After four years in eclipse, a new political party is emerging from, the shadows of military rule in Burma. It is part of the revolution set in motion by the men who seized power in March 1962. In the four years following that event, the military rulers have persisted in their determination to remake Burma along the lines set forth in their ideological stafement, Burmese Way To Socialism (BWS). Thus far, the coup leaders show no signs of growing tired and desiring to return to the barracks. However, to insure the completion of their revolution and to anticipate the day when they will step out of office, they are in the process of recruiting, training and organizing a new elite of soldiers and civilians who are loyal to their ideas, dedicated to their programs and pledged to carry on when they are given the opportunity.

The main characteristics of the Philippine political party system since the achievement of Philippine independence in 1946 have been the following:

1. It is a two party system. Two major parties, the Nacionalistas and the Liberals, dominate the scene. Their nation-wide combined vote at the six post-war presidential elections held since 1946 averaged 94 per cent of the votes cast. At both the eleven senatorial elections and the six elections for members of the House of Representatives held during the same period, the combined two-party vote was also 94 per cent. At the five gubernatorial elections held since 1947, the corresponding figure was 97 per cent.* In none of these election years did the combined two-party vote for any of these offices fall below 70 per cent.1 While minor parties have appeared from time to time, few have remained active for an extended period of years, and none has seriously threatened to replace either of the two existing major parties as the governing party or as the principal party of the opposition.

It would be easy, and not altogether inaccurate, to begin and end an article on Cambodian politics with the observation that Prince Sihanouk's leadership of the country has rendered political parties unnecessary. Since the establishment of the Sangkum Reastr Niyurn, the People's Socialist Community, in 1955, this political movement — the distinction is one made by its founder — has dominated Cambodian politics and succeeded in eclipsing the parties which existed up to 1955, with one minor exception. This exception is the Pracheachon, a partly clandestine front party for the Cambodian Communist Party. Its importance is negligible in a country in which social grievances, in contrast to so much of the rest of Asia, are limited, particularly in the countryside, where the peasant is normally a land-holder unencumbered by major problems of land indebtedness or land shortage.

Writing about political parties in Indonesia makes one suddenly aware of how little research has been done on the subject. With the decline of the parliamentary system since 1957, interest has shifted away from the party order towards the forces of Guided Democracy: President Soekarno, the army, and the Communists. Among the parties, only the Communists have received a great deal of specific attention.

The Geneva Agreement of 1954 in effect divided Vietnam into two mutually independent states, aligned internationally with hostile power blocs owing allegiance to competitive ideological systems. In the North a fully committed Communist regime has maintained political and administrative hegemony, entrusting control of the governing process and of social change and economic planning to the Dang Lao Dong, the Workers' (Communist) Party of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).

Following the initialing of the Treaty of Hue in 1884 ceding Tonkin and Annam to France as “protectorates”, the Vietnamese Emperor Ham Nghi led a nationalist imperial party against consummation of the colonialists gains. This Nguyen imperial party, a regional guerrilla and terrorist faction based only in the north central section of the nation and operating from highland fiefs, relied upon violence, the personality of its leader, the mystic of his cause and the mystic of nationalism. This combative “party,” while hardly a party in the strictest sense of the term and perhaps not even a movement in the strictest sense of that term, was defeated with the capture of its leader in 1888. Yet this party has continued to serve in miniature as the model for subsequent political party activities in Vietnam. Nearly all of the numerous Vietnamese parties have more or less emulated the patterns of behavior of the first anti-colonial party and few in South Vietnam have gone much beyond modifying the tactics of that vanguard group.

Whatever impact the formation of Malaysia had on the areas involved, the merger, in 1963, of mainland Malaya with Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah (North Borneo) — and the separation of Singapore in 1965 — has been a complication in the life of the political analyst in the midst of efforts to formulate generalizations about the country's political life. Obviously adjustments are being made in the whole range of political affairs as the various components of the enlarged federation are in the course of integration into a single operating political system. Yet, differences remain, and there is still much to be learned by considering the component parts as separate entities. Distortions will result from such a procedure, but as long as the researcher and his audience are alerted to the distortions, and no claim of completeness made, the built-in error need not be too misleading.

The political life in Sarawak has been characterised by confusion, disunity, and repeated crisis. As a primitive hinterland permeated by relatively sophisticated forms of political conflicts, it offers a rare phenomenon to political analysts. Several insightful articles have recently appeared concerning various aspects of its party system. I hope to concentrate on some aspects that I have not seen previously discussed.

During the past decade, Singapore has been characterized by a relatively open and competitive party system, thus setting this nation apart from a number of her Southeast Asian neighbors. However, the travails experienced by the system as it has evolved are no less in evidence today than they have been heretofore.

It is a crime of political science that its creations of the post World War II decades — the area specialist and the model builder — so seldom communicate with one another. Professor Harry Eckstein has lamented that theory building sometimes serves as a vicarious substitute for research;1 in the same way, comments about local politics by area specialists sometimes seem to serve as a vicarious substitute for a study of the political process.