We make transparent the mutually reinforcing relationships between global civil society, democracy and network society which are often implicit in extant theories. However, very little has been said about how these apparent mutually reinforcing relationships came about. Focusing on the case of Indonesia during the fraught regime change from authoritarianism to democracy, we investigate the role of global and national civil society organisation during the periods of pre-reform, reform and post-reform. Using social network analysis and interviews with civil society activists we discover a less encouraging picture of these relationships. We account for this finding in terms of chequebook activism characterising the global civil society’s role during an abrupt and bloody regime change.