Over a decade has passed since the phenomenon of non-official diplomacy emerged as a notable theme in the international affairs of Southeast Asia. The emergence of unofficial diplomats from epistemic communities as well as ‘Track 2’ networks across the Southeast Asian region – such as ASEANISIS (ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies) and CSCAP (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific), among others – has contributed, among other things, to a more expansive understanding of diplomacy as a multitracked enterprise with governmental as well as non-governmental features (Hernandez 1994; Simon 2002; Woods 1993). Moreover, in the light of ongoing (albeit incipient) institutional changes to longstanding regional norms and practices, non-official diplomacy has arguably had some impact in engendering those regional transitions.

Nevertheless, efforts to arrive at some definitive conclusion about the nature and context of this broadened notion of diplomacy have not been entirely successful. This is largely due to the disagreement among analysts over the aims and accomplishments of non-official diplomacy vis-à-vis the Southeast Asian region. For my purposes, at least two broad observations, both apparently antithetical of each other, are noteworthy. On the one hand, non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia is seen by some as emblematic of a growing and thriving civil society throughout the region, although it is clear that civil society is more developed in some regional states than others (Acharya 2003; Yamamoto 1995). On the other hand, this diplomatic form has also been viewed more critically as having supported and legitimated regional governments and their policies (Jones & Smith 2002a; 2001; Khoo 2004). In this sense, non-official diplomatic agents ostensibly serve as a sort of shadow ‘civil service’, as it were.

Upon closer inspection, however, a more complex picture emerges that calls into question the supposed coherence of that distinction. Against that backdrop, this paper analyses the evolution of non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia in the post-Cold War era, paying close attention to the multifarious practices and processes in which non-official diplomatic agents engage that make them not only civil society participants whose ideas challenge the identity and interests of the state, but, paradoxically, also ‘civil servants’ who promote and protect those very things. Whether this inherent tension is resolvable is open to question.