Author Description

It is now apparent, especially in the aftermath of the regional financial crisis of 1997, that globalization has been impacting upon the Southeast Asian economies and societies in new and harrowing ways, a theme of many recent studies. Inadvertently, these studies of globalization have also highlighted that the 1980s and 1990s debate on democratization in the region which focused on the emergence of the middle classes, the roles of new social movements, NGOs and the changing relations between state and civil society might have been overly one-dimensional. This volume revisits the theme of democratization via the lenses of globalization, understood economically, politically and culturally. Although globalization increasingly frames the processes of democracy and development, nonetheless, the governments and peoples of Southeast Asia have been able to determine the pace and character even the direction of these processes to a considerable extent. This collection of essays (by some distinguished senior scholars and other equally perceptive younger ones) focuses on this globalization democratization nexus and shows, empirically and analytically, how governance is being restructured and democracy sometimes deepened in this new global era. A historical review introduces the volume while an analytical assessment of the ten case-studies concludes it.