Evi Fitriani
Professor of International Relations, University of Indonesia
The Rise of Global South and Its Impact on Multipolarity: Indonesia’s Experience
In the last two decades, the international system experienced (and is still experiencing) global power restructuring that involved not only existing status-quo power centers but also global south, consisting of emerging economies and technologic powerhouse. Being the host of 1955 Bandung Asia Africa Conference and maintaining various engagements with developing countries at regional and global levels to help strengthen multipolar world, Indonesia has been named among the key countries of the global south. However, Indonesia’s experiences showed that its stand in global south depended on the country’s domestic development. Internal problems generated by difficult political transformation and arduous socio-economic development hindered the country from taking consistent roles among global south countries. Nevertheless, Indonesia managed to build vast networks of multidimensional partnerships in a multipolar world, maintaining friendly relations with both global south and north, as well as with Eastern and Western countries. The country’s independent and active foreign policy does matter.
Speaker Bio
Evi Fitriani, Professor of International Relations, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia and Head of the Department from 2012 to 2016. She is also the Indonesian Country Coordinator of the Network of East Asian Think-tanks (NEAT), the Track Two of the ASEAN Plus Three (APT). She obtained her PhD from the Australian National University (ANU) in 2011 and was trained in international relations discipline in Indonesia, the UK, and the USA, as well as in Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Hungary. She became a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne, University of Meiji, and University of Malaya as well as a guest professor at Yonsei University, University of Maastricht, Mandalay University, Chuo University, University of Turin, National University of Singapore, University of Tokyo, and Beijing University.
