Weaving Legitimacy, Power-Sharing and Peace Building in Southeast Asia

Abstract

            Peace practices have been affected by geopolitics of Southeast Asia which has two dimensions, security and resources. A sustainable peacebuilding could be attained through the inter-subjectivity process and inclusion. There are two processes of making legitimacy including redistribution and recognition.  Redistribution is a process to support peace as well as legitimacy. Recognition of identity is also the support of peace through representation. Both processes involve people’s feeling of justice, making the right to govern acceptable. On the other hand, peace also involves the forms of power-sharing. Therefore, the proposed model of governance includes consociationalism, which has been divided based on different ethnicities and identities. Another form of power-sharing is identified as the centripetalism, in which the form of governance is designed to encourage inter-communal moderation by promoting multi-ethnic political parties, cross- cutting electoral incentives and inter- group accommodation. 
            Findings from some case studies of Southeast Asia indicate that the Aceh of Indonesia has been evolved to be the centripetalism, while the Mindanao of the Philippines is developed to be similar to the consociationalism mixed with the neopatrimonialism. In Thailand’s Deep South conflict, the Thai state is more oriented to choose the centripetalism as a form of conflict resolution as the elites are still confused with the authoritarian mode of resolution.  Peace in Papua, Indonesia, evolves to become ramified and expanded fields with mixed power sharing and continued struggle for justice. The mixed power sharing is between consociationalism and centripetalism.