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Networks and Groups in Southeast Asia: Some Observations on the Group Theory of Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Carl H. Landé
Carl H. Landé*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
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Abstract

The paper describes a “dyadic” type of political structure which, it is argued, is a necessary supplement to class and interest group models for the analysis of informal political structure in contemporary Southeast Asia, and probably in other developing areas.

Various types of simple and complex dyadic structures are described. The paper then examines four Southeast Asian polities, of different degrees of political development, with attention to the manner in which they combine group and dyadic structures. The examples are the Kalinga, a pagan ethnolinguistic group of Northern Luzon; the Tausug, a Muslim group of the Sulu archipelago; the traditional Thai monarchy; and the present Republic of the Philippines. In each case the effects of structure upon the operation of the system are explored. The paper concludes with a set of paired propositions concerning the characteristics of “trait associations” and “personal followings.”

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , March 1973 , pp. 103 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1973

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References

1 Almond, Gabriel A. and Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1966), p. 75.Google Scholar For Almond's earlier formulation, see The Politics of the Developing Areas, ed. Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 3–64.Google Scholar For the paper which guided the research of the Committee's grantees, see Almond, Gabriel A., “A Comparative Study of Interest Groups and the Political Process,” American Political Science Review, 52 (03, 1958), 270–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Bentley, Arthur F., The Process of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908)Google Scholar; Truman, David B., The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951)Google Scholar; Latham, Earl, The Group Basis of Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952).Google Scholar

3 See Giovanni Gentile, “The Philosophical Basis of Fascism,” and Rocco, Alfredo, “The Political Doctrine of Fascism,” in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago (Denver: Allan Swallow, n.d.).Google Scholar For a discussion of the corporate state in practice, see Florinsky, Michael T., Fascism and National Socialism: A Study of Economic and Social Policies of the Totalitarian State (New York: Macmillan, 1938), pp. 86–100.Google Scholar

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5 A more rudimentary version of the dyadic model, developed here, may be found in Landé, Carl H., Leaders, Factions, and Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics, Yale Southeast Asia Studies Monograph Series, No. 6 (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1965)Google Scholar, Appendix II, “Group Politics and Dyadic Politics: Notes for a Theory.” An earlier statement is found in “Politics in the Philippines,” Diss. Harvard University, 1958. The relationship between dyadic political structure and cognatic kinship is discussed at greater length in a paper, “Kinship and Politics in Pre-Modern and Non-Western Societies,” which was submitted to the American Political Science Review in 1961. While not published at the time, it now appears in Southeast Asia: The Politics of National Integration, ed. McAlister, John T. Jr. (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 219–233.Google Scholar These writings owe a heavy debt to the late Pehrson, Robert N., whose classic study, The Bilateral Network of Social Relationships in Könkämä Lapp District, Indiana University Publications, Slavic and East European Series, Vol. 5 (Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics. 1957)Google Scholar introduced me to the peculiarities of dyadic structure.

6 Winick, Charles. Dictionary of Anthropology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 242.Google Scholar

7 There is a growing body of literature dealing with dyadic structures and in particular with patron-client relationships. Some seminal studies which are not mentioned elsewhere in this paper include the following: For Southeast Asia: Scott, James C., “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Science Review, 66 (03, 1972), 81–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For South Asia see Barth, Frederik, Political Leadership among Swat Pathans, London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 19 (London: The Athlone Press, 1965), pp. 71–126.Google Scholar For Northern Europe see Blehr, Otto, “Action Groups in a Society with Bilateral Kinship: A Case Study of the Faroe Islands,” Ethnology, 3 (July, 1963), 269–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the Mediterranean area see Boissevain, Jeremy, “Factions, Parties and Politics in a Maltese Village,” American Anthropologist, 66 (12, 1964), 1275–1287CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and by the same author, “Patronage in Sicily,” Man, New Series 1 (March, 1966), 18–33. For Latin America see Foster, George M., “The Dyadic Contract: A Model for the Social Structure of a Mexican Peasant Village,” American Anthropologist 63 (12, 1961), 1142–1173CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and by the same author “The Dyadic Contract in Tzintzuntzan, II: Patron-Client Relationship,” American Anthropologist 65 (December, 1963), 1280–1294. For Africa see Gutkind, C. W., “Network Analysis and Urbanism in Africa: The Use of Micro and Macro Analysis,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 2 (05, 1965), 123–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For theoretical works which are not limited to specific countries or regions see Thibaut, John W. and Kelley, Harold H., The Social Psychology of Groups (New York: Wiley, 1959)Google Scholar, especially Part I, “Dyadic Relationships,” pp. 9–187; Barnes, John A., “Networks and Political Process,” in Social Networks in Urban Situations, ed. Mitchell, J. Clyde (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Powell, John Duncan, “Peasant Society and Clientist Politics,” American Political Science Review, 64 (06, 1970), 411–425CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lemarchand, René, and Legg, Keith, “Political Clientelism and Development,” Comparative Politics, 4 (01, 1972), 149–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whitten, Norman E. Jr., and Wolfe, Alvin W., “Network Analysis,” prepared for Chap. 3, The Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. Honigmann, John J. (Chicago: Rand-McNally, in press)Google Scholar which includes an extensive bibliography.

