Institute of Political Science NSYSU encourages students to do independent research according to their own research interest. In this regard, I manage do my own research on studying the freedom of civil society in Southeast Asia, particularly in explaining some factors that affect it as well as understanding each national context. However, my research is strictly a preliminary, which only focuses on the former part of the research.

It has been thirty-five years since democratic movement started in the Philippines, and it has been spreading across countries in Southeast Asia. The democratization process has gradually transformed the region into embracing democracy, while abandoning authoritarian value. In practice, civil society in respective countries plays vital role as an agent of change: not only as a government watchdog but also as an institution, where citizen may active and freely both express and pursue their civic and political agenda.

Despite have been exposing to democracy, civil society in Southeast Asia remains struggling to achieve its objective, particularly in the issue of the freedom. Some Southeast Asian countries enjoy more freedom than the others. Some theories discuss several factors have affected the degree of freedom/robustness of civil society. Yet, they are not empirically tested in the context of Southeast Asia. While the statistical result confirms most theory explanations, some of them does not fit. Nonetheless, this preliminary research confident in affirming that the level of participatory democracy generally has positive significant association with the degree of freedom of civil society. This factor is commonly share by most Southeast Asian countries, and very unlikely to be invalid.

Once again, this preliminary research is deemed to be incomplete but not necessarily useless to explain democratization and civil society phenomena in Southeast Asia. It remains necessary to understand historical and national context to comprehend how those factors likely affecting the degree of freedom. In this regard, this research is a work of progress to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge of Southeast Asian democracy.