ABSTRACT
Until comparatively recently, political scientists have devoted little attention to non-state associational life in South-East Asia, especially the role of the voluntary sector. At one level, the omission is unsurprising. From the mid1960s to the mid-1980s, political life in the region was dominated by the state as authoritarian patterns of rule prevailed. Yet significant socio-economic change during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, wrought in large part by the region’s authoritarian regimes, dramatically changed the nature of associational life in South-East Asia. In a 1973 article, Carl Landé argued that social organisation in South-East Asia, from the Thai monarchy to the Kalinga of the Philippines, centred on elaborate pyramids of dyadic structures ‘composed variously of ties of kinship, friendship, patronship-clientship and interpersonal political alliances’ (Landé 1973: 119), undermining the key assumptions of group theory with respect to the region. Drawing on the Philippines for modern examples, Landé argued that ‘associational and institutional groups account for only a small part of the totality of interest articulation’, and that voluntary organisations, whilst widespread, were occupationally-specialised, undermining the interest-representation function of the voluntary sector (Ibid.: 115).
