Professor Amitav Acharya
Author, Singapore Foreign Policy:
The Search for Regional Order
Director, Governance Research Centre &
Professor of Global Governance
Department of Politics
University of Bristol
United Kingdom

Assistant Professor Alan Chong
Department of Political Science
National University of Singapore

What drives Singapore's foreign policy? How does ASEAN fit in it? What are the challenges that lie ahead?

The conventional understanding of Singapore's foreign policy can be summarised in three main propositions: first, it is dictated by the imperatives of being a small state; second, its primary purpose is to ensure Singapore's survival, and third, this logic of survival dictates a realpolitik approach to foreign policy and national security.

IPS, in partnership with World Scientific Publishing Limited, is pleased to present a forum to discuss their new book which aims to challenge this conventional understanding. Prof Amitav Acharya, author of Singapore's Foreign Policy: The Search for Regional Order argues that an exclusively realist view of Singapore's foreign policy is inadequate. It is also shaped by a belief in the positive effects of economic interdependence and regional institution-building both of which Singapore has tried to promote as instruments of regional order within her national interest. This offers a different analytic lens by which to interpret how Singapore approaches her involvement in ASEAN, in inter-regionalism, and global terrorism. The second speaker at this forum, Dr Alan Chong, a leading local scholar on International Relations, critiques the book and assesses its value in the light of developments in Singapore's foreign relations through the year 2007.

Professor Amitav Acharya
Amitav ACHARYA is Director of the Governance Research Centre and Professor of Global Governance at the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol. He has previously taught at NUS, York, Harvard, and NTU (Singapore) and was a fellow of Harvard University's Asia Centre and John F. Kennedy School of Government. Among his previous works on Southeast Asia is The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (2000), which was reviewed by Pacific Affairs as he best work on Southeast Asian regionalism available? Another book, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (2001), was praised by American Political Science Review as innovative and stimulating vivid and cutting-edge? Predating ASEAN's official Security Community initiative, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia remains the most-widely cited and used book on ASEAN. Professor Acharya is a Vice President-elect (2008-9) of the International Studies Association, the world's largest professional organization of international relations scholars.

Assistant Professor Alan Chong
Alan CHONG is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. His research interests involve general International Relations Theory, International Communication, Singapore's politics and foreign policy, and Asian International Theory. He has published with Asian Survey, The Pacific Review, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Review of International Studies and the Journal of International Relations and Development. He has published several journal pieces on the role of ideas as both tools and worldview of Singapore's foreign policy. His first book Foreign Policy in Global Information Space: Actualizing Soft Power (Palgrave Macmillan) was published this year utilising the case studies of Singapore (Asian Values) and Chile (the Pinochet extradition controversy). He is currently working on a series of conference papers, articles, and potentially, a second book on communication processes and their relationship to the study of international politics. Dr Chong received his PhD from the London School of Economics, United Kingdom.

For more information, please contact Ms Catherine Lim tel: 6516-8384 or email: