Globalization and National Autonomy: The Experience of Malaysia

Contributors

xvii CONTRIBUTORS Abdul Rahman Embong, Ph.D. (Malaya), is Principal Fellow and Professor in Sociology of Development whose focus of research is on development, the middle class, democratization, pluralism, ethnicity and the nation-state within the framework of globalization and social transformation. His most important publications include Southeast Asian Middle Classes: Prospects to Social Change and Democratisation (editor, 2001); State-led Modernization and the New Middle Class in Malaysia (2002); The Nation-state: Processes and Debates (in Malay) (2006); Globalisation, Culture and Inequalities: In Honour of the Late Ishak Shari (editor, 2004) and Role and Orientation of Malaysian Social Science (in Malay) (2006). He is general editor for the Malaysian and International Studies Series of the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press and a member of the advisory board of the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia. President of the Malaysian Social Science Association since 2000 and a member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Social Science of the Malaysian National Commission for UNESCO (Nat.Com), he is an expert resource person for UNESCO, UNDP and UNRISD, as well as to the Federal and State Governments of Malaysia. He was appointed by the Prime Minister’s Department in late 2003 as head of the team tasked with formulating the National Integrity Plan and the blueprint for the setting up of the Integrity Institute of Malaysia, both of which were launched by the Prime Minister on 23 April 2004. Lee Poh Ping, Ph.D. (Cornell), is Principal Fellow and Professor in Political Science whose areas of research are international relations and regionalism, with a focus on Japan and Southeast Asia. His publications include, The Emerging East Asian Community (edited with Tham Siew Yean and George Yu, 2006), Chinese Society in Nineteenth Century Singapore (1978); “Japanese Political Relations with Southeast 00฀GlobalNAprelimsn.indd฀฀฀17 7/28/08฀฀฀9:53:04฀AM xviii฀ CONTRIBUTORS Asia from 1952–1977” (2004) and Facing the Dragon: ASEAN and Japan, and the Rise of China (2005). He is President of the Malaysian Association of Japanese Studies (MAJAS) since 2000, and was Chairman of the Malaysian-American Council on Educational Exchange (MACEE) (2001 and 2003). Jacob Meerman, Ph.D. (Chicago), has had a career in development with the World Bank, USAID, and the Harvard Institute of International Development. He has done extensive work in rural development in Africa and evaluation of Bank programmes in agricultural structural adjustment. His earlier experience includes work in Malaysia and Latin America. He has been Adjunct Professor and Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies and has been most recently a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at the American University in Washington where he is concluding a book on the economic mobility of five low-status minorities. He is the author of Public Expenditures in Malaysia, Who Benefits and Why (1979), Reforming Agriculture, the World Bank Goes to Market (1996), and one of the authors of the awardwinning “Berg Report”, Accelerated Development in Africa (1981). Joan M. Nelson, Ph.D. (Harvard), was the Pok Rafeah Distinguished Chair in International Studies at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, for the period October 2006 to May 2007. She is also a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution, and Scholar in Residence at the School of International Service, American University. Her primary research interest is the politics of economic reforms, and the interactions between market-oriented reforms and democratization in middle and low-income countries. Her current work focuses on the politics of education and health sector reforms. She received her doctorate from Harvard in 1960. She has consulted for USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the IMF, and has taught at MIT, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. Among her publications are Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives: The Politics of Health and Education Reform in Latin America (co-editor with Robert Kaufman, and contributor, 2004); Reforming Health and Education: The World Bank, the IDB, and Complex Institutional Change (1999); Transforming Post-Communist 00฀GlobalNAprelimsn.indd฀฀฀18 7/28/08฀฀฀9:53:04฀AM CONTRIBUTORS฀ xix Political Economies (co-editor with Charles Tilly, and contributor, 1998); A Precarious Balance: Democracy and Economic Reforms in Latin America (editor and contributor, 1994); Access to...