PREVIOUS ARTICLE ALL CONTENTS Next ARTICLE

Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia, Edward Aspinall, Meredith L. Weiss, Allen Hicken and Paul D. Hutchcroft

Reviewed by Mariela Daby
 

Saying something new—let alone creative and thoughtful—in a crowded field is difficult. Mobilizing for Elections provides a new framework to study and understand distributive politics by focusing on patronage and clientelism. Studying in detail patronage and clientelistic networks in three countries in Southeast Asia, Aspinall, Weiss, Hicken, and Hutchcroft build a new theory and provide novel findings to the field. By focusing their study on the same region where the literature began with patron-client relations over fifty years ago, they provide an insightful and novel understanding of how to think about clientelism and patronage today.

In their theory-building effort, the authors untangle patronage from clientelism to achieve analytical precision. Defining patronage as “a material resource, disbursed for particularistic benefit for political purposes and generally (but not always) derived from public sources” (6) and clientelism as a “personalistic relationship of power” (7), the authors enable scholars in the field to make sense of similar observations and findings documented in the field. The reconceptualization proposed by the authors is one of the most insightful contributions of the book: “patronage, as an adjective, modifies resources and flows, and clientelistic, as an adjective, modifies relationship

To continue reading, see options above.

About PSQ's Editor

ROBERT Y. SHAPIRO

Full Access

Join the Academy of Political Science and automatically receive Political Science Quarterly.

CONFERENCES & EVENTS

Academy Forum | Latino Voters, Demographic Determinism, and the Myth of an Inevitable Democratic Party Majority
October 9, 2024
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. ET
WEBINAR

MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT VIEW ALL EVENTS

Editor’s spotlight

Virtual Issue

Introduction: Black Power and the Civil Rights Agendas of Charles V. Hamilton
Marylena Mantas and Robert Y. Shapiro

MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC

Search the Archives

Publishing since 1886, PSQ is the most widely read and accessible scholarly journal with distinguished contributors such as: Lisa Anderson, Robert A. Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert Jervis, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Theda Skocpol, Woodrow Wilson

view additional issues

Most read

Articles | Book reviews

Understanding the Bush Doctrine
Robert Jervis

The Study of Administration
Woodrow Wilson

Notes on Roosevelt's "Quarantine" Speech
Dorothy Borg

view all

New APS Book

Political Conflict in American Politics   POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICAN POLITICS

About US

Academy of Political Science

The Academy of Political Science, promotes objective, scholarly analyses of political, social, and economic issues. Through its conferences and publications APS provides analysis and insight into both domestic and foreign policy issues.

Political Science Quarterly

With neither an ideological nor a partisan bias, PSQ looks at facts and analyzes data objectively to help readers understand what is really going on in national and world affairs.

Stay Connected

newsstand locator
About APS