argue that these performances are not marginal to political life but constitute a profound form of public engagement. In doing so, it contributes to debates in youth geographies and Southeast Asian studies on how dissent is lived, felt, and sustained beyond mass protest.

• Remembering Violence through the Body: War Injury and Political Commitment in Myanmar’s Resistance Movements Naw Moo Moo Paw Taing University of Massachusetts Lowell

  This study examines how war-related disabilities shape the political perspectives and engagement of civilians in Karen State, Myanmar. Focusing on civilians who sustained landmine-related injuries during the country’s prolonged civil conflict, the research explores whether physical disability undermines political trust, participation, and attitudes toward armed actors. Drawing on qualitative, in-depth interviews with war-disabled civilians, family members, community leaders, and disability advocates, the study reveals that injury does not lead to transformation in political alignment or demobilization. Instead, it produces a political orientation characterized by peace preference without political participation. The findings demonstrate that war-disabled civilians express fear of all armed actors, including both the Myanmar military and ethnic armed organizations, and adopt survival-oriented strategies such as political silence, coerced neutrality, and compliance with taxation demands. Limited political understanding and bodily vulnerability further constrain engagement, even when political awareness increases following major events such as the 2021 military coup. Family and community support systems play a critical role in sustaining daily life after injury but often reinforce withdrawal from public political spaces rather than enabling participation. Disability-related advocacy emerges only in non-confrontational forms aimed at social inclusion rather than political challenge. By foregrounding the embodied experiences of war-disabled civilians, this study contributes to civil war and political behavior scholarship by challenging assumptions that victimization leads to political mobilization. It extends theories of civilian agency and coerced neutrality by demonstrating how disability reshapes political capacity under conditions of ongoing conflict.

Show Paper Abstracts

Abstract

Keywords

• Bangladesh
• Chiang Mai
• Indonesia
• Madagascar
• Myanmar
• New Order
• Northeast Thailand
• Southeast Asia
• Vietnam
• affect
• affective citizenship
• authoritarianism
• calibrated coercion
• civil war
• civil-military relations
• civilians
• comparative analysis
• democratic backsliding
• digital governance
• disability
• executive aggrandizement
• feminism
• feminist pedagogy
• gender
• gender equality
• graffiti
• identity
• masculinity
• neo-New Order
• performance art
• political efficacy
• political implications
• post-Soeharto Indonesia
• pro-democracy movement
• protest
• protests
• quiet resistance
• repertoires of contention
• resistance
• space and place
• youth
• youth activism
• youth mobilization
• youth movements
• youth political dissent
• youth protests
• youth resistance