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The teaching of international relations (IR) at universities in Southeast Asia plays a role in the production of knowledge about the IR of Southeast Asia. As a complement to the scrutiny of published research output, a focus on teaching offers one pathway toward comprehending the constitution of meaning in both the IR of Southeast Asia and the broader IR discipline. This introduction to a collection of essays on the teaching of IR in Southeast Asia also discusses the potential ways by which attention to teaching may uncover the socializing role of pedagogy. An inquiry into the discipline as it is taught in the region throws light on how particular national legitimating myths are reproduced, the transmission of collective historical memories, the dominance of certain schools of international thought, and the role of civil society in Southeast Asian knowledge production.

This preliminary survey of international relations (IR) teaching in Singapore argues that while the hegemonic goals of the nation-state have been pervasive since 1956, the influences upon IR teaching have become more complex and subtle in tandem with Singapore's transition from pristine developmentalism to an aspiring global city. Today, IR teaching has acquired characteristics of a division of labor among the main universities, research institutes, and business-oriented schools. Nonetheless, the dialectics of whether the future lies in open-ended knowledge inquiry or hewing to some version of state-associated pragmatism remains unresolved.

This paper is about the development of international relations (IR) as a field of study in Indonesian universities. It argues that IR as a discipline has been encountering a paradox. On the one hand, while the discipline has been increasingly held in high esteem by students, marked by an increasing number of applicants to IR departments across the country; on the other hand, IR scholars show too little commitment to research and publication for the development of the discipline; and if they do publish, the quality of writing is generally poor. This article indicates that the paradox of teaching IR in Indonesia has much to do with historical legacies and political intrusion, as well as an economic environment in which universities are increasingly driven toward commercial activities. All these factors shape the current development of social science in general, and IR in particular.

International relations (IR) as it is taught in Thailand possesses developmental characteristics that have curbed its growth in the past. Through a combination of institutional and trend analyses, it will be argued that IR teaching in Thailand is at a turning point where externally driven developments are compelling a certain level of professionalization and engagement with global debates.

The article makes a preliminary survey of the teaching of international relations (IR) in Malaysia. It starts by describing the origins of the field, and the emergence of an IR epistemic community joining both academia and government. This account is necessarily derived from the experiences of the four most established Malaysian universities distinguished by length of existence and official favor. Subsequently, the survey would describe course content and influences going into their design. The penultimate sections would attempt to place the evolution of Malaysian IR teaching within a historical context. This survey nonetheless concludes that nationalist aspirations continue to remain a secondary influence when compared with intellectual dependence upon the West in the design of IR education in Malaysia.

This paper traces the evolution of the teaching of international relations (IR) in Vietnam, from the establishment of the first Institute of International Relations in 1959 to the proliferation of departments of IR or international studies from the 1990s. It notes the limitations facing teachers of IR and efforts to develop and standardize the curriculum in recent years. It also examines the way national history is portrayed in the teaching of Vietnam's foreign policy and regional relations in Southeast Asia, with increasing attention paid to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from the 1990s.

This article reviews and critiques recent scholarly work on Southeast Asian relations with the great powers, examining the strategies that ASEAN governments have used and the effects of those strategies. The author argues that Southeast Asian governments have generally steered away from traditional balance of power politics to promote a more complex ‘balance of influence’ comprising military, economic, institutional, and ideational dimensions. A key feature of this balance of influence strategy has been its inclusiveness. Southeast Asian governments have invited competing great powers to participate in the region's economic and diplomatic affairs so that they develop stakes in the region's peace and prosperity. The author contends that Southeast Asian efforts have been relatively successful to date, contributing to a multi-dimensional balance that is relatively resilient and places significant constraints on any external power's ability to exercise unwanted dominance in the region.