ABSTRACT
If modernity consists partly in mimetic reliance (or mimicry) on Western ideas and modalities, then the widespread emulation of Anglo-American methodologies in academic scholarship on the International Relations of Southeast Asia could probably be appreciated as an indication of the attempts by the region’s articulators at “modernization.” Such mimetic performance during the Cold War years generally assumed the form of an epistemic realism that had neither need nor tolerance for International Relations (IR) theory, although exceptions to the rule of course existed. However, the field has been gravitating, shortly before and through the post-Cold War period, toward more systematic engagements with formal theory. This shift has arisen as a result of growing interest in Southeast Asian regionalism, along with a commensurate interest among regional analysts in IR theory and its perceived relevance to the formal study of Southeast Asian international relations. As some would have it, the emerging consensus regarding the contemporary state of the theoretical enterprise of Southeast Asian International Relations is that it pivots on a realist-constructivist axis (Peou 2002; Eaton and Stubbs 2006). Again, as in Cold War Southeast Asian IR, the post-Cold War oeuvre also has its fair share of exceptions.
