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Since the financial crisis of 1997, political as well as economic stability in the Asia-Pacific region has looked increasingly fragile. Earlier notions of democratization in the region-as driven by solid middle-class interests-have given way, particularly in the polarized world of the twentyfirst century, to fears that extremist social movements have the potential to undermine the state. This collection of papers was produced with the aim of reassessing the framework within which state-society contention takes place in changing societies.1 Our intention was to interrogate the ways in which democratizing societies talk to themselves and to the state, the better to understand how the new and proliferating movements and identities observed in Pacific Asia in recent years contend with ideologies of nationhood and "Asian-ness" promoted by the state. In doing so, we investigate both the channels of communication used, and the messages sent, and ask how both the form and content of these conversations influence state policies and construct social identities. In particular, we are concerned with the question of how communicative practices are used by state and/or society, to construct the identity of "citizen" for the people and the identity of "democracy" for the state.
Recent studies of democratization and the media in the South, generally, and the Asia-Pacific in particular, have focussed on the question of whether the media operates as an engine for change in moments of "transition." Randall concludes that although the media were influential in earlier phases of democratic transition, media channels were subsequently captured by elite interests, promoting notions of democracy and citizenship that work against any impulses for further change, while McCargo argues that generalizations about the role of the media in transitions are impossible.2 The contributors to this collection take a broader view of the concept of "democratization," regarding this as a process that goes beyond the establishment of identifiably democratic procedures, and encompassing the production in society of democratic identities. The contributors also take a broader view of "communication," examining election campaigning and debates about electoral reform, as well as the media itself, as modes of public communication that are of paramount significance for the construction of democratic identities. The central questions raised by this shift in focus are: How do powerful interests police this range of mass...