I am an University Scholar and Associate Professor of Political Science in McMaster University, ON Canada. My research focuses on the sources of authoritarian resilience and political representation of women and ethnic minorities, especially in East and Southeast Asia. Currently, I am working on the impact of digital technology and social media, especially in authoritarian regimes. You will find more information about my research, teaching and collaborative activities on Asia in this website.

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News

Putting Women Up: Gender Equality and Politics in Myanmar!

by Netina Tan and Meredith Weiss

For the duration of Myanmar’s experiment with electoral democracy, why did some women run for political office, and not others? What role did gatekeepers such as party leaders play in those decisions, and using what criteria in selecting candidates? How did experience of domestic violence or harassment affect women’s likelihood to participate in politics, especially beyond the local level? And what implications might these earlier patterns have for a post-coup Myanmar, should meaningful elections be restored? The contributors to Putting Women Up: Gender Equality and Politics in Myanmar answer these questions by examining the internal politics of nine political parties in Myanmar and both men’s and women’s attitudes towards and experiences of political leadership. Drawing on extensive interview, survey, and focus-group discussion data collected from across Myanmar in 2017 and 2020, this book offers a mixed-methods approach to explain how factors from party rules to formative personal trauma to patriarchal biases to ethno-religious context shape women’s and men’s likelihood to join local and national politics. The findings expand on culturalist insights on gender inequality to provide context-sensitive, evidence-backed policy recommendations to promote women’s political leadership, despite militarization and violence in post-coup Myanmar. Read more here!

Electoral Malpractice in Asia: Bending the Rules

by Netina Tan and Kharis Templeman

What causes widespread abuse of the electoral process? How do political elites choose and weigh the relative costs and benefits of differing kinds of electoral manipulation? How and why have patterns of electoral conduct changed over time? In Electoral Malpractice in Asia, we answer these questions and systematically compare the quality of elections across eleven democracies and electoral autocracies. Covering a range of regimes and practices, the 13 chapters highlight the varying ways that electoral integrity is violated and the consequences for the quality of democracy across the region. Read more here!

Special Issue in AJCP: Democratic Backsliding in Southeast Asia

by Yuko Kasuya and Netina Tan

Globally, democracy is said to be backsliding. What about in Southeast Asia? This special issue of six articles highlight the key findings and implications of democratic backsliding in this dynamic region. Collectively, the articles suggest the importance of unpacking regime components and the attitudinal elite-mass gap in analyzing the quality of democracy. For an introduction and overview of the region’s democratic landscape using the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset and patterns of backsliding in six selected cases, see Introduction by Yuko Kasuya and Netina Tan here.

Dr. Netina Tan named University Scholar