For some time now, there has been sense in the American political science academy that the study of regions and the development of theory are at odds.Footnote 1 For critics, regionalists typically tell interesting ‘stories’ but lack methodological and theoretical rigor. The single or small-n case study approach often undertaken by area studies scholars is considered archaic and at minimum, needs to be buttressed by quantitative and game-theoretic approaches. Regionalists are behind the curve, so to speak.
It is in this milieu that Kuhonta, Slater, and Vu (KSV hereafter) offer a set of arguments about the relevance of Southeast Asian regional studies and its productivity in political science. KSV reject the view that regionalists face a necessary trade-off between region and theory arguing that ‘detailed research of a small number of countries can be an ideal route to developing more convincing theoretical claims’.Footnote 2 Their goal is thus ‘to improve and invigorate the scholarly synergy between region and discipline’.Footnote 3
Each chapter in the volume, 14 in all, is penned by an expert of Southeast Asian politics. The authors range from senior and established scholars to younger more recently minted Ph.D.s. Together, they assemble a ‘state of the art’ analysis of Southeast Asian scholarship on major political topics across three broad areas: state, society, and political economy. Most chapters analyze the trajectory of ideas and key works in a given subject, reflect on dominant methodological approaches undertaken by scholars, and conclude with prospects for future research.
The first section on states and regimes includes chapters on approaches to the state, regime durability and transition, and electoral politics. State-centered approaches and regime analysis have been quite prominent in the region and scholars here have clearly helped to build and hone theoretical ideas. On the other hand, the authors suggest that work on elections and parties is just now gaining momentum for scholars of the region and a productive research agenda lies ahead.
The next section on social structures and forces includes chapters on contentious mass politics, agrarian politics, civil society, religion, and ethnicity. While firmly embedded in political science, these chapters also highlight how much Southeast Asian political studies interact with other disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, and history. The chapters on religion and ethnicity, for example, show how political scientists owe enormous debts to anthropologists who identified patterns of religion, developed theoretical insights on identity, and pioneered the interpretive method in social science.Footnote 4
The third section on Southeast Asia's political economy discusses economic development, rural development, and globalization. Southeast Asia's stark economic variation over both space and time make it an ideal place to explore theories of development and underdevelopment. Southeast Asian political economy also lends itself to intra-regional comparisons in a way that other themes typically do not. Thus Southeast Asian development can also be compared to the East Asian or Latin American experience.
The book concludes with a punchy reflection about the place of qualitative methodology and its relationship to other approaches in the discipline. Donald K. Emmerson takes issue with the emerging consensus in political science that marries quantitative, qualitative, and rational choice approaches. He argues that there is a power relation embedded in this disciplinary consensus, where qualitative analysis plays second fiddle to game-theoretic and quantitative approaches. It is a thought-provoking way to conclude the volume and highlights continued epistemological tensions in the discipline.
Southeast Asia in Political Science is successful on several grounds. It is, first, comprehensive in scope and up-to-date in its ‘state of the art’. In this regard, it will be an invaluable resource for scholars of Southeast Asia. Second, it demonstrates the strong linkages between region and discipline in a systematic and convincing fashion. Southeast Asian studies has clearly imported, honed, and exported various concepts on a whole range of issues. Third, the chapters show how qualitative research can emulate, complement, and even surpass the rigor of other approaches, such as rational choice or quantitative approaches.
The volume also presents a strong case for more explicitly comparative work within the region. As several chapters indicate, for a wide variety of practical and intellectual reasons, scholarship on Southeast Asia has often been based on single country case studies. While recognizing the strengths and contributions of such studies, the volume also calls for more research with explicit cross-country comparisons so as to take advantage of the region's immense variation and thus strengthen the conceptual arguments put forth by scholars.
Breaking down the boundary (perceived or real) between discipline and region is an important endeavor and the authors have succeeded in that goal. At the same time, such an endeavor does perhaps reinforce others kinds of boundaries as a result. For example, KSV take the region of Southeast Asia as given, whereas scholars have at times questioned the sensibility of treating it as a coherent whole.Footnote 5 More discussion about what constitutes a region and why it makes sense as an analytic category might have been useful. Similarly, the authors take the discipline of political science as given and while highlighting cross-disciplinary fertilization, do little to problematize the distinction between the disciplines themselves.
These are, however, minor quibbles in an otherwise superb volume. While edited works with so many authors can often be uneven, the quality of this one is high throughout, expertly edited for coherence and continuity. Invaluable for scholars of Southeast Asia, the volume also reaches out to scholars of other regions and comparative political scientists more broadly who might examine this book to reflect on the relationship between region, theory, and method and learn what Southeast Asia has to offer.
