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This article reports that since the end of World War II the peoples of Southeast Asia have engaged in a search for political stability. The Southeast Asian quest for viable political arrangements embraces two phases: first the drive for national independence, the seeds of which go back into prewar colonial days; and second, the efforts to establish and operate acceptable political systems once the original goal had been attained. The breakup of any established political order is a complex rather than a simple process, particularly in regions as diverse and complex as those which comprise Southeast Asia. Rather than solving problems, the attainment of independence has tended to create new ones, or at the very least, to shift responsibility for solving pre-existing problems from the colonial powers to the localities themselves. In as much as the latter were generally underdeveloped economically and unprepared politically to assume the burdens, their efforts have been uncertain and insufficiently productive to satisfy the original high hopes. The results have been discord and political strife, complicated, and often confused, by the interplay of interests and aspirations which have developed within each country.