This book provides an explanation for this pattern of political change in the region. Broad historical patterns set the stage for the regimes that continue to rule. Yet, some sociological, political and institutional factors also explain patterns of continuity and change.
Ideology and Cold War politics
Ideas and ideological currents informed many of the groups that mobilized and seized power when European colonial rulers left the region. Nationalism strongly influenced groups with existing or growing sense of shared history and identity to seek their own state. Anti-colonial movements rose at a time when nationalism spread throughout Asia. It galvanized groups, some of which had been under colonial rule for several centuries, to identify themselves as modern nations, coddled together around shared languages, religion or histories. The Indonesian nationalist movement emerged as a prototypical example of how nationalism allowed for disparate groups to imagine themselves as “Indonesian”, sharing a regional language of common communication and the experience of Dutch colonial rule. Similar imagination formed the basis of a Filipino nationalist movement that informed the creation and maintenance of an independent Philippines. To different degrees, nationalism also transformed Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao and even Thai identities, as it gave them a new identity as “nations” seeking modern, independent states. After independence, regimes across the spectrum continued to frame these identities in national terms to bolster regime legitimacy and maintain unity. From Indonesia’s attempt to articulate a national ideology of Pancasila to the Khmer Rouge or the Burmese armed forces attempts to articulate their own unique brands of communism, nationalism was used in different shapes and forms to gain popular support, sometimes with positive consequences but other times with more destructive effects.