As in Emily Brontë's dreams, war has flowed through Asia in the past century like wine through water. Be they interstate conflicts, intercommunal violence, social revolutions, or struggles for sovereignty, wars have transformed political structures, changed territorial boundaries, and reshaped the regional order. In particular, World War II, which strides the twentieth century like some malignant colossus, had a profound impact on the region. Estimates of its human cost vary, but it probably caused at least twenty-three million deaths in the Asia-Pacific (Wikipedia 2015a).2 Politically, it shattered the hold of the European powers on their colonial subjects, triggered the wave of post-war decolonization, and established the bipolar balance which dominated international and regional relations for almost fifty years.

In a less tangible but equally important sense, World War II and other violent conflicts transformed the cultural imaginations of the peoples and societies of the region. Not only did the defeat of the European powers in 1941–42 make a world beyond imperialism imaginable, but in recent decades, the memories of past wars have come to play a central role in the domestic politics and interstate relations of the region. Asia is not alone in this. The memory “boom” which has swept the globe since the 1970s or 1980s has seen a turn to the past in many countries. In both established and emerging states, war memory has become “a key element in the symbolic repertoire available to the nation-state for binding its citizens into a collective national identity” (Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper 2000, p. 7). Across the globe also, the politics of war memory have been used by various substate agents to justify their claims to greater recognition or compensation for past grievances and injustices.

NEW KNOWLEDGE

Creating new knowledge — the task at the heart of research practice — is almost never straightforward. Whether you are in a Hmong village in northern Thailand, a government office in Canberra, a dusty archive in Beijing, or a banquet hall in Singapore, there is no single, or simple, way that research in Asia-Pacific affairs should be done. For some researchers, their career is spent down in the dirt, where muddy boots may be symbolic of long commitments. Others spend their time among sharply-dressed officials and business people — the other end of the continuum. Lack of unanimity about preferred research tactics and techniques inspires us to consider the many different ways that researchers can successfully blend disciplinary, thematic, and geographical orientations to support their analysis about how the world works and why. In fact, it is this wide variety of research practice that helps to sharpen our understanding of politics at the local, national, regional, and global levels. Good research begins with a puzzle about how things happen. In this chapter, we reflect on the different practices of solving these research puzzles, and consider the conceptual, ethical, and practical challenges researchers face in their quest to understand some of the biggest questions in social, political, and economic life.

The practical challenges of research tend not to receive much everyday attention beyond methodology classes, which often narrowly emphasize mechanics rather than cultures.

This is partly the result of professional hesitation about revealing some of the many difficulties involved in effective and sustained research practice. Researchers often enjoy a life of flexibility in terms of research topic and approach, with a variety of intellectual entanglements that can be the envy of those in many other twenty-first century jobs. Researchers also face the perpetual struggle for positions, funding, and priority in academic political economies that can prove inhospitable, even for the best prepared. Entire subcultures of academic reflection are devoted to the gripes and grievances of those who imagine that a gilded age has recently vanished: much of this material is nowadays found online, a global common room.

INTRODUCTION

War is a complex and deeply social process that reaches lives far beyond soldiers on the battlefield. The first department of international relations was founded in Aberystwyth in 1919 following the horrors of the First World War, and as a discipline, it has always been captivated by the central problem of preventing the devastation of war on human populations, even if scholars disagree on how this can be achieved. Although war is an enduring feature of global politics, the character of war itself has changed significantly over the past century (Strachan and Scheipers 2011). We are fortunate not to have experienced another major world war despite the creation of 142 new nation states since 1945, yet war itself has become much more fragmented and internalized within this period. The rapid changes in the mode and characteristics of today's conflicts challenge the way that scholars consider their methodological approaches to studying the impact of armed conflict on societies.

This chapter focuses on methodological considerations for researching populations impacted by armed conflict in the Asia-Pacific, a region that experienced major conflicts in the Cold War period, has the potential for major interstate conflicts, and continues to be confronted by a range of diverse internal conflicts that threaten the security of domestic populations. The starting point for thinking about methodological approaches here is to consider the nature of the field that is being researched — what are the historical, social, and political characteristics of the conflict settings? How are conflict-affected populations situated within this overarching field? What are the implications of the way that the field is conceptualized for advocating for the agency, protection, and human rights of the affected populations?

This chapter is therefore concerned with two sets of developments in international politics and academic practice that are important for considering approaches to research on the humanitarian impact of armed conflict. The first set of developments is in global politics where we find, on the one hand, the strengthening of international norms and rules to regulate armed conflict that are increasingly geared towards the protection of individuals in war. On the other hand, the fragmentation and internalization of armed violence within the state creates ambiguity in the international legal and regulatory space, and challenges international efforts to protect populations affected by conflict.

INTRODUCTION

Statistical research methods are already very big in many of the social sciences. For decades, it has been well-nigh impossible to get an academic appointment in economics without a thorough grounding in quantitative research. The same is increasingly becoming true in political science (at least in the United States), psychology and to a lesser degree sociology. Even in the humanities, the quants are making inroads — economic history, for instance, increasingly resembles economics more than it does other subfields of history, and some have even sought to apply quantitative analytic tools to the analysis of literature. Nor is this phenomenon confined to the ivory tower. With the exponential growth of marketing opportunities represented by new data-rich companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Amazon, “data scientist” is, according to the Harvard Business Review, the “sexiest job of the 21st century” (Davenport and Patil 2012). Similarly, the mathematical requirements of financial engineering are becoming so intense that Wall Street, the City of London, and other finance houses are raiding not only economics but also mathematics and physics PhD programmes in order to find analysts with the requisite skills (Lewis 2015).

Statistical and other quantitative methods are powerful tools in the hands of researchers, policymakers, and the public, when used correctly. The first part of this chapter will outline why researchers use quantitative methods in the social sciences. Human brains, even expert human brains, can be horribly wrong in extrapolating general trends from small numbers of events. Where there are multiple cases at hand of a phenomenon in which we are interested, statistics therefore allows us to see the general trend better than anything else. But quantitative methods can be misused. When they are misused, this can be dangerous because a conclusion couched in terms of numbers and endowed with the prestige of science often commands more confidence than it warrants. Costly errors can result, as the 2008 Global Financial Crisis shows us. Good quantitative researchers are aware of such pitfalls, however, and make strenuous efforts to avoid them. In the second part of this chapter, therefore, I will outline some cautions about the application of quantitative research to the social sciences.

MILITARY ORDER AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The study of international relations today faces a formidable methodological problem: how to understand the role of power in relations between powerful states, and especially in the creation, maintenance, and decline of the international orders which frame those relations within groups or systems of states from time to time. The problem extends to explaining the role of power in general, but it is most acute in relation to power in its starkest form — military power. That is the focus of this chapter. It explores the role of military power in shaping orders in systems of states.

This is hardly a new question. Military power has been central to the conduct and study of international relations since states and state systems first emerged. But today it is poorly understood and its influence on current developments is generally underestimated, especially perhaps by analysts and decision makers in the West. This has big implications for our understanding of the choices that countries of the West now face, and of the risks they may confront at a time when, it is now generally accepted, we face a significant shift — or set of shifts — in international order. These choices and risks bear upon Australia as much as on any Western country, and perhaps more than on most. It therefore seems important, for very practical reasons, to make sure we refresh our understanding of the role of force in shaping international orders.

This chapter suggests a simple way to see this issue: an international order in a system of states is framed — its boundaries are defined — primarily or ultimately by what the great powers within the system are willing to go to war with one another over. Or, to be a little more precise, an order is framed by what the great powers can convince one another they are willing to go to war with one other over. One obvious example is the bipolar global order of the Cold War era, which was framed by the clear conviction on each side of the other's willingness to go to war to defend their established spheres of influence in the key European and Northeast Asian theatres.

INTRODUCTION

Is aerial bombardment an effective counter-insurgency tactic? Do immigrants depress local wages? Does the presence of natural resources harm democratic consolidation? Answering questions such as these requires the uncovering of general patterns of cause and effect. Social scientists have been attempting to put this search for causal inference on a sure philosophical and methodological footing at least since Émile Durkheim's pioneering research on suicide in the nineteenth century, but progress has been slow, coming in fits and starts. Even the diffusion of computing technology and the modelling revolution it brought about did not solve the problem. However, the last decade or so has seen one of the most exciting developments in the history of causal inference in the social sciences for generations.

The design-based revolution has transformed how social scientists go about their research and the kinds of causal inferences they can now draw from it. Field experiments and natural experiments are at the foundation of design-based inference. A growing body of scholarship outlining the principles, techniques, and promise of this kind of research already exists, but most of it has been aimed at an audience already well versed in comparative analysis and statistical methods (Gerber and Green 2012; Morgan and Winship 2015; Angrist and Pischke 2015; Imbens and Rubin 2015). The logic of design-based inference is actually very intuitive, despite its somewhat daunting technical language. In this chapter, I want to introduce the design-based approach to a non-specialist audience, primarily those who use qualitative rather than quantitative methods.

