Interlocking Elites in Southeast Asia

Abstract Analysts make much of the diversity of Southeast Asia's political regimes. However, the region also displays a mounting preponderance of pseudoand fuller democracies, as well as a common mode of transition where fuller democratization has taken place. This analysis argues that these "intermediate" regime categories can be partly ascribed to common, though countervailing factors of colonial legacies, structural forces, some faint cultural residues, and new globalized influences. Next, it explores the conditions in which changes may take place from pseudo-democracy to more fully democratic outcomes. Analysis turns finally to the ways in which despite this weakening of leadership, elites regain enough vitality that while transitions may go forward, they have been able to collaborate in limiting the quality of the new democracies that have emerged.