Southeast Asia is routinely characterized as among the world’s most ‘diverse’ regions. Within and across Southeast Asia’s eleven countries, political regime types, economic strategies, developmental levels, social structures, cultural features, and global and regional positioning vary immensely. Based on the theories of political and social change, this course seeks to determine commonalities and differences between the Southeast Asian countries. The regimes of the region vary widely from democracies in Indonesia and the Philippines, electoral authoritarian regimes in Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia, military dictatorship in Thailand as well as the hybrid military-democracy of Myanmar (Burma), to one-party regimes in Vietnam and Laos.