ABSTRACT
Among the most commonly noted contributors to democratisation and supports for successful democratic praxis is a vibrant civil society. Unfortunately, the discussion too often stops there: at the notion of an undifferentiated, frequently anthropomorphised ‘civil society’ that acts as a necessary, if not sufficient, causal factor. Southeast Asian experience offers ample grounds for teasing out the concrete mechanisms involved, the attributes of civil society that are most relevant and what specific types of civil society organisations (CSOs), organised on what bases (e.g. class, communal segments, interests), are most likely to be germane to processes of liberalisation and/or full democratisation. I do not endeavour to list the full array of proximate and more distal instigators of democratisation in Southeast Asia. Other chapters in this volume address the roles of business elites, new media, middle-class movements and others of the usual suspects. Instead, my objective here is, narrowly, to determine what sorts of CSOs seem most conducive to democratisation and how the effect manifests. Toward that end, I first review what the prevailing wisdom is about these issues in the region and what generalisations we might tease out regarding the relationship between civil society and democratisation (or consolidation and maintenance of democracy), and I then suggest a taxonomy of patterns.