I first introduce the two main models of causal inference common to comparative politics, the sufficient-component-cause (SSC) model and the counterfactual model. Second, I outline the problem of confounding in traditional qualitative and quantitative methods in the social sciences. Third, I detail the experimental method in its basic form and present some examples of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in Asia. Fourth, I discuss extensions to the experimental model in the form of natural experiments and again illustrate the method with some examples from Asia. Finally, I discuss the limitations of the design-based revolution and what needs to be addressed going forward.

This is a good time to study Asia's international security setting. The biodiversity is astonishing. Scholars and analysts have become accustomed to what were once termed “new” security threats being core business. In the past, considerable energy and effort was spent trying simply to make the case that problems like transnational crime or the spread of infectious diseases warranted the distinctive analytic and policy lens of “security”. Today, the range of issues in the region that present clear, immediate, and significant challenges to the well-being, indeed existence, of states and peoples is huge. Equally, the old fashioned security challenges which many had thought we had left behind — rivalry between states over territory, resources, and influence — have become recharged. Flying in the face of the complacent platitudes of liberally-minded globalization enthusiasts, the growth, wealth, and interdependence of Asia's states and societies has fuelled tensions, not caused a binding of interests or fostering of a sense of common cause.

But it is not just the range of security issues — both conventional and non-traditional — it is the sense of change and the rate with which such changes are occurring which makes the field so engaging and challenging. There is a palpable sense that the current period is experiencing a high level of “plasticity” (Mahbubani 2008). The mix of moderate foreign policies and a stable military balance, that kept the traditional security concerns from centre stage for over forty years, is changing. Moreover, the global financial crisis of 2007–8 and its recessionary aftermath has accelerated the sense of transformation. The structures which gave confidence in the past are eroding, future trajectories are uncertain, and state goals and ambitions similarly unclear. Therefore, it is a good time to study Asia's security landscape.

One of the notable features of the Asian security literature, both scholarly and policy-focused, is the absence of a shared vocabulary about that with which we are trying to grapple. Perhaps more precisely, there is no clear intellectual consensus about the meaning of central concepts and ideas.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter considers the relationship between country-level or groundup research, policy, and policymaking. It focuses on the interface between research and policy issues — that is to say, how policy can be the subject of research and the role research can play in informing policy — using the experience of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) as a case study. RAMSI is a regionally mandated but Australian-led statebuilding mission developed in response to civil conflict in the Solomon Islands (Braithwaite et al. 2010). Arriving in Solomon Islands in 2003, RAMSI involved a large-scale policing component and an ambitious development programme focused on rebuilding the post-conflict Solomon Islands state. Conceived in a global “state-building moment” (Allen and Dinnen 2016), when international enthusiasm for external intervention was at its fullest flush, RAMSI was a major Australian security and development policy initiative with regional and international significance (Fry and Kabutaulaka 2008). Today, overt references to state-building have receded from Australia's policy lexicon but state-building remains central to its regional security and development policy including as an implicit part of good governance and institutional strengthening programmes across the Asia-Pacific region. With a reputation as one of the most successful state-building interventions from the period (Fullilove 2006), RAMSI has been the object of significant research interest amongst transnational research and policy communities. At the same time, as a complex and long-term mission, RAMSI has had to evolve and adapt, responding to a range of policy challenges over time. This has created demand amongst policymakers for policy-focused research to help explain and resolve policy problems and to identify new policy solutions.

Recognizing RAMSI as the focus of extensive country-level research, this chapter will explore how researchers have responded to and engaged with policy issues from two different perspectives. The first involves RAMSI as the object of research, with the intervention providing an example of research of policy. From this perspective, the chapter will consider how country-level research of RAMSI has contributed to broader scholarly debates on state-building and intervention, which has been a major debate in world politics and international relations in the twenty-first century.

Asia has faced multiple drivers of regionalism in the post-Cold War era. These include states’ needs to cooperatively tackle new regional challenges, and a growing desire to pursue common interests regionally. Regionalism is defined as formal state-sponsored regional projects, as distinct from the more informal process of regional building led by non-state actors and commonly referred to as “regionalization” (Nair 2008, p. 111). In regionalism, elites and/or state leaders in the region play important roles in regionbuilding processes, regional integration, and regional movements and initiatives. They push forward regionalism and, to some extent, create regional institutions. However, their efforts are not always successful. One of the big challenges for regionalism is the presence of global powers — states whose power can impact globally — that exist both within and outside the region.

