Do democratic and authoritarian political regimes (re-)act differently to certain forms and contents of protest? This is the core question behind this pilot project, which conducts an intra-regional comparison between Indonesia and Vietnam. The research belongs to the H2020 consortium CRISEA (Competing Regional Integrations in Southeast Asia), coordinated by Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO).
EC, Horizon 2020, 2017-2021
The project uses theoretical approaches which focus on the state-society nexus and in-built biases of the capitalist state. More specifically, it draws on Poulantzas’ idea of the state as a “social relationship” and “material condensation of relationships of forces”, but also on Jessop who further developed this perspective on the “state in capitalist societies” and called his approach “strategic relational approach” (SRA). This stresses that structures are not equally constraining or facilitating for all agents. Rather structure offer opportunities that vary by agent; agency, in turn, depends on strategic capacities that vary according to the actors involved but also by structure.