Populism in Southeast Asia (Elements in Politics and Society in Southeast Asia)

This Element is organized around two questions: what does populism mean in the context of Southeast Asia? And what are the causes of populist success in the region? Populism is conceived of as political strategy through which charismatic leaders establish unmediated links with otherwise unattached mass constituencies in their quest to gain and retain power. Having identified all of the cases of populism in Southeast Asia's democracies, the main argument put forward is that populist mobilization thrives in the region because parties are so weak. This weakness is in turn caused by institutional and political economic factors. Conceiving of populism as the charismatic mobilization of a mass movement in pursuit of political power, this Element theorizes that populists thrive where ties between voters and either bureaucratic or clientelistic parties do not exist or have decayed. This is because populists' ability to mobilize electoral support directly is made much more likely by voters not being deeply embedded in existing party networks. This model is used to explain the prevalence of populism across the major states in post-authoritarian Southeast Asia: the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. It extracts lessons from these Southeast Asian cases for the study of populism. Cover Title page Copyright page Populism in Southeast Asia Contents 1 Introduction 2 Defining Populism 3 The Causes of Populism in Southeast Asia 4 Fragmented Parties 5 Populist Leaders 6 Conclusion: Populism and Democracy References Acknowledgments