Guns for hire and enduring machines: clientelism beyond parties in Indonesia and the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Since their transitions to democracy, electoral politics in Indonesia and the Philippines have become heavily clientelistic, marked by high levels of vote-buying and other forms of material exchange. In both cases, the organizational form taken by clientelism is similar: political candidates build informal pyramidal structures of brokers to connect them to voters, largely operating outside national parties. In the Philippines, these structures are local machines; in Indonesia, they are ephemeral organizations known as “success teams.” Yet this similarity in form masks a deeper dissimilarity: in the Philippines, machines are built on a relational clientelism in which politicians cultivate brokers for the long-term; in Indonesia, the modal pattern is short-term transactional relationships. We demonstrate this distinction by drawing on fieldwork and broker surveys conducted in both countries, and attribute it to a combination of historical legacies and electoral rules. In particular, differences in electoral institutions shape the incentives and capacities of politicians to invest in lasting machines, encouraging coordination among candidates when building campaign structures and sharing resources in the Philippines; impeding such cooperation in Indonesia. Our analysis suggests that scholars of patronage politics need to look beyond parties and to consider differences between relational and transactional varieties of clientelism.

KEYWORDS:

• clientelism
• vote buying
• brokers
• local elections
• electoral institutions
• patronage

Acknowledgments

The authors thank their research collaborators in Indonesia and the Philippines, especially David Efendi, Zusiana Elly Triantini, and Noor Rohman who worked on the broker surveys in Indonesia, and Michael Davidson, Nico Ravanilla, Dotan Haim, and Grace Labalan, who did the same in the Philippines. They also thank Ward Berenschot and other participants in two lively workshops in Leiden and New Haven for their inputs, the two anonymous reviewers, and their long-term collaborators, Meredith Weiss and Paul Hutchcroft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Edward Aspinall http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4678-298X

Notes

1 Ufen, “Parties in Post-Suharto Indonesia.”

2 For one other such surveys, see Stokes et al., Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism, and Schneider, “Do Voters Know their Voters?”

3 Aspinall and Berenschot, “Varieties of Clientelism.”

4 See for example, Scott, “Erosion of Patron-Client Bonds.”

5 See for example, Hicken, “Clientelism.”

6 Nichter, “Electoral Clientelism or Relational Clientelism?”

7 Shefter, Political Parties and the State.

8 Schiller, Developing Jepara.

9 Crouch, “Patrimonialism and Military Rule.”

10 Robison and Hadiz, Reorganising Power.

11 Mietzner, Money, Power and Ideology.

12 Erb and Sulistiyanto, Deepening Democracy; Mietzner, “Indonesia’s Direct Elections.”

13 Mietzner, Money, Power and Ideology.

14 Aspinall and Berenschot, Democracy for Sale.

15 Hutchcroft and Rocamora, “Strong Demands.”

16 Ibid.

17 Hutchcroft, “Colonial Masters.”

18 Tancangco, Anatomy of Electoral Fraud.

19 Hutchcroft and Rocamora, “Strong Demands.”

20 Ibid.; Landé “Leaders, Factions, and Parties”; Anderson “Cacique Democracy”; Wurfel, Filipino Politics.

21 Shefter, Political Parties and the State.

22 Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism.

23 Wurfel, Filipino Politics.

24 Hawes, “Marcos.”

25 Hicken, “Electoral Design.”

26 Ibid.

27 Hicken, “Party and Party System Institutionalization”, 322.

28 Hicken et al., “Introduction.”

29 Muhtadi, “Buying Votes.”

30 In our voter surveys in both countries the percentage of voters who reported being targeted with offers of money was virtually the same (and high) whether we asked them directly, or used techniques designed to compensate for social desirability bias.

31 For provincial or congressional candidates there may be an additional layer in the pyramid.

32 Aspinall et al., “Inducement or Entry Ticket?”

33 Ibid.

34 Stokes et al., Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism; Aspinall, “When Brokers Betray.”

35 Aspinall and As’ad, “The Patronage Patchwork.”

36 The Liberal Party, the party of former President Aquino, boasted that it had created a national machine capable of mobilizing votes for its presidential candidate in 2016. Prior to the election it claimed that party machinery would help the candidate overtake the more popular Rodrigo Duterte (Holmes, “The Myth of the Machine”). In the end, the Liberal Party machine proved little more than a rhetorical pipe dream and the party’s candidate was trounced. Following the election, 80 of the Liberal Party’s 115 House members jumped ship to Duterte’s party.

37 Aspinall and Berenschot, Democracy for Sale.

38 Hicken et al., “Introduction.”

39 The major exceptions are barangay and youth elections, which happen on a different calendar.

40 Of course, candidates differ in their ability to access government programmes. In the Philippines, the key actors are members of Congress, who can access pork-barrel funds, and mayors, who receive large transfers from the central government and have great discretion in how they use them. In Indonesia the key players are heads of local governments, especially at the district level (bupati, or regents, in rural districts, walikota or mayors in towns). Though they have to negotiate budgets with local parliaments, they exercise great discretionary authority over local spending, and control the careers of the civil servants who determine how programmes are distributed.

41 Gans-Morse et al., “Varieties of Clientelism.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DP140103114].

Notes on contributors

Edward Aspinall

Edward Aspinall works in the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. He researches on Southeast Asian, especially Indonesian, politics, focusing on topics such as clientelism, ethnic politics, and democratization.

Allen Hicken

Allen Hicken is in the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan. His primary focus has been on political parties and party systems in developing democracies and their role in policymaking. His regional specialty is Southeast Asia where he has worked in Thailand, the Philippines, and Cambodia.