This book explores the connection between strong democracy and neoliberal development schemes based on the concept of ‘social entrepreneurship’ in Thailand and Southern India.

With an original approach, this book addresses the intersection between emerging approaches to development; namely microfinance, microenterprise, and social entrepreneurship, and the ability of societies to generate their own public goods without state assistance. Utilizing observation, fieldwork, and practice in Northern Thailand and Southern India, as well as secondary sources from the southern Asia region more generally, the author examines the challenges of democratic governance and generation of public goods where civil society and democracy, as development strategies, have become less meaningful to citizens across the developing world than micro-development. The author argues that these approaches to development have impacts on development and civil society building, but do not necessarily amount to political empowerment, raising important questions for civic participation in the state when the state is no longer viewed as the locus of public goods and democratic governance.

Presenting a new theoretical approach to understanding the changing paradigm of development and political participation, Democratic Governance and Social Entrepreneurship will be of interest to students and scholars of development politics, political economy and governance.