This chapter provides a historical-institutional account of the emergence of distinct electoral mobilization regimes in Southeast Asia. It does so by surveying the sequencing and development of the bureaucracy, parties, and electoral systems across Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. In the Philippines, the focus is the early twentieth century, when US colonial authorities introduced elections before establishing a strong bureaucracy, enabling elite families to capture power and build local machines. Malaysia's regime is traced to its transition to independence and rise of an ethnically defined party that subordinated the bureaucracy to its patronage purposes. And in Indonesia, the key era is authoritarian rule in 1966–98, when patronage was centralized in the bureaucracy and parties marginalized. Over time, electoral and bureaucratic reform have tempered, but not displaced, those legacies. Only through comparative analysis of historical patterns of state–society relations, the chapter shows, can we understand cross-national differences in patronage and the networks through which it flows. The chapter also provides key context for readers unfamiliar with Southeast Asia.

This chapter focuses on how patronage politics interacts with the politics of identity, notably ethnicity, religion, gender, and class, across Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The chapter highlights rich variety of forms of patronage politics across these categories, co-existing with underlying similarity in function. Politicians cater to a wide range of social identities and target varied identity groups with patronage, showing immense creativity when doing so. But the underlying goal of such politicians across our highly diverse, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious contexts is fundamentally the same: to capture more votes using offers or promises of patronage. This instrumental process generally reinforces rather than erodes existing social identities (except, the chapter points out, those based on class, which clientelist politics tends to undermine by connecting lower-class recipients of patronage to higher-status dispensers of it). Even so, particularly where electoral systems encourage broadly inclusive strategies, patronage distribution regularly crosses identity-group boundaries and thus tends to bridge divides rather than promoting deeper within-group bonding.

This chapter examines the three distinct types of networks used for patronage distribution and election campaigning in the primary Southeast Asian countries studied in the volume: a party-based national patronage machine in Malaysia, local machines in the Philippines, and ad hoc patronage networks in Indonesia. In each case—albeit in different ways and with varying degrees of effectiveness—these networks play critical roles in helping politicians to recruit, organize, and reward their brokers; coordinate access to patronage; and manage campaign activities. A further common feature of these networks is their resemblance to the classic brokerage pyramid associated with clientelistic politics. On closer examination, however, the chapter finds they differ significantly in terms of their geographic scope and degree of institutionalization or permanence. The chapter considers how these distinct network types map onto the three major types of patronage to produce distinct electoral mobilization regimes and demonstrates how differences across these regimes stem from historical antecedents and institutional environments.

This chapter analyses variation in patronage politics at the subnational level in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Variation is apparent at two extremes: locales where politicians rely more intensely on patronage, often combining it with coercion; and “islands of exception,” generally urban areas, where programmatic appeals supplement or begin to supplant patronage. Explaining this variation, the chapter focuses on three variables: concentration of control over economic resources, levels of capacity of local state institutions, and relative autonomy and egalitarianism of local social networks. The mix of these three factors can provide politicians and citizens with options to escape the cycle of patronage politics, or may deepen citizens’ dependence on patronage and vulnerability to predatory politicians. These variables help explain subnational variation, including intense patronage relative to the rest of the country (e.g., in East Malaysia and Indonesian Papua), high coercion (e.g., in the Philippines’ Mindanao), and urban reform movements that push toward programmatic politics (e.g., in Penang in Malaysia, Surabaya in Indonesia, and Naga City in the Philippines).

Chapter 5 examines the patronage type found most consistently across Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines: meso-particularism (commonly called pork, club goods, or local public goods). This involves distribution of patronage to groups. The chapter distinguishes groups targeted with such patronage: networks of affect orient around religious, cultural, or other social purposes; networks of benefit are tied to income-generating, employment, or other material needs. The chapter explains when and how community-level elected officials act as key brokers in these exchanges. It identifies four reasons why candidates adopt meso-particularism: (1) it is less costly than dispensing cash or other individual patronage to voters; (2) it carries less social and legal stigma; (3) it allows politicians to provide benefits throughout the electoral cycle; (4) it promotes monitoring by focusing on groups rather than individuals. The chapter shows that meso-particularism rarely involves a clear quid pro quo; its value is in building a brand, buying credibility, and protecting turf. It involves contingent patronage only when candidates deal with group leaders able reliably to deliver followers’ votes.

This chapter introduces the research questions and framework that guide the volume. Explaining that the volume aims to understand variation in patterns of patronage politics across Southeast Asia, what causes that variation, and how patronage politics works on the ground, it begins by conceptually untangling patronage and clientelism. The chapter defines patronage as a material resource disbursed for particularistic benefit and political purposes, and clientelism as a personalistic relationship of power. It distinguishes among three types of patronage (micro, meso, and macro), the first involving disbursement of benefits to individuals, the second to groups, and the third referring to large-scale programs that are “hijacked” for particularistic purposes. The chapter also stresses that politicians draw on different types of political networks when distributing patronage, producing a logic whereby different mixes of patronage and networks cohere as distinct “electoral mobilization regimes.” The chapter introduces three such regimes found in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and highlights the volume's theoretical contributions and scope and methods.