Emajuddin Ahamed is professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and former pro vice chancellor of that university. His numerous publications include Military Rule and Myth of Democracy (1988) and Society and Politics in Bangladesh (1989).

Suchit Bunbongkarn is professor and head of the Department of Government at the Political Science Faculty, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. He was an adviser to former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanoud from 1981 to 1987. His many publications on Thai politics include The Thai Military in Politics 1981-1986 (1987).

Stephanie Lawson is a fellow in the Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. Her doctoral thesis from the University of New England, Australia, on The Failure of Democratic Politics in Fiji, was published by Oxford University Press in 1991 and she has recently completed a book on Tradition and Democracy in the South Pacific.

Ronald J. May is senior fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, and former director of the Papua New Guinea Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research (now National Research Institute). He is a graduate of Sydney and Oxford universities and has published extensively on the politics of Papua New Guinea and the Philippines, including The Changing Role of the Military in Papua New Guinea (1993).

Yung Myung Kim is a graduate of Seoul National University and the State Uni-versity of New York at Buffalo and currently associate professor in Political Science at Hallym University, Chunchon, Kangwon-do, Korea. He has written on various aspects of Korean politics, including civil-military relations.

Hasan Askari Rizvi is professor and chairman of the department of Political Science at the University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. He holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr Rizvi’s many publications include The Military and Politics in Pakistan (1986) and Pakistan and the Geostrategic Environment (1993).

Viberto Selochan is a graduate of the Australian National University and former research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Australia-Asia Relations at Griffith University, Australia, currently working with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He is the author of Could the Military Govern the Philippines? and editor of The Military, the State, and Development in Asia and the Pacific (1991). His PhD thesis on ‘Professionalisation and Politicisation of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ is being prepared for publication.

Josef Silverstein has recently retired as professor and chairman of the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University, USA. He is a leading authority on Burma, whose extensive publications include The Political Legacy of Aung San (1972), Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation (1977), and Burmese Politics: The Dilemma of National Unity (1980).

Michael Vatikiotis is a graduate of the London School of Oriental and African Studies who has spent a number of years in Southeast Asia working for the BBC and as bureau chief and ASEAN correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. His book on Indonesian Politics Under Suharto was published in 1993.