This is a volume on changes in governance systems and practices pertaining to the idea of ‘democratization’ in Southeast Asia, intentionally positioned in a ‘thick’ historical context of globalization. Starting with a regional historical review, it travels through 10 case studies and arrives at some generalized conclusions on the nature, pace and depth of democratic change in Southeast Asia.

DEBATING AND DEFINING GLOBALIZATION

The term globalization asserts that the basic conditions of the world that we live in have been significantly altered. When globalization began depends on whether one emphasizes the political, economic or cultural aspect of that globalization process. It also depends on the situational experiential perspective – specifically, whether from the US or Europe or Southeast Asia – one brings to bear on understanding that process. Whichever the case, the notion of globalization is in many ways retrospective.

One of the major changes that has occurred, especially when considered from European and American vantage points, are the events related to 1989, which marked the beginning of the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern European bloc. The security arrangements associated with the Cold War were rapidly dismantled and the East-West divide, symbolically marked by the Berlin Wall, rendered obsolete (and the Wall itself destroyed). The emergence of a ‘New World Order’ was also proclaimed by Washington. With the break-up of the Soviet empire, liberal democracy was further extended to new parts of the globe.

This line of analysis often includes a discussion of the expansion and consolidation of the European Union (EU), which further suggests that the individual European state's autonomy and sovereignty, perhaps the most important feature of the Wesphalian order, was being replaced by more regional affiliations and interests on the one hand, and devolution of powers to the local sub-national levels on the other. The intervention of the European nations in the war-torn former Yugoslavia also highlighted the decline of the nation state and its replacement by multi-layered governance.