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This article shows the inconvenience of using area studies to analyze the processes of decolonization and State building in - Southeast Asia, arguing that such studies do not consider the diversity of the historical and political processes in every country during the second half of the twentieth century because of its use of homogeneous and universal categories. Some of these categories originated from the theoretical paradigm of the modern Nation State, which is inadequate to study the political results of those processes. The article uses the examples of Thailand, East Timor, Burma and Philippines to examine the problems of national unity, bureaucracies and political cultures, and the links between tradition and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]