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9 Murdock, George Peter, Social Structure (New York: Macmillan, 1949), p. 60.Google Scholar For an excellent discussion of the nature of groups resulting from cognatic descent, see Fox, Robin, Chap. 6, “Cognatic Descent and Ego-centered Groups,” Kinship and Marriage (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967), pp. 146–174.Google Scholar

10 The personal kindred performed very similar tasks in early Europe. For an exploration of this subject see Philipotts, Bertha Surtees, Kindred and Clan in the Middle Ages and After: A Study in the Sociology of the Teutonic Races (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913).Google Scholar

11 Eggan, Fred, “The Sagada Igorots of Northern Luzon,” in Social Structure in Southeast Asia, ed. Murdock, George Peter (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1960), pp. 27–30.Google Scholar Similar groups are found among the Muslim Maranao of the Southern Philippines, but not among the Christian peoples of the islands. See Mednick, Melvin, Encampment of the Lake: The Social Organization of a Moslem-Philippine (Moro) People, Philippine Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Research Series, No. 5 (Chicago: University of Chicago Philippine Studies Program, 1965).Google Scholar

12 Kiefer, Thomas M., “Institutionalized Friendship and Warfare among the Tausug of Jolo,” Ethnology 7 (07, 1968), 225–244CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tausug Armed Conflict: The Social Organization of Military Activity in a Philippine Moslem Society, Philippine Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Research Series, No. 7 (Chicago: University of Chicago Philippine Studies Program, 1969); The Tausug: Violence and Law in a Philippine Moslem Society (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972).

13 Kiefer, , Tausug Armed Conflict, p. 189.Google Scholar

14 Kiefer, , Tausug Armed Conflict, p. 192.Google Scholar

15 Kiefer, , Tausug Armed Conflict, p. 36.Google Scholar

16 Kiefer concludes, “Territoriality … is not generally conceived in terms of boundaries which create discrete spatial units, but rather in terms of the space which vaguely surrounds a single point.” Kiefer, , Tausug Armed Conflict, p. 31.Google Scholar

17 Kiefer, , Tausug Armed Conflict, p. 37.Google Scholar

18 Kandé, , Leaders, Factions, and Parties, pp. 141–148.Google Scholar

19 Kiefer, , Tausug Armed Conflict, pp. 167–171.Google Scholar

20 Quaritch-Wales, H. G., Ancient Siamese Government and Administration (London: Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., 1934)Google Scholar; and Rabibhadana, Akin, The Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period, 1782–1873, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Data Paper No. 74 (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, 1969).Google Scholar

21 Rabibhadana, p. 53.

22 Rabibhadana notes, pp. 119–120, that the large volume of historical legal documents concerning disputes over the control of manpower contrasts sharply with the dearth of similar documents dealing with disputes over land. For a discussion of Thai retinues today, see Hanks, Lucien M. Jr., “The Corporation and the Entourage: A Comparison of Thai and American Social Organization,” Catalyst (Summer, 1966), pp. 55–63.Google Scholar

23 Rabibhadana, p. 20.

24 Debt bondage, which varied in its degree of unfreedom from merely nominal mortgaging of the debtor or a member of his family, through actual debt service, to hereditary slavery, was encouraged by the rule that a patron had a first right to extend loans to his government clients. If a debtor defaulted in his repayments, he could be transformed from a government client into the patron's private debt bondsman, the degree of his unfreedom depending upon the extent of this indebtedness.

