Southeast Asian political economy

Southeast Asia ¹ consists of countries with a remarkable heterogeneity in culture, language, religions, ethnicity, history, and traditions. Great disparity also exists between the countries in respect to physical area, population size, and stages of economic development. In addition, the region’s development experience has been deeply affected by its colonial past and by the evolving external environment (see, for example, Stubbs 1989). These factors include the Cold War from the post-World Word II period until the early 1990s and the 2008 global financial and economic crisis.