A book newly acquired by the Thammasat University Library should be useful for students interested in ASEAN studies, history, political science, international relations, diplomacy, political economy, and related subjects.
Southeast Asia In The New International Era by Robert Dayley is an overview, now in its ninth and latest edition, published in 2024.
Dr. Robert Dayley is a professor of International Political Economy at The College of Idaho, the United States of America (USA).
The TU Library collection also includes other books about different aspects of ASEAN political economy.
A review of an earlier edition of the same book posted on the website of the Association for Asian Studies, a scholarly, non-political and non-profit professional association focusing on Asia and the study of Asia based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, stated:
Southeast Asia can seem overwhelming to integrate into a course, given its eleven countries and considerable cultural diversity. Robert Dayley’s Southeast Asia in the New International Era steps in to save the day. Organized into thirteen chapters, the book provides a thorough overview and introduction to the political developments of each of the eleven countries. The introductory chapter provides a historical survey and a discussion of cultural features of the region, and the concluding chapter draws everything together by giving a useful overview of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is the most important regional organization in Southeast Asia. The remaining chapters focus on each particular country, and each is broken into sections: Institutions and Social Groups, State-Society Relations and Democracy, Economy and Development, Foreign Relations, and a Conclusion. This organizational strategy facilitates comparisons across chapters. Each chapter has endnotes with sources that are cited, which are useful for further study. The chapters are concise, and the average length of each is twenty-five pages. The book as a whole is highly readable, informative, and suitable for scholars looking to refresh, as well as those new to the study of Southeast Asia.
Dayley, a professor of International Political Economy and Asian Studies at the College of Idaho, has been the primary author of this book since 2011, and this is its seventh edition, having been established by renowned political scientist of Southeast Asia Clark Neher. Dayley’s research focuses on Southeast Asian comparative political economy and agrarian change in Thailand; this expertise shows in the especially insightful chapter on Thailand. Key themes in the book are the development of political systems and whether democracy can exist in the region (although at times one wonders if an overzealous interest in democracy obscures the unique sociopolitical formations particular to Southeast Asia). The book highlights many of the contemporary issues for the region, including the conflicts over the South China Sea concerning the Spratly and Paracel islands. This particular issue has gained more attention in the United States in the past few months, with the new Donald Trump administration and questions of American military involvement in that area. Dayley gives some historical context to these and other issues, although this is primarily a book about political development and political economy.
Today’s students may be more familiar with Southeast Asia as a land of glittering beaches, palm trees, and exotic cuisine, rather than as a site of Cold War conflicts. Dayley’s highly accessible Southeast Asia in the New International Era would be useful in an undergraduate survey course on Asian studies, Asian politics, comparative politics, or international studies. It could also serve as a text or a reference for AP World History courses. In AP World History courses, Dayley’s book would be most useful in the “Industrialization and Global Integration” (ca.1750 to 1900) and “Acceleration of Global Change and Realignments” (ca.1900 to present) themes, and the “State Building, Expansion, and Conflict,” and “Creation, Expansion, and Interaction of Economic Systems” thematic learning objectives […]
Another review of an earlier edition, published in the Journal of Third World Studies suggested:
Robert Dayley and Clark D. Neher have provided a comprehensive and detailed survey describing and delineating the historical, political, and cultural developments in Southeast Asia. The authors explore the impact of globalization, transnational terrorism, economic volatility, policy dilemmas, and drive toward democratization in Southeast Asia, which has a population of more than 600 million people. Between change and continuity, between a widening gap between rich and poor, amidst contestation between modernization and traditional roots, and between the agrarian economy and rapid strides toward industrialization, the scene in Southeast Asia is a complex one beset with contradictions and diversities.
The book encompasses eleven country-specific chapters, evaluating each country in terms of its unique political history, major social groups and institutions, democracy, society and development, and foreign policies. Southeast Asia in the New International Era analyzes contemporary politics of the region at both systemic and sub-systemic levels from the perspectives of both the Southeast Asian region and the larger international community. […]
One of the highlights of the book is in categorization of Southeast Asian political regimes. By employing Larry Diamond’s sixfold typology and the Freedom House ratings (free, partially free, and not free), the authors distinguish two types of democratic regimes (liberal and electoral); three types of authoritarian regimes (competitive, hegemonic electoral, and politically closed), and ambiguous regimes. Indonesia, one of the electoral democracies, may be categorized as “free” and yet one can argue that its democracy is fragile in nature and that the parameters of democracy are untested in spite of the end of Suharto’s authoritarian rule and the ushering in of liberal democracy. The Philippines, classified as “partially free,” is also closer to an electoral democracy than a liberal democracy. This nascent democracy is flawed in nature as it is marked by recurring violence, lawlessness, corruption, and intimidation as a continuing legacy of the Ferdinand Marcos years. Thailand had a relatively successful, pluralistic system that could be categorized as liberal democracy at least from 1998 to 2005. Thailand in recent years has been beset by serious, electoral-driven political crises, a military coup, challenges to constitutional legitimacy, judicial interventions, and clashes between the political class and government security forces. Singapore, in contrast, is a case where one particular political entity, namely the People’s Action Party, has appropriated the role of one-party dominant government by restricting the space of opposition parties. The authors are off the mark when they describe the system as one of “manipulating a politicized judiciary.”
Singapore is a case of judicial activism marked by pseudo-democracy in a hegemonic, electoral authoritarian arrangement. Overall, Southeast Asia in the New International Era is an excellent work that showcases a balanced, insightful and critical analysis of Southeast Asia, a region that provides both changes and challenges. The book will be extremely useful to research scholars, area study specialists, foreign policy analysts, and academics in international relations.
(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)