25 Whether the obligation of clientage was confined to men, or applied to both men and women is unclear. Some comments by Wales suggest the latter. See his observation, p. 53 that “When the parents belonged to different kroms, or had different patrons in the same krom, their children, on reaching the age at which government service was required of them, were divided between the patrons of their parents.” Other descriptions of Thai clientage make no reference to women. But women it appears, were sold into slavery. Almost all men, at least, of nonelite status were obliged to assume one of these roles of subordination, according to the observation of an early nineteenth-century foreign observer, mentioned by Rabibhadana, p. 81; this foreigner noted that free labor did not exist, for the labor of every individual was appropriated by one or another chief, without whose approval he could not work.

26 Rabibhadana, pp. 36–39, 56–59.

27 Under Ayudhya law, as reported by Wales, p. 5, commoners were entitled to choose and leave their patrons. That in practice this right was always preserved seems unlikely. A decree by King Rama II quoted by Rabibhadana, p. 88, which promised runaway clients that if they returned from the jungle “this time only they would not be punished and would be allowed to choose their new patrons,” attests to this. On the other hand Rabibhadana reports, pp. 34–35, that it was fairly easy, prior to the institution of tatooing of clients, for a dissatisfied client to abscond and have himself secretly taken in by another patron, or find another patron who would buy him from his first master, or by lending him money convert him into his debt bondsman.

28 Rabibhadana, pp. 38, 59. The alienation of royal clients by princely patrons and the consequent weakening of royal authority recalls a somewhat similar development which took place in Japan during the several centuries which followed the first attempt to establish a centralized bureaucratic state in the seventh and eighth centuries. In the Japanese case however the development involved the control of land and only secondarily the enlistment of manpower. See Sansom, George, A History of Japan to 1334 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 83–89.Google Scholar

29 Mosel, James N., “Thai Administrative Behavior,” in Toward the Comparative Study of Public Administration, ed. Siffin, William J., (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1957), p. 287.Google Scholar Rabibhadana, pp. 29, 31, notes that, legally, towns were equated with krom, and that governors were equated with chiefs of krom.

30 Riggs, Fred W., Thailand: The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966), pp. 70–72, 79Google Scholar; and Heine-Geldern, Robert, Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Data Paper No. 18 (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies, 1956), pp. 3–5.Google Scholar

31 Rabibhadana, p. 77. Hanks, who is quoted by Rabibhadana has described the premodern social order of Thailand as one “which resembles a military organization more than an occidental class type society.” Hanks, Lucien M. Jr., “Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order,” American Anthropologist, 64 (12, 1962), pp. 1247–1261Google Scholar; cited at 1252.

32 Under the rule of declining princely descent, a king's numerous male descendants by his many wives could pass on their rank to their descendants only in diminished form. The sixth generation became commoners. A king's female descendants could receive rank but could not transmit it even in diminished form. This would seem to have discouraged the creation of stable heritable princely clienteles.

33 Rabibhadana, pp. 31, 78.

34 Rabibhadana, pp. 30–31.

35 Wilson, David A., Politics in Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Riggs, “Thailand”; Siffin, William J., The Thai Bureaucracy: Institutional Change and Development (Honolulu: East–West Center Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Mosel, “Thai Administrative Behavior”; Phillips, Herbert P., Thai Peasant Personality: The Patterning of Interpersonal Behavior in the Village of Bang Chan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965).Google Scholar

36 Landé, Leaders, Factions, and Parties; and Southern Tagalog Voting: Political Behavior in a Philippine Region, A.I.D. Research Paper (January, 1972).

37 For excellent discussions of behavior and its structural basis in societies not very different from that of the Philippines, see Banfield's, Edward C. classic The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar; and more recently Schneider, Jane, “Of Vigilance and Virgins: Honor, Shame and Access to Resources in Mediterranean Societies,” Ethnology, 10 (01, 1971), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 For a report on the analysis of these ballots, see Lande, Carl H., “Parties and Politics in the Philippines,” Asian Survey, 8 (09, 1968), pp. 242–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Southern Tagalog Voting, pp. 81–93.

