John T. Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of Comparative and International Politics and Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research on Southeast Asia has spanned issues of bossism and criminality, religious violence, state-building and class formation, reform advocacy coalitions, and the political economy of transportation and infrastructure, especially in the Philippines and Indonesia. His most recent book, ‘Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia’, is available via Cornell University Press.