Dan Slater, “Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2010)

New Books in Sociology · Nov 14, 2014 · 1h 2m

Few books on Southeast Asia cover as much geographic, historical and theoretical ground as Dan Slater’s Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Working across seven case studies, the book argues that existing theories of institutionalization don’t account for regional variation in regime type. Tracing causal processes from the colonial period to the present day, it shows how internal conflicts occurring at critical moments of state building encouraged the formation of elite “protection pacts” with a high degree of…