The argument here is that, although Indonesia would appear to be the natural leader in Southeast Asia, it has been singularly unsuccessful in putting its stamp on ASEAN. If anything, ASEAN has been put on Indonesia's bebas dan aktif (independent and active) foreign policy stamp through Indonesia's deference to self-constructed obligations to ASEAN solidarity and consensus. ASEAN's political incoherence on regional security matters suggests that, for Indonesia, strategic independence from the immobilism of ASEAN decision making would put bebas dan aktif back into play in pursuit of Indonesian national security interests.

Southeast Asian Affairs 2006 provides an informed and readable analysis of the events and developments in the region in 2005. The first four articles present the political and economic overview of the region, a nuanced analysis on terrorism, and the role of Japan in East Asian community-building efforts. Eleven country reviews as well as five special theme articles follow, delving into domestic political, economic, security, and social developments during 2005 and their implications for countries in the region and beyond.

Founded in 1974, Southeast Asian Affairs provides, without fear or favour, informed and in-depth annual analyses of this vibrant region and its component countries. It is the only publication which does this and is in its own class without peers. It is a mandatory reference and read for those seriously interested in knowing Southeast Asia.–Professor A.B. Shamsul, Founding DirectorInstitute of Ethnic Studies, Universiti Bebangsaan Malaysia."Now in its 38th edition, Southeast Asian Affairs offers an indispensable guide to this fascinating region. Lively, analytical, authoritative, and accessible, there is nothing comparable in quality or range to this series. It is a must read for academics, government officials, the business community, the media and anybody with an interest in contemporary Southeast Asia. Drawing on its unparalleled network of researchers and commentators, ISEAS is to be congratulated for producing this major contribution to our understanding of this diverse and fast-changing region, to a consistently high standard and in a timely manner."–Hal Hill, H.W. Arndt Professor of Southeast Asian EconomiesAustralian National University

"Irene Ng has written a book that gives a comprehensive portrayal of Mr Rajaratnam - one of Singapore's outstanding leaders who played a crucial part in the momentous and crisis-ridden transition to independence. This is a book about the man and his wisdom. One would fail to appreciate him until one reads this absorbing book and reflects on the acuity and breadth of his insights and his wisdom." - S. R. Nathan, President of Singapore"In the course of a 33-year career in diplomacy, I met many great leaders. Having done so, I can confidently assert that S. Rajaratnam was one of the greatest leaders I met. Sadly, few in Singapore understand how great Rajaratnam was. This well-researched comprehensive volume by Irene Ng therefore fills a real need. Both Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans will benefit a lot from reading it." - Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore "Rajaratnam is one of the founding fathers of modern Singapore. He was Singapore's first and longest serving foreign minister. He was a rebel and a revolutionary. He was an intellectual and a man of action. In this wonderful book, Irene Ng tells the story of this remarkable leader of Singapore. I found the book both enjoyable and insightful." - Tommy Koh, Ambassador-At-Large, Singapore

"This is an excellent book which will have a major impact on the current debate about the relationship between Islam and politics in Indonesia. Its greatest strength is its innovative characterization of three Indonesian Muslim models of polity, as opposed to the normal two, Islamic state and secular state. Assyaukanie brilliantly delineates a third model, which he calls the Religious Democratic State, in the process greatly clarifying our understanding of the previous models, which he now proposes to label the Islamic Democratic State and the Liberal Democratic State. Another strength of the book is methodological. Each of its arguments is solidly grounded in the thoughts and actions of particular players, Indonesian Muslim thinkers and activists." - Professor R. William Liddle, Ohio State University, United States of America

Trading in the rural areas of developing countries provides a valuable source of cash income, especially for small and landless peasants. In a case study of the village of Kakas in the province of North Sulawesi, Indonesia, the authors depict the colourful market scene of a village pasar, the selling and buying strategies of traders and customers, and the characteristics of supply and demand. They also shed light on the often-neglected non-economic aspects of the pasar, such as its value for local communication and its role in the formation of a new sense of local identity and solidarity. By means of studies of trader households this book also scrutinizes how rural households combine petty trade with other income-generating activities such as cash-cropping, subsistence production, wage labour, and even work as a civil servant. The authors also show how petty trade, though highly efficient, may well be an indicator of underdevelopment.

