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With the possible exception of the nuclear disarmament movement in Japan, East Asia has historically not been a region known for high levels of citizen activism in the area of peace and security. This has started to change since the 1990s with more NGOs and other societal groups in the region now working on peace-related issues at the local, national, regional and international levels. NGOs and activists in these movements have played diverse roles, at times providing solutions to security problems and at other times stimulating regional conflict. This article examines the domestic and international factors that have led to these changes and provides a guided tour of three relatively new movements in Northeast Asia., Introduction Since the end of the Cold War, scholars have debated over whether or not East Asia is 'ripe for rivalry' and recurrent tensions and crises in the Taiwan Straits [...]

This article provides a 'top-down' explanation for the rapid growth of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the postwar period, focusing on two aspects of political globalization. First, I argue that international political opportunities in the form of funding and political access have expanded enormously in the postwar period and provided a structural environment highly conducive to NGO growth. Secondly, I present a norm-based argument and trace the rise of a pro-NGO norm in the 1980s and 1990s among donor states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), which has actively promoted the spread of NGOs to non-Western countries. The article ends with a brief discussion of the symbiotic relationship among NGOs, IGOs, and states promoting international cooperation.