This chapter discusses the relations between regional institutions in the Asia-Pacific and several global powers, namely the United States, China, and Russia. While located in the region, these three great powers have not always been included in regional initiatives. The chapter delves into the interaction of these global powers within several regional institutions such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and the East Asia Summit (EAS). The chapter first provides a short history of the relationship between regionalism and global powers in the Asia-Pacific, before turning to a contemporary picture of regionalism in the region. It then investigates the role of global powers in the development of regionalism by focusing on the four aforementioned regional institutions. Finally, the chapter provides a brief review of the key methodological approaches to studying regionalism and global powers in Asia.

HISTORY OF REGIONALISM IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC

It is often said that APEC was the first form of regionalism in the Asia- Pacific because it drew together countries on both the Pacific-side of Asia as well as the Pacific-side of North and South America. However, regionalism in Asia has a much longer history, originating with Japan's military campaign in Northeast and Southeast Asia in the lead up to the Second World War. Japan's military campaign was underpinned by its vision of “Pan-Asianism”. Pan-Asianism reflects the early movement of regionalism in the Asia-Pacific and is a precursor of contemporary Asian regionalism (Saaler 2007).

INTRODUCING RESEARCH PRACTICE

In 2015, the Australian National University relaunched its famous School devoted to the study of regional politics, strategy, international affairs, and diplomacy. It had previously been known by a generic name. It was reincarnated as the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. At the time, some effort was put into finding quotable lines from the School's namesake, who was, for five decades, a leading figure in Australia's official and academic engagement with the Asia-Pacific region. Among her many sharp observations, one that caught my fancy was on the topic of nationalism. Bell once wrote, “Nationalism, like some wines, doesn't travel well”. This piercing thought, wrought with abruptness, reminds us that scholarly communication is, at its essence, about explanation. Making sense of the world around us, putting ideas and issues in their rightful contexts, comparing conditions across time and space, and developing models that can integrate all the different aspects of multifaceted human experiences (and dilemmas), requires a deep appreciation that, by definition, should grow over time. The cultivation of such awareness about the places that we research eventually needs to be harnessed to clear and effective language that allows other people to understand such hard-won insights. A specific mix of academic skills and other less easily quantifiable attributes seems to support the best research on politics and political cultures. Where researchers need to step outside of their own frames of cultural and political reference, the task is naturally made more difficult.

Such scholarly engagement remains the perpetual challenge of studying politics in the Asia-Pacific region, especially when we take seriously the requirement that thought and action must be understood on their own terms. The foundation for such research is a solid grounding in history, language, politics, and culture. Perhaps the best way to begin the journey of understanding a place and its people is to spend a sufficient period of time there. It is no surprise that doctoral candidates focused on political change and social upheavals are commonly advised to immerse themselves in their field research for as long as possible. This helps, naturally, with the development of language skills, but also with the expansion of social networks, the consolidation of goodwill, and the broadening of experiences, to include those that could never have been anticipated.

Introduction

In this chapter I investigate the way Malagasy split off from other Austronesian languages, and the sociopolitical circumstances under which this may have happened.

Malagasy is an Austronesian language spoken in a variety of dialects in Madagascar. It is a member of the South East Barito (henceforth SEB) language subgroup, the members of which are predominantly spoken on the eastern shores of the Barito River in South Borneo (Dahl 1951; see Map 10.1). This region is considered the original homeland of Malagasy.

Malagasy underwent influence from Malay and Javanese, the hegemonic languages par excellence in insular South East Asia (henceforth ISEA), as well as from Sanskrit. In fact, the Sanskrit loanwords in Malagasy can be shown to have been borrowed via Malay and Javanese, and not directly from a source in South Asia. Malagasy also borrowed from Austronesian languages close to South Borneo homeland: it has loanwords from South Sulawesi languages (Adelaar 1995a), and from Ngaju (Dahl 1951), which is spoken west of the Barito River (see Map 10.1).

Malay, Javanese and Sanskrit loanwords testify to the fact that already very early onwards the Malays and Javanese were passing on to other peoples in ISEA Indic cultural influences that had been transformed by their own local cultures. This must already have happened on a large scale around the time that ancestors of the present-day Malagasy people began to migrate to East Africa, which was possibly in the seventh century AD, if not earlier (see Map 10.2). Malay loanwords also enable us to see that the ancestors of the Malagasy were not only in touch with Malays in Borneo but also with Malays from Sumatra. They were so for a considerably long time, starting from before the first migrations to East Africa and continuing until after the Portuguese made their appearance in the Indian Ocean region (sixteenth century AD; Adelaar 2009, p. 158). Some Malay loanwords in East Madagascar have a Muslim signature, indicating that Islam may have been introduced from ISEA to this part of the island; other loanwords are from South Sulawesi languages, showing that there was a certain measure of inter-insular contact and ethnic integration going on across ISEA, something that does not readily appear from historical evidence based on written records (Adelaar 1995a).