SEAPRG gives two Best Paper Prizes for papers related to politics in Southeast Asia, presented at APSA in the prior year. We have two award categories: 1) open category; or (2) emerging scholar category. To be eligible for the emerging scholar category, all authors must have earned their PhDs no more than three years before the time of nomination. For co-authored papers, we use the most senior author to classify the paper. We welcome self-nominations. To be included in the consideration process, nominees must submit a PDF copy of the paper they presented at APSA, the section/division/panel title wherein the paper was presented, as well as all the names and institutions of all the authors.
The winning papers are selected by SEAPRG’s prize committee, which is typically comprised of the prior year’s award winners.
Winners are announced during SEAPRG’s business meeting at APSA.
This year’s prize winners
SEAPRG is pleased to announce the winners of its 2023 Best Paper Awards. This year’s winners are:
Emerging scholar category:
Htet Thiha Zaw (University of British Columbia): “The Pre-colonial Roots of Colonial Coercion: Evidence from British Burma”
Open Category:
Nathanael Gratias Sumaktoyo (National University of Singapore): “The Broader Political Significance of Houses of Worship”
Honorable Mention: Jeremy Siow “Bilingual Education Reduces Ethnic Outgroup Discrimination Through Perspective-Taking”
These papers were selected from a strong pool of candidates that attests to the high quality of research being done on and in Southeast Asia by SEAPRG members. We thank this year’s prize committee (Matthew Nanes, Dotan Haim, and Oren Samet) for their work!
IMPORTANT: Did you see a great paper on Southeast Asia presented at APSA 2024? Please nominate it for the 2024 Best Paper Awards! The call for nominations will be sent out to APSA SEAPRG members in October.
Previous Award Winners
2022
Open category:
Oren Samet (UC Berkeley), Aila Matanock (UC Berkeley), and Leonardo Arriola (UC Berkeley): “Facebook Usage and Outgroup Intolerance in Myanmar ”
Dotan Haim (Florida State University), Matthew Nanes (St. Louis University), and Nico Ravanilla (UC San Diego): “How does Community Policing Affect Police Attitudes?”
2021
Emerging scholar category: “Can Encounters with the State Improve Minority-State Relations? Evidence from Myanmar,” by Jangai Jap (UT Austin)
Open category: “Is Electoral Accountability Possible in a Single-Party Regime? Experimental Evidence from Vietnam,” by Edmund Malesky (Duke University), Jason Douglas Todd (Duke Kunshan University), and Anh Tran (Indiana University)
2020:
Emerging scholar category: “The Indigenous Civil Service in Late-Colonial Indonesia: Insights from a New Dataset,” by Nicholas Kuipers (UC Berkeley)
2019:
Emerging scholar category: “Recognition as Integration: Indigenous Rights and National Citizenship in the Philippines,” by Nina McMurry (WZB Berlin)
Open category: “Deadly Populism: How Local Political Outsiders Drive Duterte’s War on Drugs in the Philippines” by Nico Ravanilla (University of California, San Diego), Renard Sexton (Emory University), and Dotan Haim (Florida State University)
2018: “Merit, Discrimination, and Democratization: An Analysis of Promotion Patterns in Indonesia’s Civil Service,” by Jan Pierskalla (Ohio State University), Adam Lauretig (Ohio State University), Andrew Rosenberg (Ohio State University), and Audrey Sacks (World Bank)
2017: “Civilian Social Networks and Credible Counterinsurgency,” by Dotan Haim (University of California, San Diego)
2016: “Explaining Elections in Singapore: Party Credibility and Valence Politics,” by Steven Oliver (Yale-NUS College) and Kai Ostwald (University of British Columbia)
2015: “Inducement or Entry Ticket? Broker Networks and Vote Buying in Indonesia,” by Edward Aspinall (Australian National University), Michael Davidson (University of California, San Diego), Allen Hicken (University of Michigan), and Meredith Weiss (SUNY Albany)
2014: “Productive Intolerance: Godly Nationalism in Indonesia,” by Jeremy Menchik (Boston University)