39 For case studies of local and provincial politics which illustrate these points, see Hollnsteiner, Mary R., The Dynamics of Power in a Philippine Municipality (Quezon City: Community Development Research Council, University of the Philippines, 1963)Google Scholar; Agpalo, Remigio E., Pandanggo-Sa-Ilaw: The Politics of Occidental Mindoro, Papers in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, No. 9 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1969)Google Scholar; and Landé, , Leaders, Factions, and Parties, pp. 132–140.Google Scholar

40 See Agpalo, Remigio E., The Political Process and the Nationalization of the Retail Trade in the Philippines (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1962)Google Scholar; and Stauffer, Robert B, The Development of an Interest Group: The Philippine Medical Association (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1966).Google Scholar

41 Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1959).Google Scholar

42 The Tagalog term for such a client is bata (literally, “child”). Modern organizations in the Philippines, both in the government and the private sector, are honeycombed with bata systems of the classic patron-client type. Equally widespread are compadre relationships of the type found in Latin America and medieval Europe. These may be either vertical or horizontal. A functionally equivalent tie among Filipino Muslims is that which results from swearing together on the Koran. Finally, in the economic sphere there are to be found suki relationships between buyers and sellers who deal with each other on the basis of favored treatment. The latter type of relationships have been described by Anderson, James N., in “Buy and Sell Economic Personalism: Foundations for Philippine Entrepreneurship,” Asian Survey, 9 (09, 1969), 641–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The “compadre system,” which in Latin America is called compadrazgo, has been described by numerous writers. The best comparative discussion is that of Mintz, Sidney W. and Wolf, Eric R., “An Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 6 (Winter, 1950), 341–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an excellent survey of various relationships of this sort see Pitt-Rivers, Julian, “Pseudo Kinship,” in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 8 (New York: Crowell, Collier and Macmillan, 1968), 408–31.Google Scholar

43 See Landé, “Kinship and Politics in Pre-Modern and Non-Western Societies.”

44 Data from George Peter Murdock's “World Ethnographic Sample” were employed to test the hypothesis that cognatic societies are less likely than unilineal societies to assign positions of political leadership on a hereditary basis. This entailed the construction of a two-by-two table for unilineal versus bilateral (cognatic) descent and for hereditary versus non-hereditary political succession. The number of societies which fit into the table were 384. Unilineal societies tended to have hereditary political succession approximately four times as often as non-hereditary succession, while bilateral (cognatic) societies were almost equally divided between the two types of succession. The Phi coefficient was .32, indicating a relatively strong relationship in the hypothesized direction. The Chi square test indicated that the relationship would occur by chance in less than one out of 1,000 cases. Another two-by-two table was constructed for unilineal descent versus bilateral (cognatic) descent and for hereditary slavery versus the absence of hereditary slavery (slavery if present, being only temporary or nonhereditary). This time the number of societies in the table was 464. While 27 per cent of the unilineal societies had hereditary slavery, only 12 per cent of those with bilateral (cognatic) descent did so. The Phi coefficient was .18. The Chi square test again indicated the relationship would occur by chance in less than one out of 1,000 cases. The data were taken from Murdock, George Peter, “World Ethnographic Sample,” American Anthropologist, 59 (08, 1957), 664–687.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I shall be glad to supply the tables on request.

45 See Uberoi, J. P. Singh, Politics of the Kula Ring: An Analysis of the Findings of Bronislaw Malinowski (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; and Michael, Franz, The Origins of Manchu Rule in China: Frontier and Bureaucracy as Interacting Forces in the Chinese Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942), especially pp. 80–98.Google Scholar

46 Foster, George M., “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good,” American Anthropologist, 67 (04, 1965), 293–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scott, James C., Political Ideology in Malaysia: Reality and Beliefs of an Elite (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 91–149.Google Scholar Foster, p. 296, associates the “image of limited good” with land shortage. But like clientage, it seems to be found also in peasant societies where land is not in short supply.

47 Kiefer, , Tausug Armed Conflict, p. 194.Google Scholar

48 Sartori, Giovanni, “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review, 64 (12, 1970), 1040–1046.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Lemarchand, René, “Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa: Competing Solidarities in Nation Building,” American Political Science Review, 64 (March, 1972), p. 68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Mayer, Adrian C., “The Significance of Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies,” in The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, ed. Banton, Michael, ASA Monograph No. 4 (New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 115–117.Google Scholar

51 Scott, James C., “The Weakening of Rural Patron-Client Ties in Colonial Southeast Asia,” and “How Traditional Rural Patrons Lose Legitimacy,” unpublished papers, 1971.Google Scholar

52 Nathan, Andrew J., “A Factionalism Model for Chinese Politics,” The China Quarterly, 53 (January/03, 1973).Google Scholar

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