Southeast Asia Regional Office This section provides lists of new books purchased to the Bangkok Regional Office Library. The publications are presented with a scanned frontpage, a bibliographical reference, ISBN and a short description. Developing the Mekong: Regionalism and Regional Security in China-Southeast Asian Relations by Evelyn Goh. (Abingdon, Oxon. : Routledge, 2007.) ISBN: 9780415438735 In Southeast Asia, China’s growing economic and political strength has been accompanied by adept diplomacy and active promotion of regional cooperation, institutions and integration. Southeast Asian states and China engage in strategic regionalism: they seek regional membership for regime legitimation and collective bargaining; and regional integration to enhance economic development, regarded as essential for ensuring national and regime security. Sino-Southeast Asian regionalism is exemplified by the development plans for the Mekong River basin, where ambitious projects for building regional infrastructural linkages and trade contribute to mediating the security concerns of the Mekong countries. However, Mekong regionalism also generates new insecurities. Developing the resources of the Mekong has led to serious challenges in terms of governance, distribution and economic externalities. Law and society in Vietnam : the Transition from Socialism in Comparative Perspective by Mark Sidel. (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2008.) ISBN: 9780521850520 This book addresses constitutional change, the assertion of constitutional claims by citizens, the formation of a strong civil society and non-profit sector, the emergence of economic law and the battles over who is benefited by the new economic regulation, labor law and the protection of migrant and export labor, the rise of lawyers and public interest law, and other key topics. Alongside other countries, comparisons are made to parallel developments in another transforming socialist state, the People's Republic of China. Creating Laos : the making of a Lao space between Indochina and Siam, 1860-1945 by Soren Ivarsson. ( Copenhagen: NIAS, 2008) ISBN: 9788776940225 The existence of Laos today is taken for granted. But the crystallization of a Lao national idea and ultimate independence for the country was a long and uncertain process. This book examines the process through which Laos came into existence under French colonial rule through to the end of World War II. Rather than assuming that the Laos we see today was an historical given, the book looks at how Laos’s position at the intersection of two conflicting spatial layouts of ‘Thailand’ and ‘Indochina’ made its national form a particularly contested process.