Across Southeast Asia, as in many other regions of the world, politicians seek to win elections by distributing cash, goods, jobs, projects, and other material benefits to supporters. But they do so in ways that vary tremendously—both across and within countries. This project presents a new framework for analyzing variation in patronage democracies, developed through examination of distinct forms of patronage and different networks through which it is distributed. We draw on a large-scale, multi-country, multi-year research effort involving not only interactions with hundreds of politicians and vote brokers but also surveys of voters and political campaigners across the region. At the core of the analysis is the concept of electoral mobilization regimes, used to describe how key types of patronage interact with the networks that politicians use to organize and distribute these material resources: political parties in Malaysia, local machines in the Philippines, and ad hoc election teams in Indonesia. In doing so, we show how and why patronage politics varies, and how it works on the ground.

Meredith Weiss is Professor of Political Science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY) and inaugural Director of the SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium (SEAC). Her work, which draws on extensive field research, addresses mobilization, identity, and civil society; electoral politics and parties; institutional reform; and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Singapore. Her most recent books are The Roots of Resilience: Political Machines & Grassroots Politics in Southeast Asia (Cornell, 2020), and the co-authored Money & Machines: Mobilizing for Elections in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 2022). These join two prior monographs, several dozen journal articles and chapters, and over a dozen edited/co-edited volumes. She also co-edits the Cambridge Elements series, Politics & Society in Southeast Asia. As a Lee Kong Chian NUS–Stanford fellow this year, she is completing a book on Malaysian sociopolitical development.