Alongside and overlapping the public-health and economic crises that COVID-19 sparked, has been a political one, of democratic decline or autocratic consolidation, across most states in the region. To what extent have actors and organizations from civil society acted as firewalls against democratic decline or autocratization in Southeast Asia-including when fellow civil society organizations (CSOs) have exerted countervailing, anti-democratic pressure-and how best we might understand those roles?
