Suchergebnisse

A review essay on a book by Heikki Patomaki, The Political Economy of Global Security: War, Future Crises and Changes in Global Governance (London & New York: Routledge, 2008).

Southeast Asia's strategic location at major sea-lanes of communication, its previous role as a theatre of super power rivalries, its neighbourhood to China & India, its increasing economic prosperity & its inherent political instability have secured the region unrelenting attention of political scientists. Yet, the region is politically, economically & culturally highly diverse & fragmented. This diversity is also reflected in research on the politics of the region. Southeast Asian politics -- more than any other Asian sub-region -- thus defies sweeping generalizations about the state of the art. However, a paper committed to identify new research trends can not do justice to the diverging research agendas in the region's different countries. It must search for common themes which are relevant for understanding the political dynamics of the region & at the same time enrich the general discourses of the discipline. While this amounts to the squaring of the circle, the following sections nevertheless try to pinpoint where political scientists have made innovative contributions & where lacunae exist. It starts with a few general observations on recent trends in the study of Southeast Asian politics & then proceeds to international relations & comparative politics, two major sub-disciplines of political science. It focuses, albeit not exclusively, on regionalism & democratization as the dominant themes in the post-Cold War period. The paper concludes with a few proposals to improve the institutional context of (German) political scientists working on Southeast Asia. References. Adapted from the source document.