The establishment of democratic political systems of government is a difficult and protracted process. This particularly holds true for Southeast Asia. Despite various democratization attempts in the region, authoritarian setbacks seem to be a constant feature of Southeast Asian politics. The most serious and promising democratization efforts over the last decades were undertaken by Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

All these three countries became democratic in the so-called third wave of democratization (Huntington 1991). High hopes were set in the newly introduced democracies by democratic-minded people in the region. The re-start of Thailand's democracy with the 1997 Constitution was widely hailed as a political breakthrough to end decades of elite-controlled semiauthoritarianism. In the Philippines, the removal of dictator Ferdinand Marcos by the so-called People Power Revolution in 1986 offered a great chance to establish a full-fledged democratic order and to remove the authoritarian remnants. The same holds true for Indonesia after the downfall of long-time autocrat Soeharto in May 1998.

In the first years after the regime changes, there was rising optimism that a full-fledged democracy could be established in all three countries. However, disappointment over the implementation of the expected democratic consolidation soon became the dominant impression among analysts and ordinary people. Initial euphoria turned into frustration since the democratic promises did not always transfer into daily political practice and reality. Worse, particularly in Thailand and the Philippines, the political systems temporarily adopted authoritarian features and turned away from being liberal democracies. For some time, it was therefore justified to speak not of a weak democratic consolidation process but rather a veritable regression in democracy.

In Thailand, people witnessed a military coup in 2006, election boycotts, and about one decade of political violence and unrest, mostly not in the political institutions but rather on the streets. In the Philippines, the recent pork-barrel scandal made the dimensions of graft in public office visible to the general public. Previously, a president was impeached under legally dubious conditions, whereas his successor led the country into more or less open authoritarianism. Indonesia was spared from direct authoritarian backlashes, but the current political system is still marred by a multitude of corruption scandals and undemocratic power struggles at all levels of government. More than 350 Indonesian government officials have been jailed on corruption charges since 2002, including national ministers, provincial governors, dozens of members of the national parliament and high-ranking judges.