Why do authoritarian nations brand themselves? And how do they understand and use this practice? In her new book, Dr Petra Alderman offers a novel approach to the study of nation branding as a strategy for political legitimation in authoritarian regimes using the example of military-ruled Thailand. This talk discussed how Thailand’s military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (2014-2019), sought to nation branding to shape the social attitudes and behaviours of Thai citizens during the almost 5 years of direct military rule.
This seminar was recorded and you can watch the video here.
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Dr Petra Alderman is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Leadership for Inclusive and Democratic Politics at the University of Birmingham, and a Research Fellow of the Birmingham’s Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability & Representation (CEDAR). Her main areas of research expertise are nation branding, authoritarian politics, elections and electoral management, and the politics of Thailand.
Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (2007), Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines (2020, with Jaime Faustino) and a forthcoming book Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia.