* Dependent Communities: Aid and Politics in Cambodia and East Timor
* Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia
* Political Change, Democratic Transitions and Security in Southeast Asia
* Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis
* The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam
| Dependent Communities: Aid and Politics in Cambodia and East Timor |
by Caroline Hughes
Cornell University Press, 2009
Dependent Communities investigates the political situations in contemporary Cambodia and East Timor, where powerful international donors intervened following deadly civil conflicts. This comparative analysis critiques international policies that focus on rebuilding state institutions to accommodate the global market. In addition, it explores the dilemmas of politicians in Cambodia and East Timor who struggle to satisfy both wealthy foreign benefactors and constituents at home.
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| Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia |
by Dan Slater
Cambridge University Press, 2010
Like the postcolonial world more generally, Southeast Asia exhibits tremendous variation in state capacity and authoritarian durability. Ordering Power draws on theoretical insights dating back to Thomas Hobbes to develop a unified framework for explaining both of these political outcomes. States are especially strong and dictatorships especially durable when they have their origins in protection pacts: broad elite coalitions unified by shared support for heightened state power and tightened authoritarian controls as bulwarks against especially threatening and challenging types of contentious politics. These coalitions provide the elite collective action underpinning strong states, robust ruling parties, cohesive militaries, and durable authoritarian regimes all at the same time. Comparative-historical analysis of seven Southeast Asian countries (Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand) reveals that subtly divergent patterns of contentious politics after World War II provide the best explanation for the dramatic divergence in Southeast Asia ‘s contemporary states and regimes.
Cambridge University Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books
| Political Change, Democratic Transitions and Security in Southeast Asia |
by Mely Caballero-Anthony
Routledge, 2009
The fragility of democracy in Southeast Asia is a subject of increasing concern. While there has been significant movement in the direction of democratisation, the authoritarian tendencies of popularly elected leaders and the challenges posed by emerging security threats have given rise to a shared concern about the return of military rule in the region. This book examines the nature of political transitions in Southeast Asia and why political transitions towards political liberalisation and democracy have often failed to take off. It considers political systems in Southeast Asia that have gone through significant periods of transition but continue to face serious challenges toward democratic consolidation. Some key questions that the book focuses on are – Are emerging democracies in the region threatened by weak, failed or authoritarian leadership? Are political institutions that are supposed to support political changes toward democratisation weak or strong? How can democratic systems be made more resilient? and What are the prospects of democracy becoming the defining political landscape in Southeast Asia?
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| Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis |
edited by Erik Kuhonta, Dan Slater, & Tuong Vu
Stanford University Press, 2008
This book argues that Southeast Asian political studies have made important contributions to theory building in comparative politics through a dialogue involving theory, area studies, and qualitative methodology. The book provides a state-of-the-art review of key topics in the field, including: state structures, political regimes, political parties, contentious politics, civil society, ethnicity, religion, rural development, globalization, and political economy. The chapters allow readers to trace the development of Southeast Asian politics and to address central debates in comparative politics. The book will serve as a valuable reference for undergraduate and graduate students, scholars of Southeast Asian politics, and comparativists engaged in theoretical debates at the heart of political science.
Stanford University Press | Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books
| The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam |
by Christopher S. Bond, Lewis M. Simons
John Wiley & Sons, 2009
A U.S. senator and Pulitzer Prizewinner, both experts on Southeast Asia, offer a bold new approach to address radical Islam and fight global terror
The next front in the war on terror is in Southeast Asia, warn Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) and Lewis Simons, both leading experts on the region. The U.S. has bankrupted its policies in dealing with the Islamic world. As Fundamentalist Islam gains traction in Southeast Asia, backed by Saudi money, the U.S. must act swiftly to re-establish its credibility there and help defuse global terrorism. Bond and Simons present a bold plan to accomplish this key goal by substituting smart power (civilians in sneakers and sandals) for force (soldiers in combat boots) in Indonesia and the other nations of Southeast Asia, home to the world’s greatest concentration of Muslims.Introduces a critical new “smart power” approach to combat global terrorWritten by two experts on Southeast Asia with extensive contacts in Washington and overseasTackles a crucial challenge to U.S. foreign policy and President Obama’s administrationExamines a wide range of views and people, from Osama bin Laden-trained armed terrorists to radical clerics to western-trained officials who plead for Americans to come to their countries to teach, start small businesses, and improve health care
“The Next Front” offers exactly the kind of fresh, out-of-the-box thinking the United States needs to rebuild its credibility and transcend its foreign policy failures.
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