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Myanmar's political system during the 2010–2021 period shares much in common with the political systems of neighbouring India and nearby Sri Lanka, and so this article identifies all three as ethnocratic, arguing these polities represent a variation of ethnocracy which leans authoritarian and is specifically Islamophobic. This article builds on discourse about the nature of ethnocracy to introduce the label 'Saffron Ethnocracy', which is used to identify the specific Islamophobic variation of ethnocracy observable in India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. The saffron label recognises the common use of saffron clothing as identity markers by Hindus and Buddhists, the dominant religious groups in each country. While all three South Asian countries were certainly procedural democracies during the period studied, majoritarianism strongly impacted their political systems, affecting citizenship laws and practices, contributing to assertions about civilisational uniqueness of dominant groups, empowering religio-political institutions of the dominant groups, dramatically curtailing freedom of expression and severely undermining the standing of minorities, particularly Muslim populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue critically examines the interplay between the law and politics of state trans/formation, status precarity and the abuse of law. Globally, governments have exercised state power to undermine citizenship status, democratic well-being and the rule of law. This introduction makes the case for this focus and highlights the range of the special issue's intervention. Firstly, it shows how the contributions in the special issue build upon scholarship that tackles these three values independently and offers a more comprehensive analysis of contemporary challenges of the law and politics of citizenship. It studies the mutual attrition of citizenship, law and democracy by adopting a focus on South and Southeast Asia, especially India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Secondly, it emphasises the special issue's methodological contribution by drawing from the theory-generative capacities of focusing on Asia and the Global South more generally. Thirdly, the introduction highlights the cross-cutting substantive contributions of the articles, especially status liminality and statelessness, securitisation and authoritarian politics, bureaucracy and paperwork, and minority and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bangladesh, a littoral state of Bay of Bengal, has historically played a marginal role in regional and global politics. Despite being a maritime nation, the maritime considerations have been absent in the country's foreign policy formulation process. The article argues that the resolution of its maritime disputes with its neighbours has placed 'maritime considerations' in the heart of its foreign policy and the country has moved away from 'land-centric' regionalism to a more 'maritime-centric' regionalism over the past decade. This transformative shift represents the country's ambition to become a 'middle power' in regional and global affairs with a critical objective to achieve 'security pluralism' in the Bay of Bengal region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "non-nuclear five" (NN5) countries consisting of Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka have common geographical and/or regional borders with India and have historically been in their big neighbor's historic and cultural sphere of influence. Yet, over the years, as China has made significant inroads into the South Asian region, NN5 are getting entangled in the India-China rivalry. In this paper, we posit how the NN5 exhibit a common pattern of strategic hedging given their bilateral relations with regional hegemon India, along with the rising influence of China. By analyzing comparative trends in the South Asian region, we contribute empirically to the research on "hedging" in international relations, since to date no study has examined all these five countries using this concept. The study is relevant because the US administration is increasingly focusing on "small countries" in its Indo-Pacific strategy, and the NN5 are such countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]