Centre for Democratic Institutions

Crawford School Seminar: Political Engineering & Ethnic Politics in the Asia-Pacific

Crawford School Seminar at the ANU, 20 May 2008 by CDI Director Prof Benjamin Reilly:

An intense scholarly and public policy debate concerns the optimal design of political institutions for new democracies, particularly those facing deep ethnic or cultural cleavages. Drawing on a book-length study of political engineering in the Asia-Pacific region, I survey the different models advanced to manage the consequences of ethnic pluralism in democracies. The most prominent of these models are consociationalism, centripetalism, and communalism. In this presentation I fleshed out these models and illustrated their application in Asia-Pacific countries. As I showed, after having been advocates of consociational approaches in the post-independence period, many Asia-Pacific democracies have adopted explicitly centripetal political reforms in recent years.

Political Engineering & Ethnic Politics in the Asia-Pacific:

Click here to view/download the video of this seminar on the Crawford School website


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	Crawford School of Economics and Government	The Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI) is a government-funded body that supports the efforts of new democracies in the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen their political systems. It provides training, technical assistance and peer support for parliamentarians and emerging leaders in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, with a particular focus on Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji. The Australian Government established CDI in 1998. It is funded primarily by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). One of the primary ways in which CDI works to promote democracy is through strengthening parliamentary governance and political parties. The Centre focusses on parliamentary and political party development, and conducts flagship training courses and policy-relevant research on these subjects.
© The Centre for Democratic Institutions, The Australian National University. Please direct all comments to cdi@anu.edu.au. Last modified: 16 September, 2008 CRICOSProvider Number: 00120C