When Indonesia's long-time authoritarian ruler Soeharto was overthrown in May 1998, the country embarked on a period of tumultuous political change. Governments rose and fell, dramatic reform of virtually all major state institutions began, new political movements proliferated, and violent conflicts broke out in several parts of the archipelago. The year 2004, I contend in this survey, marks the end of this period of rapid political flux. The lengthy electoral cycle that dominated the year's politics demonstrated that Indonesia's new political system is settling solidly into place. The April legislative election was the second to be held since the fall of Soeharto, and it passed remarkably smoothly, with relatively little violence or electoral fraud. The direct presidential elections that followed in two rounds in July and September realised one of the major promises of the reformasi era: for the first time in Indonesia's history, the population directly elected its head of state.

In place of the unpredictability and turmoil of the immediate post-Soeharto period, we now see the advent of an era of what might be called ‘normalised’ democratic politics, characterised by the atomisation of voters, greater fluidity of political affiliation, dominance of professional strata, modern techniques and big money. The media and the politics of personality and image dominate, exemplified by the election as president of arguably the most media-savvy politician of his generation, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The very orderliness of the election, including the sense of alienation and boredom felt by many voters, confirmed that elections are seen by the majority as the sole legitimate means to change government. No major political force seriously questioned the legitimacy of the 2004 elections or threatened to overturn their results. Developments outside the electoral arena confirm the general picture; for instance, the various communal and other violent conflicts that marked the immediate post-Soeharto years continued to decline in intensity.

Christianity in Southeast Asia is in many ways a relatively recent phenomenon, with the most significant events taking place from the late nineteenth century onwards. Certainly compared with religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, Christianity in the context of Southeast Asia as a whole must be considered a minority religion and one that has only recently begun to make a cultural impact. Yet this impact is by no means negligible, and has played quite an important role in shaping some aspects of Asian modernity, especially in the areas of education, medical and social work, and in laying the foundation for significant international networks in the age of Asian diasporas and globalization.

The earliest signs of a Christian presence in Southeast Asia possibly date back to the seventh century; archaeological finds suggest that there were a number of Christian settlements (originating in Central Asia, and spreading through India) in the Malay Peninsula and parts of Sumatra and Java (Gillman and Klimkeit 1999, pp. 307–9). However, little is known about these early Christian settlements, and they certainly had no lasting impact on the early kingdoms and cultures of Southeast Asia. It was only in the early sixteenth century that Christianity entered Southeast Asia to make a sustained impact, and it was in large part because religion entered together with mercantile and military interests that this sustained presence was effected. From this point onwards, the spread of Christianity in Asia is connected, if in complex ways, to European colonial interests. It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century, after most of the Southeast Asian nations gained independence, that indigenous leadership and growth in the churches took place.

Catholicism arrived in Southeast Asia well before the main Protestant missionary movements. The earliest sites of Catholic influence in Southeast Asia were Malacca, a port which the Portuguese occupied in 1511, and the Philippine islands, which Spain claimed from 1521, although it was not until the latter part of the sixteenth century that their control over the islands was complete.

Indonesia, with its huge size (covering almost 2 million square kilometres), insular geography (spread out over some 17,000 islands), large population and linguistic ethnic diversity, is an arena predisposed to religious diversity and fragmentation. Islam arrived in the Indonesian islands in the thirteenth century, and by the sixteenth century had become the dominant religion, but this did not completely supplant pockets of older religions and practices like Hinduism and animism, especially in the more remote regions far away from the power base of the island of Java. The wealth of cash crops in the islands, especially spices like pepper and nutmeg, attracted the interest of the European colonial powers, including the Portuguese in the sixteenth century and the British for a brief period in the nineteenth century. However, it was the Dutch who exerted the most protracted colonial influence: after seizing Ambon in the Moluccas in 1605, the Dutch gradually extended their control over the Indonesian islands, bringing into subjugation the rulers of the different Indonesian kingdoms, and making treaties with rival colonial powers like the British.

As with the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia seems to have been visited by Christians from the Eastern Church, and some early Christian settlements on Sumatra and Java have been reported by various sources from the seventh to fifteenth centuries (Santoso 1996, p. 315). The rise of Islam from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries also eclipsed these early Christian settlements. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese brought Catholicism to parts of Indonesia; Francis Xavier's ministry in the Moluccas in 1546–47 did much to reinforce the acceptance of the religion in the eastern part of the islands (Santoso 1996, p. 315). However, when the Dutch established their dominance over the islands in the seventeenth century, they were as keen to suppress the old enemy of Catholicism.