"Maritime power has been a key defining parameter of economic vitality and geostrategic power of nations. The first decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of China and India as confident economic powers pivoting on high growth rates and exponential expansion of science, technology and industrial growth. Sequel to their steadily growing economic clout has been the emphatic resurgence of their maritime power evident in maritime shipping, port development and the concomitant expansion of naval power.Dr Vijay Sakhuja, a former Indian Navy officer, in this pioneering study has splendidly elucidated and examined the resurgence of Asian naval power and its political-diplomatic, economic-commercial, science-technological-industrial, grand-strategic and operational-doctrinal dimensions. Using a neorealist framework, the author provides robust and insightful analysis of how China and India as great powers, using their maritime military capabilities, would evolve and act in global affairs."— Professor Sanjay Chaturvedi, Centre for the Study of Geopolitics, Punjab University, Chandigarh

Prof Leong Wai Kum not only demystifies the provisions of the Women's Charter, she also situates the Charter in Singapore's political context at the time. The author gives a balanced view of the Charter by highlighting the progressive provisions as well as its shortcomings. Outstanding is her personal view that the Charter provides a moral view of marriage as being "an equal cooperative partnership of different efforts". She also holds the view that the Charter elevates the status of women as it gives equal importance to women's unpaid work and men's paid work. The Charter enshrines and elevates the institution of marriage. At the same time it also gives the reader an impression of the state's approach to familial relationships. This is a must read book for those who are interested in gender issues. Cheng U Wen Lena Founder Member and 1st President of AWARE The author affirms the primacy of the Women's Charter as a radically progressive legislation ahead of its time in the ideals that guided the drafters and in regulating family law in Singapore. It provides thoughtful, practical suggestions, invaluable insights, rationalises the provisions of the Charter, comments on its many strengths and some of its shortcomings. Perhaps the most valuable and appealing insight that the author highlights is that the Charter offers a moral message that calls on men and women to treat each other as equal partners, discharge their obligation jointly and generally behave with consideration towards one another. I would encourage all those planning to get married to study The Singapore Women's Charter: 50 Questions. Constance Singam Writer, Social Activist, Past President of AWARE The Women's Charter is arguably one of Singapore's most important pieces of legislation as it fundamentally altered the social fabric of the country. It also has a very real and direct impact on the lives of many Singaporeans today. This book is therefore to be warmly welcomed as it deals with 50 questions that are commonly asked about the Women's Charter. Written in a clear, succinct and yet scholarly manner by Singapore's leading family law academic, the book will be helpful to Singaporeans who either need to understand the Charter better or who have an interest in how the law seeks to regulate the institution of marriage in Singapore. Prof Tan Cheng Han Dean of Law Faculty, National University of Singapore This book is a clear and concise guide to how the Women's Charter protects women and families in Singapore. It looks behind and beyond the word of the law to consider the effect and effectiveness of the statute. Undoubtedly the book is a useful tool for understanding how this legislation helps strengthen and preserve the Singapore family. Laura Hwang President, Singapore Council of Women's Organisations

VIEW FROM THE 19th FLOOR: Reflections of the first APEC Executive Director is, in the words of the author, "part narrative, part case study and part of my own thoughts about where APEC should be headed". In 1993, United States Ambassador William Bodde was sent to Singapore to set up a new economic organization. Bodde clearly relished the challenge of establishing a brand new international economic organization in the most dynamic region of the world. Instructed to keep the Secretariat small, effective and financially accountable, he describes his efforts to build a functioning, cross-cultural institution in less than a year. He also has to satisfy the fifteen-member economies spanning the Pacific that the organization reflected the wishes of all APEC members and not just those of the United States! This account, in addition to serving as a case study in international public administration, chronicles the meetings of the APEC Senior Officials and Ministers leading up to the historic APEC Leader's Meeting in Seattle at the end of 1993. He concludes the monographs with a number of provocative organizational and policy recommendations for the future of APEC.

