Technocracy often holds out the promise of rational, disinterested decision-making. Yet states look to technocracy not just for expert inputs and calculated outcomes but to embed the exercise of power in many agendas, policies and programs. Thus, technocracy operates as an appendage of...

Of the Southeast Asian countries most badly affected by the 1997 financial crisis, Malaysia and Thailand remain the most unsettled by its political fallout. Their present political situations are not akin to 'politics as usual'. Instead, they capture the unpredicted outcomes of post-crisis...

This book examines how Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam can provide instructive case studies of how Southeast Asia has negotiated pathways of development beyond crises and traps. At two ends of just one decade, 1997-2007, these five countries all weathered the shocks of...