Conventional assumptions about women's representation posit that higher proportions of women will be found at local levels of government where barriers to entry are minimal than at higher levels (Mariani 2008; Eder, Fortin-Rittberger, and Kroeber 2016). Indeed, studies on established democracies have found that the number of women in politics decreases when one moves from local to national governments (Vengroff, Nyiri, and Fugiero 2003; Kjaer 2010). This literature has shown that lower-level offices tend to be more open and accessible to women (Brodie 1985; Lovenduski and Norris 1993; Vengroff, Nyiri, and Fugiero 2003). However, evidence of this trend is inconclusive in less established or newer democracies, where limited formal institutions and lack of political party activity might prevent women from entering local politics (Kyed, Harrisson, and McCarthy 2016; Aydogan, Marschall, and Shalaby 2016).

Existing literature on Myanmar highlights structural, cultural, and institutional barriers to women's political participation at all levels of government (Löfving 2011; Latt et al. 2017). Yet, the discrepancy between the percentage of women represented at the local level and at the national and state/region level in Myanmar in the late 2010s challenges the “pyramid” model of women's representation: that women will be better represented closer to the ground. Following the 2015 general election (GE), women made up approximately 13.7 per cent of all elected members of parliament (MPs) in the Union (national) parliament and approximately 12.7 per cent of all MPs in the state/region parliaments across the country (excluding military seats). Meanwhile, women represented less than 1 per cent of elected ward/village tract administrators at the local level across the country. Why was women's representation so low at the local level in Myanmar? Drawing on extensive qualitative evidence from local interviews and focus-group discussions (see Chapter One for details), along with secondary data on local elections and politics, we investigate how women participated in local politics and why so few female local leaders were elected in Myanmar prior to the February 2021 military coup.

Following the coup, the military suspended national and state/ region parliaments. The military has tried to maintain existing local governance arrangements, as stipulated in the 2008 Constitution. However, the democratic opposition rejects that constitution. In most of the country, the junta-controlled local administration has either completely broken down or is severely weak.

The Myanmar people's revolution against the military resulted not only major political change, but also considerable economic, social, and cultural change.

The Arakan National Party (ANP) was the product of a merger between the Rakhine National Development Party (RNDP) and the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) and was registered with the Union Election Commission (UEC) on 6 March 2014. At the time of their founding, ANP's goals were “federalism”, “democratisation”, and “development”, but in practice the party has had a strong focus on Rakhine nationalism. Previously, the RNDP, led by Dr Aye Maung, was registered on 6 May 2010 and won a total of 32 seats in the 2010 elections. The ALD was founded in 1989 and ran in the 1990 election, winning 11 seats. The ALD re-registered with the UEC in 2012, before combining with the RNDP to form the ANP in 2014. The party claimed to have township executive committees (TECs) in 17 townships and more than 20,000 members in 2020.

Dr Manam Tu Ja, former vice president of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), attempted to register the Kachin State Progressive Party with the UEC for the 2010 elections. He was controversially prevented from doing so, like the other ethnic Kachin parties. He then founded the Kachin State Democracy Party (KSDP) in 2013, and, at the second attempt, on 13 January 2014. The KSDP claimed to have around 13,000 members in 2015. The KSDP was merged with three other ethnic Kachin parties to form the Kachin State People's Party.

The LNDP was registered with the UEC on 17 December 2013, with the aim of representing the Lisu people in Myanmar and promoting the development of that ethnicity. The LNDP has a close cooperative relationship with the USDP. The party claimed to have TECs in 18 townships and around 11,000 members in 2020.

The Mon Democratic Front was established in 1988 and ran in the 1990 elections, winning 5 seats. The party re-registered with the UEC after the 2010 elections, using the name the Mon Democratic Party. In 2014, the party joined with a few MPs from the All Mon Region Democracy Party and changed its name to the Mon National Party. In 2018 (overlapping the start of our field research) the MNP merged with other ethnic Mon parties to form the Mon Party.

