Party Politics in Southeast Asia: Clientelism and Electoral Competition in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines (Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series)

Contributing to the growing discourse on political parties in Asia, this book looks at parties in Southeast Asia’s most competitive electoral democracies of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. It highlights the diverse dynamics of party politics in the region and provides new insights into organizational structures, mobilizational strategies and the multiple dimensions of linkages between political parties and their voters. The book focuses on the prominence of clientelistic practices and strategies, both within parties as well as between parties and their voters. It demonstrates that clientelism is extremely versatile and can take many forms, ranging from traditional, personalized relationships between a patron and a client to the modern reincarnations of broker-driven network clientelism that is often based on more anonymous relations. The book also discusses how contemporary political parties often combine clientelistic practices with more formal patterns of organization and communication, thus raising questions about neat analytical dichotomies. Straddling the intersection between political science and area studies, this book is of interest to students and scholars of contemporary Southeast Asian politics, and political scientists and Asian Studies specialists with a broader research interest in comparative democratization studies. Cover 1 Party Politics in Southeast Asia 2 Title Page 7 Copyright Page 8 Table of Contents 9 List of figures and tables 11 List of contributors 13 Abbreviations and glossary 16 1 Introduction: party politics and clientelism in Southeast Asia 20 2 What type of party? Southeast Asian parties between clientelism and electoralism 39 3 Lipset and Rokkan in Southeast Asia: Indonesia in comparative perspective 59 4 Class, charisma, and clientelism in Thai and Philippine populist parties 81 5 Anti-party attitudes in Southeast Asia 99 6 Electoral system choice and parties in new democracies: lessons from the Philippines and Indonesia 120 7 Bringing clientelism and institutions back in: the rise and fall of religious parties in Indonesia’s electoral democracy 139 8 Who’s the perfect politician? Clientelism as a determining feature of Thai politics 161 9 Building local party organizations in Thailand: strengthening party rootedness or serving elite interests? 182 10 Clientelism and party politics in the Philippines 205 Index 234