ABSTRACT
In the 13 years from 1986 to 1998, the character of the South-East Asian state changed significantly. Prior to 1986, the ten governments that ruled over the region’s 500m population were almost exclusively authoritarian, from the civilianled but nevertheless semi-democratic regimes of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, to the military-led or-dominated regimes of Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, from the communist states of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to an eclectic socialist dictatorship in Burma. In each case, markets were subject to political interference or control and civil society carefully circumscribed or outrightly repressed. The pattern differed enormously from country to country, yet everywhere the State was a great leviathan, powerful, overbearing and repressive and the institutions of a free market and civil society weak and ineffective.