This book takes stock of the results of some two decades of intensive archaeological research carried out on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, in combination with renewed approaches to textual sources and to art history. To improve our understanding of the trans-cultural process commonly referred to as Indianisation, it brings together specialists of both India and Southeast Asia, in a fertile inter-disciplinary confrontation. Most of the essays reappraise the millennium-long historiographic no-man's land during which exchanges between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal led, among other processes, to the Indianisation of those parts of the region that straddled the main routes of exchange. Some essays follow up these processes into better known "classical" times or even into modern times, showing that the localisation process of Indian themes has long remained at work, allowing local societies to produce their own social space and express their own ethos.

With a distinguished career spanning more than four decades, Professor Desmond Ball is one of the world's greatest scholars of strategy and defence, Australia's home-grown giant. In this collection of essays, leading political, media and academic figures, including former United States President Jimmy Carter, pay tribute to his remarkable contributions. From a base at the Australian National University in Canberra, Professor Ball has unflinchingly researched topics from Cold War nuclear strategy and the defence of Australia to spy scandals and Southeast Asian paramilitaries. His roaming intellect, appetite for getting the facts and commitment to publishing on sensitive topics ensure he is a towering figure who has provided impeccable service to Strategic Studies, the Asia-Pacific region and the Australian community.

This book provides complete, yet non-technical, analyses of production fragmentation effects and thus targets a wide range of readers - including academics, researchers, policymakers, students, entrepreneurs, and anyone who is interested in this subject. It investigates the economic impacts of production fragmentation in Southeast Asia with a focus on Thailand's experience as an emerging global hub of fragmentation and outsourcing. This elucidates new evidence in connection with production, industrial organizations and labour economics theories, providing interesting insights for formulating industrialization and labour development policies.

This study revisits one of the most extensive examples of the spread of ideas in the history of civilization: the diffusion of Indian religious and political ideas to Southeast Asia before the advent of Islam and European colonialism. Hindu and Buddhist concepts and symbols of kingship and statecraft helped to legitimize Southeast Asian rulers, and transform the political institutions and authority of Southeast Asia. But the process of this diffusion was not accompanied by imperialism, political hegemony, or "colonization" as conventionally understood. This book investigates different explanations of the spread of Indian ideas offered by scholars, including why and how it occurred and what were its key political and institutional outcomes. It challenges the view that strategic competition is a recurring phenomenon when civilizations encounter each other.

The Challenge of Energy Security in the 21st Century: Trends of Significance seeks to inform all those concerned about energy security, whether national, regional or international bodies, of certain factors, which must be taken into consideration in developing their energy security policies and pursuing their respective objectives. Towards that end, this book reveals certain significant trends of importance to the major energy-producing and energy-consuming regions. Through its unique analysis, it sheds light on how such trends will affect the energy security policies of all the producers and consumers of energy, large and small, in one form or another, in the foreseeable future.

Launched in 1992, Regional Outlook is an annual publication of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, published every January. Designed for the buy executive, professional, diplomat, journalist, or interested observer, Regional Outlook aims to provide a succinct analysis of current political and economic trends shaping the region, and the outlook for the forthcoming two years. This forward-looking book contains focused political commentaries and economic forecasts on all ten countries in Southeast Asia, as well as a select number of topical pieces of significance to the region.

In the erudite essay that opens this forum, Prasenjit Duara turns to both indigenous thinkers and the premodern past for tools with which to think about Asia in a global age. Contemporary modalities of regional exchange – 'weakly bounded, network-oriented, pluralistic, multitemporal' – chime with earlier patterns of cultural circulation without state domination, giving rise to a prophetic vision of 'Asia Redux'. This attempt to capture the contours of a (re)-emergent region was calculated to provide. And what a debate it kicks off. Wang Hui resolutely reframe imagining Asia as a political project on a world-historical canvas. Tansen Sen greatly complicates the map of intra-Asian commercial exchange in earlier times; Amitav Acharya outlines five competing conceptions of Asia in the domain of international relations alone.; Barbara Watson Andaya teases out the paradoxical way in which regional religions make clashing claims about Asian unity; and Rudolf Mrazek asks, what of the Asia that bleeds? what of exploitation and its spawn, the inglorious 'built-ends' of the global economy? The reward for those who read this collection straight through is a thrillingly cacophonous conversation about how to grasp Asia in our time.'– Karen E. Wigen, Stanford University'Will a re-emergent Asia extend the violent rivalries and inequalities of Western-dominated empires, nations and capital? Or can Asia somehow draw on a relatively more peaceful past of maritime trade, interlinked religions and circulations beyond states to think and make a very different sort of region and world? Prasenjit Duara and his interlocutors define this vital debate on Asia's future through illuminating reflections on its recent and deep past. A touchstone for anyone concerned with a future shape of an inter-connected Asia newly possessed of wealth and power'– Engseng Ho, Duke University

