Description
This panel investigates how security practices and societal transformations in the Asia-Pacific are mutually constitutive, shaping the region’s evolving political orders and govern-ance dynamics. The papers collectively interrogate the tension between security imperatives and democratic accountability, revealing how militarization, identity formation, and external intervention interact in processes of (de)securitization. More specifically, Brendan Howe situates Southeast Asia’s governance challenges within the broader dialectic of human and state security, highlighting the regional spillover of insecurity. Carmen Wintergerst theorizes in her presentation elite recruitment as a subtle form of militarization that erodes political accountability in Indonesia and the Philippines. Christian Schafferer employs latent class analysis to trace how shifting generational identities in South Korea reconfigure the mean-ing of unification and security. Heidi Wang-Kaeding and Malte Philipp Kaeding explore Taiwan’s dismantling of Cold War military infrastructures as a rearticulation of ontological security and post-authoritarian memory. Finally, Sojin Lim in her comparative study of North Korea and Myanmar examines how international aid mediates the interface between external norms and domestic authoritarian resilience. Together, this panel advances theoreti-cal and empirical insights into how society and security co-construct legitimacy, order, and resistance in the contemporary Asia-Pacific.