Singapore, although one of the tiniest countries in the world, occupies a significant position in Southeast Asia, not only for its vaunted economic prosperity and governance, but also as one of the strongholds of Christianity in the region. Although the proportion of professed Christians is not very high — 14.6 per cent, according to the 2000 Census of Population — this is high relative to the proportion of Christians in most of the other countries in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the statistical figure does not really capture the broader influence of Christianity in Singapore — the “social influence” of Christianity mediated through the country's many and well-reputed “mission schools”, the close association of Christianity with middle-class identity (indicated in higher educational levels and correspondingly higher incomes and anglophone competence), and the economic and organizational cachet which is attached to Christian organizations based in Singapore.

Founded in 1819 as a trading base and port for the British East India Company, Singapore was initially administered as one of three “Straits Settlements” (the others being the port of Malacca and the island of Penang, both in peninsular Malaysia), and then as part of Malaya until independence from British rule in 1957. In 1965 Singapore and Malaysia parted ways, in large part due to issues of racial politics (it was perceived, among other things, that Chinese-dominated Singapore would affect Malay political and social control of Malaysia), and the Republic of Singapore came into being. Although the original inhabitants of the island were Malay, the colonial administration's policy of promoting Singapore as a free port and its recruitment of labourers for the rubber and tin industries in Malaya brought in a large number of Tamil and Chinese immigrants, changing the racial and cultural composition of the island significantly.

There is clearly a great range in terms of the strength of Christianity in the different countries in Southeast Asia. One need only consider the startling contrast between the Philippines, where Christianity is part of everyday life and plays a powerful sociopolitical role, and countries like Laos where Christians worship almost in secret and constitute a miniscule portion of the population. These differences might play a bigger role in the relationships between the countries in Southeast Asia, except that Christianity today is a minority religion in the region as a whole, which is dominated by Islam and Buddhism. Yet while nations are obviously keen to keep religious sensitivities out of their official dealings with each other, the fact that religion is so closely intertwined with socio-political forces means that changes in the religious landscape of the region may also exert pressure on domestic and international arrangements. Christianity, as the more recent arrival among religions in Southeast Asia, and the one with the greatest amount of input and influence from far-off foreign organizations, is the logical candidate to be regarded with suspicion as the agent of change and destabilization.

Thus any consideration of Christianity in Southeast Asia, despite the relatively small number of Christians in most of the countries in this region, needs to consider a number of issues. The first is what might be called the cultural politics of Christianity in this region: the inevitable association of Christianity with European, North American (and to a lesser extent, anglophone Pacific) countries. Although developments over the latter part of the twentieth century, and especially in the last three decades or so, have moved Christianity away from merely being a colonial legacy to a religion with deep local involvement (for example, in the phenomenon of large and rapidly-growing independent churches, or in the rise of mission-sending countries in Southeast Asia), there is still the persistent conception of Christianity as being inextricably bound to the cultural and political beliefs of European, North American and other countries.

Although Christianity for various reasons has developed less significantly in the other countries in Southeast Asia, in many cases there have been instances of local impact; furthermore, even in countries where Christianity has not become a major religion, its interaction with the other religions and with governance has interest for an understanding of the region as a whole.

Of the other six countries in Southeast Asia, the two countries in which Christianity has made the largest impact are the former British colony and protectorate (respectively) of Myanmar and Brunei. This would once again reinforce the notion that the British colonial government played a significant role in the spread of Christianity in the region, if not in any overt attempt to propagate the religion, at least in the general sense of maintaining the rule of law conducive for missionary movements and activities, and in its tolerance of missionary efforts particularly in areas like education and social welfare. British policies to encourage trade and to bring in immigrant labour also had an impact on Christianity, since in many cases this resulted in a more mixed population that qualified the religious-cultural dominant, and created opportunities for missionaries to spread the Christian faith to some sectors of the populace.

Myanmar

The British annexed Myanmar progressively via a series of treaties from 1826 to 1886, and governed it as a province of India for most of its colonial history, chiefly to prevent the warlike tribes in Burma (as it was then known) from disrupting British commercial activities in eastern India, but also to exploit Burma's valuable natural resources such as teakwood. The Portuguese had introduced Catholicism to Burma in the sixteenth century, but this did not have a significant impact as the Portuguese did not establish any territorial control. However, Burma's proximity to India also made it a logical extension to missionary endeavours in India, and from early in the nineteenth century, missionaries involved in India were already planning to cross over into the new mission field of Burma.

