Unarmed mass uprisings, celebrated as "people power" revolutions, have ended authoritarian regimes in various countries. But have these movements ushered in polities that fulfilled democratic expectations? The record is disappointing, and especially so in the Philippines after the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos. Why? Much of the answer lies in the ability of elites to ride, hijack, and redirect the trajectories of "people power" movements. Such elites take advantage of the tension between the regular politics of stable institutions and the irregular politics of extraordinary moments. The large mobilizations associated with "people power" cannot be sustained for long periods. The masses will soon delegate power to, and rely on, their leaders, who will represent them as the polity settles down to the business of normal--institutional--politics. The very minute the new regime is inaugurated, it ceases to be revolutionary and starts to be conservative. It has a country to run, and state power to defend and consolidate, for its enemies are not likely to have given up. The institutional technology of popular rule has yet to be developed beyond grand first principles and banal motherhood statements. The supposedly revolutionary leaders of the new regime lapse into using the already well known methods of minority or elite rule. But recourse to such stratagems may in time trigger the formation of new "people power" movements against these self-entrenched incumbents--prolonging the cycle and preventing the conversion of contingent power into legitimate authority.

Amado Mendoza's current research is on the political economy of organized crime and anti-state violence in the Philippines. His many writings on that country include a book-in-progress on tax reform and two edited volumes, Debts of Dishonor (1992) and From Crisis to Crisis: A History of BOP [Balance of Payments] Crises in the Philippines (1987). He has been a visiting scholar at Tufts University, the Jean Monnet Institute, the University of Turku (Finland), and the Amsterdam Insti¬tute for International Relations. In addition to pursuing his academic career, he has worked as a business journalist, a merchant banker, a stockbroker, and on development issues for an NGO.

Tectonic shifts have underscored the gradual Islamization of mainstream politics in contemporary Malaysia. This is so despite popular media representations of the country as an epitome of moderate and progressive Muslim governance -- a portrayal regularly belied by the actions of its leaders as well. Recently, these shifts have been expressed in heated debates over apostasy, religious freedom, and constitutional rights. Insofar as the media have acknowledged Islamization, they have attributed it to the Islamist opposition party (PAS). Prof. Liow will show, however, that the ruling party (UMNO) has proven no less strident in expressing its own Islamist predilections, with significant implications for the dynamics of UMNO-PAS relations and, beyond them, the country's political future.

Joseph Chinyong Liow is head of research at S. Rajaratnam School of International

Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His books include Muslim

Resistance in Southern Thailand and Southern Philippines: Religion, Ideology, and Politics (2006); The Politics of Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: One Kin, Two Nations (2005); and (as co-editor) Order and Security in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2006). He is associate editor of Asian Security, and guest-edited "Internal Conflicts in Southeast Asia: The Nature, Legitimacy and Changing Role of the State," a special issue of that journal (2007). He has published numerous articles on Malaysian politics and the conflict in Southern Thailand. His PhD is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Burma (Myanmar) has been under military rule since 1962. It is the least free country in Southeast Asia by the latest Freedom House ranking of political rights and civil liberties. The current junta's leader, Senior General Than Shwe, has made Daw Aung San Suu Kyi arguably the best known political prisoner in the world. In August-September 2007, following steep hikes in fuel prices, scores of protesters marched in silence and were dispersed or arrested. The protests spread beyond the capital and included at least one by Buddhist monks--a significant development in a largely Buddhist country. Meanwhile, delegates to a national convention convened by the regime completed guidelines for a future constitution. This step on a supposed road map to democracy was criticized by some observers as a ploy to institutionalize army control. Others treated the guidelines less skeptically on the grounds that even regime-favoring rules might be used to nudge the country toward reform, and were thus better than no rules at all.

How should outsiders respond to these conditions? With policies of isolation? Or of engagement? Which of the two logics is more powerful: that isolation will deprive the junta of needed support and thus help spark democratization? Or that engagement will expose the country to liberalization and thus incrementally undermine the regime? Is there a mixed logic worth implementing between these extremes? Or have the mounting protests inside Burma opened a crucial window of opportunity that replaces these alternatives with a radical new logic of carpe diem:that outsiders should actively intervene in support of the opposition and in favor of regime change now? Not to mention the junta's own rationale for retaining power: that military rule is preferable to any alternative.

Maureen Aung-Thwin, while working on Burma at the Open Society Institute (founded by financier/philanthropist George Soros), is an active member of the Asia Committee of Human Rights Watch. She is a trustee of the Burma Studies Foundation, which oversees the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University. She received a BA from Northwestern University and did graduate work at NYU.

Zarni, while researching democratic transition at Oxford, has been active in "Track II" negotiations with the Burmese junta. In 1995 he founded the Free Burma Coalition, which favored sanctions. Later his position evolved toward engagement. He edited Active Citizens under Political Wraps: Experiences from Myanmar/Burma and Vietnam (2006). He received a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Co-sponsored with the Asia Society Northern California and the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC-Berkeley.

Vietnam has become the newest "Asian tiger." The US played a leading role in negotiating Vietnam's January 2007 entry into the World Trade Organization and the 2001 US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement. Requirements in these treaties have accelerated the pace of economic and legal policy reforms in Vietnam. Combined with other initiatives, the reforms are giving rise to the domestic institutions, economic policies, governing procedures, and rule of law needed to grow a market economy, facilitate the fledgling private sector, and rationalize the state sector. US foreign assistance has been intensively involved in this effort. The effects of these changes have been felt in faster growth, increased trade, more foreign and domestic investment, and continued poverty alleviation. Within this context, the seminar can address an especially difficult and complex question: How might these reforms, and the changes they have foster, affect the political development of the country?

Steve Parker recently returned from nearly six years in Vietnam, where he served as the project manager for the STAR-Vietnam Project--the first major USAID-funded technical assistance program in post-war Vietnam. In that context he worked with the prime minister's office in Hanoi to help more than forty government agencies make the changes needed for Vietnam to implement the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) and accede to the World Trade Organization. His latest writing is a "Report on the 5-Year Impact of the BTA on Vietnam's Trade, Investment and Economic Structure." Previously he worked as an economic specialist for the US government and the Asia Foundation, and was posted to Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan with USAID, the Asian Development Bank, and the Harvard Institute for International Development.

Co-sponsored with the Stanford Center for International Development.

In recent years the largest Muslim-majority country, Indonesia, has seen the growth of contrary trends: a peaceful movement for democracy led and supported mostly by Muslims but also incidents of terrorism and signs of paramilitarism linked mainly to radical Islamists. Prof. Hefner will examine the role of Indonesia's Islamic madrasas in both cases, assess the likely future of Indonesian Muslim politics, and explore the implications of Indonesia's experience for the wider Muslim world.

Robert W. Hefner has directed the program on Islam and civil society at Boston University since 1991. He has conducted research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for over three decades, and has authored or edited a dozen books and several major policy reports. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton University Press, 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton, 2005); and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, 2000). He is the invited editor of the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800, and is now writing a book for the Carnegie Corporation on Islamic education and democratization in Indonesia.