Whom political parties select for elections is key to understanding how women access elected office. In this chapter, we investigate whom parties nominated as candidates and how the selection process occurred in Myanmar before the coup in 2021, focusing on the nine political parties identified in Chapter One. During Myanmar's short decade of liberalization, political parties flourished and competed in general elections (GE). In the 2020 elections alone, a total of 93 parties competed, 50 more than in 2010. That independent candidates comprised less than 5 per cent of total candidates in 2020's national and local elections indicates that parties are the primary means through which individuals become politicians.

Parties matter as they provide leadership, organization, resources, and name-recognition for candidates (Kunovich and Paxton 2005a; Aldrich 2011). Literature on electoral politics in Myanmar has largely focused on the dominant role of the military, including its politicalparty guise as the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), or on political elites such as Aung San Suu Kyi from the National League for Democracy (NLD). Despite the importance of parties and the role they play in selecting candidates for elections, we know very little about these processes—what Gallagher and Marsh (1988) call the “secret garden of politics”—during Myanmar's decade of liberalization.

Intra-party politics in Myanmar are opaque and clouded in mystery. This chapter aims to demystify a core process by comparing the key candidate-selection methods in nine parties and their effects on women's political participation. In Asia, Myanmar has had one of the lowest levels of female representation in legislatures from 2010 to 2020. Typically, respondents cite cultural factors such as patriarchy as key deterrents that affect the supply of female candidates (Zin Mar Aung 2015). Here, we go beyond cultural reasons by revealing other institutional factors, such as the role of the selectorate—the body that selects candidates—and the criteria each party looks for that affect the demand for women in politics.

Parties are gatekeepers that narrow the list of candidates to a small pool from which the voters will choose. Who selects and how the process is implemented in practice affect not only party cohesion but also its gender and ethnic diversity (Rahat and Hazan 2001; Tan et al. 2020). Typically, parties have a legal or written framework that establishes how they elect or select their candidates.

Focus Group Guide for Field Data Collection

Interview Guide Used for Field Data Collection

INTRODUCTION

This chapter visits Indonesia's latest criminalization against extramarital sex, including commercial sex. I discuss how contextually important it is for Indonesia, as the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, to discourage, if not eliminate, extramarital sex, both commercially and non-commercially. I, then, engage in the scholarly discourse on how the country cannot crack down on its extramarital sex without eradicating the socio-economic and institutional root causes of commercial sex. In Southeast Asia, sex tourism, prostitution and sex trafficking are rampant and normalized to some degree (Curley 2014; Dahles 2009). Eradicating these root causes is the ultimate solution to Indonesia's decision to punitively bar local populations from engaging in extramarital sex. Both intranational and international policies will be highlighted and summarized in this chapter to present how Indonesia can address the issues of sex work and trafficking at its best in the long term.

CONTEXTUAL IMPORTANCE OF CRACKDOWN ON EXTRAMARITAL SEX IN INDONESIA

In Indonesia, per Islamic law, extramarital sex has been religiously and politically seen as immoral, wrongful and socially undesirable (Crouch 2009). Premarital sex, extramarital sex, queer sex and commercial sex have all been labelled as immoral sex in Indonesian society. Owing to gendered freedom restriction and cultural norms, there is a general expectation throughout Indonesia that men will have extramarital sex, as per Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations (Bennett and Davies 2015).

INTRODUCTION

This chapter highlights seven major socio-economic root causes of commercial sex engagement. These are poverty, informal social control, formal social control, a lack of positive socialization, peer influence, cultural deviance and a shortage of education opportunities. The chapter follows by assessing policy development and suggesting policy recommendations that are conducive to mitigating, attenuating and even eradicating these socio-economic root causes of, underage or not, sex work. Understanding the socio-economic root causes of sex work in Indonesian contexts serves as the foundation of the development of Chapter 5, where I will visit Indonesia's anti-extramarital sex law and argue how such criminalization is associated with the country's tolerance of and response to prostitution.

POVERTY

Like other developing Southeast Asian countries, poverty, in both urban and rural forms, has been known as a pressing societal issue that disproportionately affects the vulnerability of people with socio-economic disadvantages in Indonesia (Riswanda, Mills, and Nantes 2017). In this section, I explain how poverty results in the proliferation of prostitution and sex trafficking in Indonesia.

