Previous decades' celebrations of the triumph of democracy were frequently based on mainstream analyses that displayed two major theoretical problems. First, conceptualisations of democracy based on ‘minimal pre-conditions’ commonly conflated the formal establishment of democratic structures with the far more complex and historically challenging creation of substantive democracy. Second, a deductive and generally ahistorical model asserting fixed stages of ‘democratic transition’ diverted attention from deeper and more substantive examination of struggles for power among social forces within specific historical contexts. By adhering to minimalist conceptions of democracy and simplistic models of democratic change, mainstream analysts quite often chose to overlook many underlying limitations and shortcomings of the democratic structures they were so keen to celebrate. Given more recent concerns over ‘authoritarian undertow’, those with the normative goal of deepening democracy must begin by deepening scholarly conceptualisations of the complex nature of democratic change. This analysis urges attention to the ‘source’ and ‘purpose’ of democracy. What were the goals of those who established democratic structures, and to what extent did these goals correspond to the ideals of democracy? In many cases throughout the world, ‘democracy’ has been used as a convenient and very effective means for both cloaking and legitimising a broad set of political, social, and economic inequalities. The need for deeper analysis is highlighted through attention to the historical character of democratic structures in the Philippines and Thailand, with particular attention to the sources and purposes of ‘democracy’ amid on-going struggles for power among social forces. In both countries, albeit coming forth from very different historical circumstances, democratic structures have been continually undermined by those with little commitment to the democratic ideal: oligarchic dominance in the Philippines, and military/bureaucratic/monarchic dominance in Thailand. Each country possesses its own set of challenges and opportunities for genuine democratic change, as those who seek to undermine elite hegemony and promote popular accountability operate in very different socio-economic and institutional contexts. Efforts to promote substantive democracy in each setting, therefore, must begin with careful historical analysis of the particular challenges that need to be addressed.

Thailand's on-going political crisis began with agitation against the Thaksin Shinawatra-led government, saw a military coup and a spate of street-based protest and violence. Drawing on Marx and Weber and using the categories of class, status and party, it is argued that Thailand has reached a political turning point. Subaltern challenges to the hierarchical institutions of military, monarchy and bureaucracy appear to have resulted in political patterns of the past being set on a new trajectory. The social forces that congregate around old ideas associated with status honour – hierarchy, social closure and inequality, ‘Thai-style democracy’ and privilege – are challenged by those championing equality, access, voting and populism. While the balance of forces would suggest that an historical turning point has been achieved, reaction and unexpected outcomes remain possible.

This article investigates the emergence of new partisan identities in Thailand. Using data from Thailand's last several elections I trace the emergence of partisanship over the last 15 years, particularly in the north and northeast. The change in the nature of partisanship has helped turn long-simmering tensions into an increasingly intractable political conflict. This mass partisan alignment has upset the equilibrium of Thai politics, transforming what was once an inefficient but modest-stakes game of political horse-trading into a zero sum game with extremely high stakes.

The article argues for the utility of infusing the literature on Islamic politics in Southeast Asia with insights that may be gained from the literature on Islamic politics in North Africa and the Middle East. It suggests that such infusion, particularly of more explicitly historical sociology and political economy concerns, could reinvigorate the study of Islamic politics in Southeast Asia, which has been mostly dominated by cultural politics approaches and a concern for issues of doctrinal interpretation. Though this sort of literature has a rich and established tradition, it has lately succumbed to a more superficial security-oriented approach that has grown in influence since the advent of the War on Terror, in which Southeast Asia supposedly acts as a second front. Ironically, security-oriented analysts draw much of the material for their observations about Islamic ‘moderation’ and ‘radicalism’ from cultural politics analyses of Southeast Asian Islamic politics. Analyses based on historical sociology and political economy may provide alternative ways of understanding the evolution of Islamic politics in Southeast Asia by integrating such matters as post-colonial state development, Cold War era conflicts and the transforming effects of capitalist development on its social bases.

Recent studies of the Chinese in Southeast Asia have tended to deconstruct the hybrid, transnational, diasporic, and de-territorialized attributes of ‘Chinese-ness’, and theorize the politics thereof. In contrast, earlier scholarship on the politics of Southeast Asia's ethnic Chinese raised many questions over the positions, rights, and roles associated with being ‘overseas Chinese’. Hence, many analyses of Chinese politics, from suppressed quietude to militant contestation, tended to ask, ‘Why and how was that politics Chinese?’ This article asks, instead, ‘Why and how were the Chinese political?’ within the larger rubric of Southeast Asian politics. It argues that posing the first question helped officialdom, academia and media to determine who among the ‘overseas Chinese’ were friends or foes. Asking the second question, it is argued, involves a boundary-crossing shift that sees the immigrant Chinese engaged in a full spectrum of Southeast Asian politics under the impacts of colonialism and nationalism, and capitalism and anti-capitalism. After exploring the shift in perspective from ‘being Chinese’ to ‘being political’, the article suggests that politics beyond China-oriented positions, state-bound stances, or preoccupations of ethnic identity, particularly in Malaysia transformed Southeast Asia to the point of ‘creating’ a ‘largely Chinese’ state out of Singapore.

This paper explains the post-Cold War surge of nationalism in Southeast Asia and discusses its significance for regional peace and cooperation. As argued, the growth of nationalism as a form of mass politics has different causes in each Southeast Asian context where it occurs, but at the regional level the phenomenon can be explained by three factors: the failure of earlier nationalist movements to fully deliver their promises; a shift in the international and regional order (the end of the Cold War and the rise of China); and a change in domestic order (political liberalisation and democratisation) that was also occurring across many countries in the region. While the main mission of the new nationalism is the defence of national territory, the movements have the unintended impact of bringing together national communities once divided by Cold War ideologies. The phenomenon also poses some serious risks to regional peace and cooperation.

Open nearly any general text on Southeast Asia and you will find that some space is taken up in the introduction assessing the reality and validity of the regional framework on which that text rests. Likewise, with the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), many scholars question whether or not the regional entity amounts to anything of any substance. In this article, I mount a defence of Southeast Asia as a regional framework in scholarship and draw attention to ASEAN as an evolving regional entity. While the concept of Southeast Asia among researchers and the politics of ASEAN are distinct issues, I treat them together in this article to highlight their interrelationship and parallels. My primary objective is to outline the displaced politics – of both academic and realpolitik varieties – embedded in deconstructive and dismissive critiques of both Southeast Asia and ASEAN. Critiques of both are not without value, as they sharpen our attention to processes through which supra-national regionalism is produced. Nevertheless, I argue that regionalism remains a valuable method in both politics and scholarship, in no small part as a counterweight to the hegemony of methodological nationalism in contemporary thought and research.

From its inception, ASEAN has been shaped by the evolving structure of the international system and the activities of more powerful external actors. This is still the case. What is different now is that the nature of the region of which ASEAN is a part has changed in significant ways. Indeed, the entire structure of the international system has undergone a number of profoundly important changes which have forced ASEAN to adjust and recalibrate its own policies. This paper explores this adjustment process and maps the most important forces and actors that are compelling change. By placing the ASEAN experience in a comparative conceptual framework, it becomes possible to identify the key drivers of change and to speculate about their future impact on an organisation that has proved remarkably resilient thus far. The nature of contemporary regional developments and the continuing evolution of the wider international system mean that ASEAN is currently facing major new challenges and questions about its relevance in an era when other regional organisations are emerging to challenge its authority and role.