The nature of interactions between citizens and individual police officers make these officers the ultimate “street-level bureaucrats”—those who do the difficult on-the-ground work of making policy a ...

In August 2014, I helped organise a national seminar in Magelang, Central Java, that celebrated the 200 th anniversary of the supposed “discovery” of the temple of Borobudur by the then British ...

Photo courtesy of Akshay Mahajan (Creative Commons licence) After a long period of relative silence, the most tragic period in Cambodia’s history has experienced a renaissance of interest. Spurred by ...

Two years ago, the National Gallery of Australia’s Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia exhibition opened to the public. In the third room of the gallery space was a sculpture comprised of one tonne of ...

Are Indonesia’s political parties all alike? Are some more in favour of political reform than others? Do some favour business interests while others see themselves as siding with the poor? And does it ...

Chin Peng, born Ong Boon Hua, 21 October 1924 to 16 September 2013 The passing of Chin Peng in Bangkok on 16 September 2013 brings to an end one of the longest of Asian political biographies. Chin ...

From the 1960s to the early 1990s, Indonesia’s development strategy was famously shaped by the influence of the “Berkeley Mafia”, a group of US-educated technocrats—including Widjojo Nitisastro, ...

[This is a rough summary translation of our original post in Thai. New Mandala readers who can read Thai should go here for the full length article. The English spelling of names in this article are ...

In the past 130 years, the number of foreign migrant workers in Malaya has grown from about 84,000 in 1880 to more than three million in 2010. Originally, foreign workers were predominantly from China ...

Corruption is a pervasive feature of Indonesia’s contemporary political economy. In-depth studies and cross-national surveys alike emphasise that illicit fees and bribery are widespread across the ...

Findings from a nationwide survey commissioned by Yangon-based NGOs Colors Rainbow and &PROUD indicate that Myanmar’s general public are in favour of greater equality for the country’s LGBT* ...

Tun Dr Ismail has been dead for 40 years but his legacy of inclusion and moderation, and honest and honourable leadership, is unforgettable and can yet inspire new generations of Malaysians from both ...