In Indonesia, especially in urban slums and remote, impoverished and rural communities, residents have been subject to significant impacts of poverty (Minnery et al. 2013). Here these residents living in poverty usually face a shortage of basic necessities, including education, food and shelter (Dhanani and Islam 2002; Jones 2017). Their encounters with socioeconomic disadvantages make them very vulnerable to being exploited by, for example, sex traffickers, as briefly discussed in the preceding chapters.

INTRODUCTION

On 13 April 2023, I returned to Taipei City, Taiwan, after spending the preceding months in Boston, Cambridge (United Kingdom), Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. I was appointed as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica in Taiwan and a fellow at Harvard University Asia Centre in Boston in 2022/23. As my research endeavours in Boston had already been wrapped up, I relocated to Taipei City to fulfil my research errands prior to the end of my visiting fellowship appointment contract (i.e., 30 June 2023). On 18 April 2023, I met my native Taiwanese friend who has been a typical digital nomad and usually spends her time in Tokyo, Taipei City and Europe. We were having a conversation over a few cups of ice-drip coffee. I told her I was recently working on a monograph on Indonesia's extramarital sex criminalization—the book that you are now reading. She was taken aback by the topic of my research investigation not only because she had not realized Indonesia has criminalized anti-extramarital sex, but more because she had never expected any Asian country of today would practise such a societally controversial and perhaps “morally outdated and/or conservative” law (note: In Chapter 5, I will explain why passing such a law is contextually important to Indonesia).

INTRODUCTION

Addressing the socio-economic root causes of prostitution is essential, as such an approach helps disincentivize Indonesian women and girls from entering the sex industry. However, if there are significant institutional loopholes when governing people's behaviours, disciplines and morality (such as the discussion of the lack of e-regulation on the Internet to crack down on cyber-sex crime), organized sex crime groups can continue to exploit the loose regulatory, legislative, judiciary and law enforcement mechanism to arrange and deliver sex trafficking and prostitution activities (Awaludin 2019). Therefore, this chapter, in order to minimize Indonesian nationals’ violation of anti-extramarital sex, or specifically commercial sex, discusses how commercial sex is institutionally constructed. I then examine the relevant policies to understand how the formation of the institutional mechanism against sex work can be strengthened.

POOR GOVERNANCE, POVERTY AND SEX WORK

Indonesia ranks 130th in the globe, per the Human Development Index, indicating that poverty and inequalities are salient within the country (Antara News 2022). Thus far, this book examines and discusses how poverty, inequalities, a lack of human investment in the form of the distribution of education opportunities and engagement in sex work are interrelated. A primary reason leading to Indonesia's poor human development is the poor governance of the Indonesian government.

As of writing this epilogue, I am reading Stiglitz's (2004) Globalisation and Its Discontents in my cosy apartment in New Taipei City—on the outskirts of Taipei City, Taiwan. Stiglitz argues the importance of sequencing and timing. The Nobel Prize-winning economist notes one of the major policy mistakes performed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the twentieth century was overlooking the importance of sequencing and timing when applying national and regional policies and interventions. While these national and regional policymaking outputs were supposed to raise the quality of life and national competitiveness of the Global South, very often any improper sequenced policy implementation would counter-discourage developing countries from reaching economic growth and social development.

I am thinking about the importance of sequencing and timing when curbing Indonesia's sex work. It is noteworthy that Indonesia's parliament passed the criminal code against the practice of extramarital sex upon the end of the global public crisis of Coronavirus. While I don't think the timing of passing such a criminal code was intentionally designed (as Indonesia had endeavoured to pass such a code for years), criminalizing extramarital sex soon after the declaration of the end of a pandemic could be beneficial to Indonesia's crackdowns on prostitution and sex trafficking. Owing to the economic downturns caused by the pandemic, Indonesia experienced a budget deficit of 3.0 per cent and 2.4 per cent in 2021 and 2022, respectively. However, upon the end of the public health crisis, the IMF (2023) forecasts that Indonesia will enjoy a 5.0 per cent national economic growth in 2023. These figures presented by the IMF demonstrate that Indonesia is recovering well from the economic downturns and repositions itself on the trajectory to reach more economic success ahead.

