Research on contentious politics so far has largely concentrated on politics in Western democratic countries. The present paper suggests that there are interesting insights to gain from opening up the analysis and examining contentious politics also in the context of the democratizing countries in Asia. The question of how people use protests to voice their political demands and how governments respond – in democratic and undemocratic settings – is particularly interesting to study during crisis situations: In 1997/ 1998, the Asian Financial Crisis shook the economies of the Asian region. Among the countries most hit by the crisis were Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand; they experienced severe contractions in real per capita income and a drastic rise in unemployment. In all of the three countries, massive citizen protests were organized during and in the aftermath of the crisis. In Indonesia, the financial crisis coincided with a political crisis, which eventually led to the fall of the authoritarian government. In South Korea and Thailand, the challenges posed to the ruling government were less existential, but still substantial. Based on a newly constructed dataset of protest events (1985-2005), the study analyzes similarities and differences between protest mobilization and respective responses by the government across the three countries. The parameters of comparison with regard to protest mobilization are the size and intensity of protests, the composition of social groups participating in the protest activities, their aims, and the forms of protests chosen. All of these factors are shown to influence governments’ reactions: contrary to what could be expected, the more democratic governments of Korea and Thailand do not substantially differ in their reactions from their Indonesian counterparts. Both governments'' responsiveness, as well as the use of repressive measures, increase with the size and intensity of protests and vary with the composition of the protesters.
