The Politics of NGOs in Southeast Asia traces the history of the emergence of NGOs in the Philippines and southeast Asia and the political factors which encouraged this. The main focus is on the period from the mid-1990s when NGOs first became a notable force in the region. It documents the complex relations between NGOs and other political actors including the state, organised religion, foreign donors, the business sector and underground insurgent groups and their impact on NGO strategy.

Academics and policy makers have grown increasingly interested in the ways that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may encourage better governance, democratic politics, and perhaps ultimately a global civil society. In Civil Life,Globalization and Political Change in Asia, Robert Weller has brought together an international group of experts on the subject, whose chapters address these questions through a series of extensive case studies from East and Southeast Asia including Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam.

This book examines different ideologies and related political coalitions forming the bases of movements for accountability reform in Southeast Asia.

Governments and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Asia face critical development challenges. This volume examines ways to improve the policy environment for NGOs in Asia so that they may contribute more effectively to the development process. The contributors identify the main factors which influence the policy environment for NGOs, characterize and compare the political space for NGOs, examine the roles that governments and international development agencies can play in supporting NGOs, and propose possible strategies and policy guidelines for improving government-NGO relations in Asia.

As developing countries with recent histories of isolation and extreme poverty, followed by restoration and reform, both Cambodia and Vietnam have seen new opportunities and demands for non-state actors to engage in and manage the effects of rapid socio-economic transformation. This book examines how in both countries, civil society actors and the state manage their relationship to one another in an environment that is continuously shaped and (re)constructed by changing legislation, collaboration and negotiation, advocacy and protest, and social control. Further, it explores the countries’ divergent experiences whilst also uncovering the underlying basis and drivers of civil society activity that are shared by Cambodia and Vietnam. Crucially, this book engages with the contested nature of civil society and how it is socially constructed through research and development activities, by looking at contemporary discourses and manifestations of civil society in the two countries, including national and community-level organisations, associations, and networks that operate in a variety of sectors, such as gender, the environment and health. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in Cambodia and Vietnam, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian studies, Southeast Asian politics, development studies and civil society.

The number, variety, and political prominence of non-governmental organization in the Philippines present a unique opportunity to study citizen activism. Nearly 60,000 in number by some estimates, grassroots and support organizations promote the interests of farmers, the urban poor, women, and indigenous peoples. They provide an avenue for political participation and a mechanism, unequaled elsewhere in Southeast Asia, for redressing the inequities of society. Organizing for Democracy brings together the most recent research on these organizations and their programs in the first book addressing the political significance of NGOs in the Philippines.

This edited collection brings together enterprising pieces of new research on the many forms of organization in East and Southeast Asia that are sponsored or mandated by government, but engage widespread participation at the grassroots level. Straddling the state-society divide, these organizations play important roles in society and politics, yet remain only dimly understood. This book shines a spotlight on this phenomenon, which speaks to fundamental questions about how such societies choose to organize themselves, how institutions of local governance change over time, and how individuals respond to and make use of the power of the state. The contributors investigate organizations ranging from volunteer-based organizations that partner with government in providing services for homeless children, to state-managed networks of neighborhood- or village-level associations that perform representative as well as administrative functions and seeks to answer a number of questions: When do the "vertical," top-down imperatives of the state stifle "horizontal" solidarities, and when might the two work in harmony? Are useful social and administrative purposes served by this type of fusion? Does it amplify or merely muffle citizens’ voices? What does it tell us about existing accounts of community, social capital, "synergy," "complementarity," "subsidiarity," and related concepts? Representing seven countries: China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Singapore this volume will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in Asian studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, development, history, nonprofit studies.