Abstract
This chapter emphasizes that the views and interests that prevail in struggles over accountability have profound political regime implications. Which ideologies dominate accountability institutions affects which interests might be protected or challenged through them. Only democratic ideologies insist that governance problems be determined and addressed, directly or indirectly, through expressions of popular sovereignty. Yet the most powerful basis of ideological and political mobilization around concerns over abuses of state power in Southeast Asia invoke various forms of moral political authority including: nationalism via Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam; traditional values via the King in Thailand; and of God via Catholicism in the Philippines and Islam in Malaysia. Nondemocratic ideologies of accountability – especially moral ideologies – are linked to the broader struggle over whose authority the organization of the political regime rests upon.