Several Islamic organizations have experience major changes in their theological frames and political identities away from fundamentalist and revivalist theological orientation to one that embraces a progressive Islamic theology that synthesizes these norms with classical Islamic teachings. What are the factors that explain these theological changes? What are the causal mechanisms that help to promote them? Using the moral authority leadership theory, I argue that Islamic groups would be able to change their theological frames and political identities if the changes are promoted by religious leaders with 'moral authority' status, who are using both ideational and instrumental strategies to reconstruct the theological frames of their organizations. In addition to moral authority leadership, intermediary variables that also affect the likelihood of a theological change within Islamic groups are the institutional culture of the organization - the degree of tolerance for non-Islamic theological teachings - and the relationship between the Islamic group and the state. This study is a comparative historical analysis of two Indonesian Islamic groups: the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the Muhammadiyah. It finds that the NU was able to successfully change its theological positions due to the presence of a charismatic moral authority leader, the tolerant institutional culture within the organization, and the ability of the organization to ally with the Suharto regime, allowing the reform to be institutionalized with little intervention from the regime. On the other hand, theological reform within the Muhammadiyah was not successful due to the lack of a leader with moral authority status who could have led the reforms within the organization, as well as to the dominance of a revivalist institutional culture that does not tolerate any challenges to their interpretation of Islamic theology. The analysis makes theoretical contributions on the role of religious leadership within Islamic movements and the likelihood of Islamic groups to adopt liberal political norms such as democracy, religion-state separation, and tolerance toward religious minorities. It identifies the mechanisms in which theological change within Islamic group become possible.

In the former British colony of Malaya, communism is a controversial subject that often invites significant scrutiny from government officials and pro-British scholars who describes the radical movement as a foreign conspiracy to dominate the small Southeast Asian nation. The primary goal of this thesis, therefore, is to reinterpret and revise the current established history of Malayan communism in a chronological and unbiased manner that would illustrate that the authoritative accounts of the movement was not only incomplete but was also written with explicit prejudice. The secondary goal of this thesis is to argue that the members of the Malayan Communist Party were actually nationalists who embraced leftist ideology as a means to fight against colonialism. By examining the programs and manifestoes issued by the Party over the years, it is clear that the communists were in fact had been arguing for social reforms and independence rather than a Russian-style proletarian revolution. This research scrutinizes the authoritative texts written by Cold War-era scholars such as Gene Hanrahan as well as newly published historical analysis of the period by Cheah Boon Kheng in addition to memoirs of surviving members of the Party such as Chin Peng and Abdullah C.D. The evidence indicates that early understandings of the Malayan communist movement were heavily influenced by Cold War paranoia and that over time it had become the accepted version of history.

The World Economic Herald was a newspaper founded in April 1980 and was closed down by the Chinese government in May 1989 due to its dissident voice. The World Economic Herald was widely regarded as the most influential and important weekly newspaper in China in the 1980s. It became the leading publication pushing political as well as economic reform in China. This key publication in history has yet to receive much scholarly attention. By examining the evolution of the World Economic Herald from 1980 to 1989, this thesis explores the political and financial support behind the newspaper and, more importantly, the changing contents of the World Economic Herald. The year 1985 is seen a turning point for the World Economic Herald. After 1985, the World Economic Herald moved gradually toward being more of a politically dissident newspaper from an economic newspaper. The changes in the political patronage behind the newspaper played a crucial role in the fate of the World Economic Herald.