The story of Christianity in Malaysia is to a certain extent interwoven with that of Singapore, as the two countries were part of the same colonial administrative region before finally separating in 1965. The area of the Malay Peninsula, together with parts of the coastal region of the island of Borneo, which collectively make up the modern-day nation of Malaysia, had long been occupied by Malay fishermen, traders and agriculturalists when Hindu and Buddhist influences came to the region from the ninth century onwards (Ho 1996, p. 260). From the fourteenth century onwards, Islam became the dominant religion in the whole of the Malay archipelago, and became deeply ingrained into the Malay culture, identity and way of life. As with other parts of Southeast Asia, the Malay Peninsula (in particular, the northwestern part) had contact with the Eastern Church, probably in the seventh century, although little remains of this contact (Roxborogh 1992, p. 2). Portuguese traders brought the first enduring Christian presence when they captured and settled the port of Malacca on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula in 1511. As with other Portuguese settlements (such as in Macau and Goa), the Portuguese presence in Malacca consisted only of a small garrison, which was intended to guard the port rather than conquer and control a large territory in the hinterland. The result is that the Catholic influence introduced by the Portuguese did not have an extensive reach in the Peninsula, although it did establish an enduring community of Catholic Eurasians in and around Malacca itself.

In the seventeenth century, trade rivals — the Dutch — established themselves in the region, ousting the Portuguese from Malacca in 1641. Political and religious reasons led the Dutch to discourage Catholicism and promote their own Reformed Protestantism instead (Roxborogh 1992, pp. 7–8). However, Dutch commercial and political energies were largely concentrated in Indonesia, particularly after the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824, which carved out the respective areas of influence of the two colonial powers; this also meant that the Dutch had little lasting impact on Christianity in Malaysia.

The Philippines stands out as the only Asian country which has a predominantly Christian population. With Christians forming around 93 per cent of its population, the Philippines has a higher percentage of Christian adherents than most countries in North America and Europe, including its former colonial master Spain (which has less than 70 per cent of its population Christian). It seems ironic that the Christian faith, which was introduced to the Philippines in the Spanish conquest, and integrated into mainstream Filipino culture during the long period (375 years) of Spanish colonial control, should still be a vital part of the Filipino way of life even as it struggles against secularism and the growth of competing religions in Spain. This is evidence, among other things, of the way in which “religious nationalism” constitutes a crucial principle of the social, political and everyday life of the Philippines today, in a way which is no longer true of the former European colonial powers. Christianity in the Philippines is no dead colonial legacy, but continues to be a vital part of the national political life, as well as of the daily lives of individual citizens. It has also taken on forms (particularly in certain festivals, in the growth of Filipino independent churches, in evangelical strategies to indigenous groups) which have departed quite significantly from the colonial church. At the same time, this religious nationalism paradoxically does not preclude a tendency on the part of Filipino Christianity in general to continue to recognize and work in partnership with external authorities such as the Vatican, the international headquarters of the respective Protestant denominations, and other church-related organizations and connections. This combination of religious independence and collaboration is perhaps one of the reasons for the continuing vitality of Christianity in the Philippines.

The islands of the Philippines were originally settled by seafarers of Malay stock.

People around the world are experiencing a growing disillusionment with state, government and public policies. A recent study of 47 Commonwealth countries argues that ‘many citizens are increasingly feeling remote and disconnected from the processes that affect their lives. They feel more and more disempowered by trends towards globalization, competition and individualism. In turn, the health of civil society, on which so much rests, suffers’ (Commonwealth Foundation 1999: 10). In a similar manner, a World Bank-sponsored report based on grassroots research in 23 countries concludes that ‘state institutions, whether represented by central ministries or local government are often neither responsive nor accountable to the poor… Not surprisingly, poor men and women lack confidence in the state institutions even though they still express their willingness to partner with them under fairer rules’ (Narayan et al. 2001: 172).

Perhaps this disillusionment is an intrinsic part of globalization. The power of nation states is being challenged by supra-national forces, by privatization and by decentralization. Late capitalism is characterized by free-floating financial exchanges and sophisticated technologies. The autonomy of the nation state is being eroded through forces of the market and the demands of emerging global cultures. In this regard there has emerged a strong belief, especially among neo-liberals, that the public good is better catered for by the mechanisms of a free market, rather than by governments. According to this dogma, states should confine themselves to providing a competitive and level playing field for political parties, investors and citizens. It is further believed that market competition has become the primary means of defining the value of a society, and notions of social justice and common good have been displaced by an apolitical view of a public sphere apparently accessible to all but in fact, mainly benefiting a few. Traditional bonds of kinship and family are also being eroded under pressures from work, consumerism and modernization.

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.