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This essay reviews research on Southeast Asia that has appeared in World Politics , with a
focus on articles published since the mid-1970s. Drawing on debates about the nature
of the region that are commonly found within the field of Southeast Asian area studies,
the essay identifies two axes along which Southeast Asian politics research varies: in its
emphasis on the connectedness versus autonomy of the region, and in its focus on individual country experiences versus common regional dynamics. Characterizing the Southeast Asia–focused research in World Politics in this way helps us to understand more generally the relationship between area studies and political science over the past fifty years.

Three recent books introduce political scientists to important debates and conceptual challenges for contemporary social science research. Rather than proposing new methods, these books propose new frameworks that their authors believe should guide current practice. The authors and editors seek to guide researchers through the research process, from asking questions and proposing theories to operationalizing concepts and executing comparative research designs. Reading the three books together will give researchers a comprehensive overview of the state of the discipline on important questions like how and what to compare, what social science concepts should refer to, and how to proceed when theory and empirics disagree.

Populists in Southeast Asia generally refrain from invoking anti-migrant and anti-minority sentiments as part of their mobilizational strategies. This differentiates them from "exclusionary" populists in Europe, even though many Southeast Asian countries are diverse societies with long histories of migration and ethnic chauvinism. Because the categories of peoplehood that were set alongside the onset of mass politics at independence remain salient today, they constrain contemporary Asian populists' rhetorical and mobilizational strategies—even in Southeast Asia's diverse societies. The Southeast Asian experience reveals the importance of historical sequence in nationalist mobilization and mass incorporation in shaping popular identity, citizenship, and membership in contemporary populism. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

This article reviews the changing status of single-country research in comparative politics, a field defined by the concept of comparison. An analysis of single-country research published in top general interest and comparative politics journals reveals that single-country research has evolved from an emphasis on description and theory generation to an emphasis on hypothesis testing and research design. This change is a result of shifting preferences for internal versus external validity combined with the quantitative and causal inference revolutions in the social sciences. A consequence of this shift is a change in substantive focus from macropolitical phenomena to micro-level processes, with consequences for the ability of comparative politics to address many substantive political phenomena that have long been at the center of the field.

This letter compares the performance of multiple imputation and listwise deletion using a simulation approach. The focus is on data that are "missing not at random" (MNAR), in which case both multiple imputation and listwise deletion are known to be biased. In these simulations, multiple imputation yields results that are frequently more biased, less efficient, and with worse coverage than listwise deletion when data are MNAR. This is the case even with very strong correlations between fully observed variables and variables with missing values, such that the data are very nearly "missing at random." These results recommend caution when comparing the results from multiple imputation and listwise deletion, when the true data generating process is unknown.

Common visual heuristics used to interpret marginal effects plots are susceptible to Type-1 error. This susceptibility varies as a function of (a) sample size, (b) stochastic error in the true data generating process, and (c) the relative size of the main effects of the causal variable versus the moderator. I discuss simple alternatives to these standard visual heuristics that may improve inference and do not depend on regression parameters.

Regions of exception play a critical role in contemporary world politics: they are sites of civil conflict, economic backwardness, secessionist movements, opposition party support, and challenges to contemporary national projects. I argue in this article that the mainstream methodological language for understanding subnational politics renders such important cases illegible precisely because of these regions' distinct histories and social structures. Using case materials drawn from contemporary Southeast Asia, I illustrate how to conceptualize regions of exception as representing particular tensions between the insights from comparative politics and area studies, with challenges for a purist view of causal inference in political science. Recognizing the challenges presented by regions of exception will help political scientists to better grasp key issues in contemporary world politics.