The Different Voices: Singaporean/Malaysian Novel, focuses on the challenges that face a novelist in the literary representation of a multilingual environment. The early writers used strategies like vernacular transcription and mimetic translation. However, the close readings of twelve selected novels by non-European writers from 1980 to 2001 indicate the increasing use of strategies like lexical borrowings, code mixing, code switching and varieties of Singapore-Malayan English, instead. Puthucheary asserts in her book that the methods of language appropriation have a direct connection to how the writer conveys the multilingual nature of the Singapore-Malayan society through the speaking person while developing the central theme of the novel. The book maps out the verbal artistic representation of the speaking person and the correlation between speech and character in a multilingual environment.

When Megawati Soekarnoputri became the President of Indonesia in July 2001, there were strong expectations. But so far, fundamental economic and political reforms have yet to be undertaken. The deadly Bali bombings on 12 October 2002 presented a wake-up call for the Megawati government. Terrorism on an international scale had now hit home. Now, more than ever, there is greater urgency on the part of the Megawati government to tackle the myriad of political and economic problems plaguing the country. This volume features some of the major issues that faced the Megawati government even before the devastating Bali attacks. The contributors include academics, practitioners and activists, offering a diversity of views.

The story of Dr Baey Lian Peck should be well known, but it is not. Not even among Singaporeans, and especially not among the young. This tells us a lot about a Singapore caught in pathological haste and prone towards ignoring values that do not add to the financial bottom line.The innovativeness of Dr Baey did not only make him a very wealthy man before he was forty, it also made him an indispensable actor in the implementation of urgently constructed national policies. Political leaders such as Dr Toh Chin Chye, Lim Kim San, Chua Sian Chin and Dr Goh Keng Swee picked him to solve pressing problems such as skyrocketing inflation in the early 1970s, the crisis in prisoner ward in the late 1970s, and the drug addiction epidemic in that same latter period. His one condition for taking on public positions was that he should not be paid. It was exactly this independent trait that made him so highly effective.This book tells his amazing life story, taking us into a surprising world where the qualities that make a good entrepreneur are exactly what make a good public servant... as long as he remains unbound by the bureaucracy."Dr Baey has left us and future generations a reservoir of knowledge, experience and expertise in his book which are derived from the major projects and programmes that he helped set up, nurture and run. We cannot dismiss them as just history. There are invaluable lessons to be gained. Sometimes we need to look at the past to understand the present and future. More importantly, he comes across as a strong and inspiring role model in service to the nation."–K.V. Veloo, pioneer in Probation and Aftercare who set up SANA (Aftercare) Counselling Service, and Prison Welfare Service. Ooi Kee Beng is Senior Fellow at the

The general view about regionalism seems to be that it is better to have regionalized and faltered than never to have regionalized at all! Inspired by this observation, this study aims to provide a comparative sketch of regionalism in South and Southeast Asia in the light of recent regional developments. Since regionalism is both a pervasive and amorphous phenomenon a straightforward account of its similarities and differences cannot be easily set down. But the broad patterns of behaviour of the regional actors who gather under a regional roof can be captured and compared. To compare is not only to understand but to improve and avoid the avoidable. This book analyses the highs and lows of regional experience mainly in South Asia (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation or SAARC) and Southeast Asia (Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN) interspersed with references to the European Union (EU) where relevant. The book argues that regionalism is here to stay and both imitation and innovation are the preferred strategies for sustaining the process. It points out that economic integration requires certain prior conditions to be fulfilled and does not happen merely because governments wish it to happen.