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The economic and political crises that have recently engulfed the countries of Southeast Asia provide a stark reminder of just how difficult the challenge of sustained regional development remains. In retrospect, the hyperbole that surrounded the ‘East Asian miracle’ looks overblown, and testimony to the manner in which rhetoric can outstrip reality, especially in the minds of international investors. Certainly, some observers had questioned the depth and resilience of capitalist development in Southeast Asia (Kunio 1988), but in the years immediately prior to 1997 such analyses tended to be in the minority. Now, of course, it is painfully obvious that much of Southeast Asia’s economic and political development was extremely fragile. And yet, when seen in historical context, this outcome should not have been so surprising. For the fact remains that the countries of modern Southeast Asia, both as independent nations and as colonies of various imperial powers, have been highly vulnerable to the actions of powerful external political and economic forces. This chapter will examine the economic bases and the political consequences of this vulnerability, both domestically and at a regional level. I argue that the recent crisis has served as an unwelcome reminder of just how constrained, dependent and vulnerable the Southeast Asia region’s development prospects remain, a situation that is exacerbated by, and which contributes to, domestic political crises…

This chapter explores the dual relevancies of technology to diplomatic engagement; that is, technologies as both the subject and catalysts of bilateral and multilateral interactions. The former is explored in the first section, and the latter in the second. Both are conducted with empirical cases. In the third section, the chapter seeks to highlight the encroachment of the “Westphalian” monopoly of states on the international diplomatic stage in light of the growing number of actors involved in responding to new challenges brought on by the development of emerging technologies, particularly nuclear proliferation, climate change and e-waste management. Additionally, it ponders the diplomatic implications of AI and other emerging technologies.

Since the Second World War, Africa and especially Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has had the poorest economic performance of any region in the world. Ironically, many African countries had set out with high hopes once they had thrown off the yoke of colonial rule but it was not long before disaster struck. Against the background of an expanding world economy Africa experienced ‘a chronic failure of economic growth’ (Collier and Gunning, 1996), so that by the end of the 20th century incomes per capita were little better than they had been at the time of independence, and in some cases a good deal worse. The main problem was the failure to improve the efficiency of resource use; in contrast to the position in many other developing countries total factor productivity was either static or negative for much of the time (Ndulu and O'Connell, 1999; Crafts, 2000). Thus while poverty was declining elsewhere, it was increasing steadily in SSA. By the turn of the century two-thirds of the population were estimated to be living at subsistence or below the absolute poverty line, while nearly one-half the world's poor lived in Africa (United Nations, 1997).

There are of course many factors which can explain this remarkable state of affairs, but the one we shall focus on this chapter is Africa's great weakness in statecraft, by which we refer to political systems, bureaucracies, administrative organizations, property and legal rights and general issues of trust and contract enforcement. In other words, it is a question of good governance as opposed to bad governance and corruption. The general argument here is that with few exceptions African countries have lacked a sound social and political base which would favor growth and development and that this base has tended to deteriorate over time.