Trees for the wood

Mizuno, Kosuke, Pasuk Phongpaichit (eds). 2009. Populism in Asia. Singapore: NUS Press in association with Kyoto University Press. xii + 228 pages. ISBN 978-9971-69-483-8 pb.

Populism in Asia is a publication of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. It comprises a lucid Introduction by the editors (respectively Director of said Center and the Chair of the Political Economy Centre at Chulalongkorn University), six contributions
by Japanese scholars on populism in Latin America, Thailand, the Gorontalo Province of Indonesia, and Northeast Asia (Korea, Taiwan, Japan). The further chapters on populism in the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia have been written by local scholars. The collection closes
with a 4-page Afterword by Ben Anderson. Of the 173 pages devoted to country case studies, 70 focus on the Thaksin-Shinawatra phenomenon – and one would have liked to see that saga extended into the present to get a better feel for the populist mobilisation potential.

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