This article explores legislative voting behaviour in the regional party system where electoral competition is based primarily on geographic divisions instead of national public policies. An analysis of roll-call votes in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea from 2000 to 2008 reveals that in the regionalized context, legislative voting unity is high because legislators are disciplined to receive endorsement from their regional champion party. Those legislators are far more disciplined when voting on pork legislation. Nonetheless, as the socioeconomic status of constituents rises and the constituents thus care more about policy than pork, then opposition legislators tend to vote against their parties more often. Conversely, governing-party members are more disciplined to pass bills where voters often desire policy over pork. This study suggests a powerful interaction between party affiliations and voter demands as a dominant electoral strategic tool in the regional party system.

In this article I seek to explain the microfoundations of patronage politics in the developing world. Two distinct approaches have evolved in the literature. One puts emphasis on the demand side, arguing that patronage persists because poor voters tend to desire individualistic goods over policy. The other focuses on the supply side: few politicians offer programmatic policy, so voters have no alternative but to vote for the politicians who distribute patronage. In this study I test those competing theories using original data from Jakarta, Indonesia. I find evidence supporting the demand-side theory: when both patronage and policy are offered, poor, less-educated voters tend to demand patronage, such as jobs and money, over national programs like free education and universal health care, whereas well-off, better-educated voters tend to prefer the national policies. However, the study also reveals that demands for patronage are affected by level of participation in politics: those who voted in previous elections and those who affiliate with a political party are more likely to demand patronage. This microfoundational evidence helps to explain the persistence of patronage politics in places of widespread poverty.