Under the climate of positive national economic development, more foreign and domestic investments are plausibly recorded, more job opportunities are created, unemployment rates fall, the availability of public funds that can be used for implementing social protection and pro-poor policies increases, and fewer underprivileged women and children in Indonesia shall experience transitorily or chronically financial hardships.

INTRODUCTION

This book engages in the sociological discourse on the (de-)construction of extramarital sex in commercial forms in Indonesia. I explain and address related social theories such as social control and social learning theories and the discussion about the nuanced relationships between poverty and crime in order to support my declaration of how prostitution and sex trafficking occur and persist in Indonesian contexts from a socio-economic perspective. Also, I apply additional theories named cultural deviance and social disorganization theories in order to support the rationalization of how prostitution and sex trafficking are both socio-economically and institutionally constructed. So long as how sex work is being constructed is detailed and clarified, I, in this book, am allowed to suggest how deconstruction should be practised.

SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY

The justification of how juvenile and adult cohorts express criminality or delinquency can be supported by the social control theory. According to the theory, those expressing criminality or delinquency often lack the social forces to harness them from presenting deviance in terms of their behaviours. The social control theory states that people are discouraged from taking part in criminality or delinquency by their social bonds to society (Agnew 1991). Negative life events, such as poor treatment by others (like parents, teachers and peers), lessen the strength of social control over people's criminality or delinquency. For example, when parents and teachers tend to apply devaluing and demeaning approaches to educate the younger generations, the latter cohorts are at higher risk of developing substantial strains that foster their expression of criminality and delinquency. Those who consistently encounter parental absence, denial or rejection, in addition to whoever encounters school and peer bullying, are major drivers of the diminished levels of social bonds to communities and society.

INTRODUCTION

Addressing a gathering at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in March 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping talked about the concept of mankind being a community of shared future or with a common destiny. This was Xi's first major foreign policy speech, during his first foreign visit, after taking over as president. Analytical and media discourse at the time paid little attention to this concept. Instead, much of the discussion was focused on what appeared to be the articulation of shared grievances and a convergence of objectives between China and Russia. From a policy perspective, the idea of people being a community of common destiny or shared future was rather vague. Moreover, it did not seem novel. In fact, in Chinese discourse, this concept can be traced back to the pre-Xi era.

As far back as 2007, there were references to people in the Mainland and Taiwan forming a community of common destiny. The phrase was also used by Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao, in his report to the 18th Party Congress in November 2012. In Hu's articulation, the concept of mankind as a community of common destiny largely seemed to refer to the interconnected nature of the world. This implied that it was in China's interests to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries. At the same time, it encapsulated ideas of the need to pursue the construction of a global order featuring common security and common development.

However, in the decade that followed Xi's ascension to power, Chinese foreign policy gradually but decisively shifted away from the era of keeping a low profile towards more purposeful and proactive efforts to shape a favourable external environment. This was reflected in the description of Chinese foreign policy under Xi as exploring a new pathway of major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics. In this context, the concept of mankind being a community of shared future began to acquire greater salience. It implied the desire to construct “a new concept of morality and interests” in international affairs, with the focus primarily being on China's neighbouring countries and the developing world. Chinese scholars argued that the concept embodied China's responsibility and efforts to reform global governance.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• This paper discusses Chinese President Xi Jinping's flagship global initiatives’ normative implications for the world order.

• It argues that the Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI) and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), which are key pillars of China's proposal to build a community of common destiny for mankind, are driven by Beijing's desire to cultivate authority in the international system.

• Analysing the speeches by Chinese leaders, policy documents, media and analytical discourse in China, along with policy decisions, this study provides an assessment of the Chinese leadership's worldview. It places the launch of GDI, GSI and GCI within this context, before detailing the elements of each initiative and offering a critical analysis.

• This study concludes that through GDI, GSI and GCI, the Chinese leadership hopes to shape an external environment that not only ensures regime security but is also favourable to China's development and security interests. In doing so, however, it is reshaping key norms of global governance towards a fundamentally illiberal direction.