A common narrative of globalization, conceived as a multi-layered offensive by the forces of neo-liberal capitalism, is that it is unravelling the familiar political form of the post-war nation state, identified broadly as ‘embedded liberalism’ in the West and the ‘developmental state’ in the East. This occurrence is marked by bringing into being new disciplinary regimes of governance articulated around market rules. Further, some would codify this as instituting new modes of constitutionalism whereby authorities that transcend the nation state now compel extant states to adopt codes of conduct in conformity with the transcendent needs of the capital form (Gill 1998). Thus, although the last 20 years have seen dramatic shifts in state forms towards procedural democracy, these developments need to be framed in cognisance of the global structures that limit the sovereignty of the new democracies such that alternative national agendas are left begging (Gills et al. 1993). Democratization, then, to the extent that it has been elite-led, might best be seen as bringing into being new conditions of disempowerment, as William Robinson (1996) and Rita Abrahamsen (2000), separately, show.

Bringing this analysis down to a sub-regional perspective and looking at democratization in the Philippines, Thailand or Indonesia, we see a confluence of national crises, the advance of capitalism and domestic movements for political reform. Each of these countries has been subject to international democracy promotion projects and governance reform aimed at developing a liberal state, in line with the ‘globalization project’ pursued by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as transnational corporations and the US Wall Street-Treasury complex. This project entails market liberalization and deregulation, pursuit of comparative advantage, restructuring of the state (downsizing, decentralization, democratization) and the emergence of institutions of global governance (McMichael 1996: 148–175).

While a broad brush account of neo-liberal globalization serves as a useful template upon which to map national responses, it tells us little about the kind of discursive struggles that are happening on the ground in each of the countries involved.