In their preface, the editors of this volume, called a fourth edition, state that it follows on from three previous volumes, published by different publishers in 1997, 2001, and 2006. All were edited by Garry Rodan, Kevin Hewison, and Richard Robison, the three founding fathers of what is now called the ‘Murdoch School’. These volumes, together with several other books authored by Robison and Vedi Hadiz have together ‘challenged established literatures’ (p. v) on the economic development of Southeast Asia, especially those written by orthodox economists and political scientists whose research is broadly ‘comparative and institutional’. The reader learns in the editors' preface that the Murdoch School has rejected not just these approaches but also that of dependency theory and what might be broadly called the developmental state literature, pioneered in the case of Japan and Korea by the American political economists Chalmers Johnson and Alice Amsdem. These authors explained the rapid growth in Japan and the Republic of Korea in terms of insulated bureaucracies that were free to implement pro-growth policies without too much interference from vested interests. The Murdoch school rejects this approach in favour of one that has