Globalizing comparative political science research on Southeast Asia

From my point of view, the scholar of Asia today is a ‘global scholar’, embedded not only in his/her area studies specialization, but also in constant intellectual dialogue with others in the same discipline, but focused on other Area studies fields. In practice, by dint of the complexity of the ‘object’, we are studying to becoming interdisciplinary. In short, the scholar of Asia today not only has greater savoir, s/he has an enhanced savoir faire: in a virtuous circle of scientific dialogue, greater interdisciplinarity leads to today’s Asia scholar making a more substantial contribution to his/her ‘home’ discipline. Below, I shall argue the case for political science.