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Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

James C. Scott
James C. Scott*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Abstract

The analysis presented here is an effort to elaborate the patron-client model of association, developed largely by anthropologists, and to demonstrate its applicability to political action in Southeast Asia. Inasmuch as patron-client structures are not unique to Southeast Asia but are much in evidence, particularly in Latin America, in Africa, and in less developed portions of Europe, the analysis may possibly have more general value for understanding politics in preindustrial societies. After defining the nature of patron-client ties and distinguishing them from other social ties, the paper discriminates among patron-client ties to establish the most important dimensions of variation, examines both the survival and transformations in patron-client links in Southeast Asia since colonialism and the impact of major social changes such as the growth of markets, the expanded role of the state, and the creation of local regimes. Finally, the paper shows how patron-client bonds interact with electoral politics to create distributive pressures which, in turn, often lead to inflationary fiscal policies and vulnerability of regimes to losses of revenue.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 91 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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References

1 Two influential anthropologists who employ this mode of analysis are: Geertz, Clifford (“The Integrative Revolution,” in Geertz, , ed., Old Societies and New States [New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963])Google Scholar; and Gluckman, Max (Custom and Conflict in Africa [Oxford: Basil and Blackwell, 1963])Google Scholar.

2 A number of political studies of Southeast Asia have dealt with factionalism or patron-client ties. The most outstanding is Landé's, Carl Leaders, Factions, and Parties: the Structure of Philippine Politics, Monograph No. 6 (New Haven: Yale University—Southeast Asia Studies, 1964)Google Scholar. For the Thai political system, Riggs, Fred W.' Thailand: The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966)Google Scholar and Wilson's, David A. Politics in Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962)Google Scholar pursue a similar line of analysis; and for Burma, see Pye, Lucian W., Politics, Personality, and Nation-Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar. Some notable attempts to do comparable studies outside Southeast Asia are: Leys, Colin, Politicians and Policies: An Essay on Politics in Acholi Uganda 1962–1965 (Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House, 1967)Google Scholar; Weiner, Myron, Party-Building in a New Nation: The Indian National Congress (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Brass, Paul R., Factional Politics in an Indian State (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Bailey, Frederick G., Politics and Social Change: Orissa in 1959 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

3 Class as well as ethnicity is relevant to Malay-Chinese conflict, since the different economic structure of each community places them in conflict. Many a rural Malay experiences the Chinese not only as pork-eating infidels but as middlemen, money lenders, shopkeepers, etc.—as the cutting edge of the capitalist penetration of the countryside.

4 There is an extensive anthropological literature dealing with patron-client bonds which I have relied on in constructing this definition. Some of the most useful sources are: Foster, George M., “The Dyadic Contract in Tzintzuntzan: Patron-Client Relationship,” American Anthropologist, 65 (1963), 1280–1294 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolf, Eric, “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations,” in Banton, Michael, ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, Association of Applied Social Anthropology Monograph #4 (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966), pp. 1–22 Google Scholar; Campbell, J., Honour, Family, and Patronage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Powell, John Duncan, “Peasant Society …,” p. 412 Google Scholar, Carl Landé, Leaders, Factions and Parties …,” Weingrod, Alex, “Patrons, Patronage, and Political Parties,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 10 (07, 1968), pp. 1142–1158 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Powell, , “Peasant Society and Clientelist Politics,” American Political Science Review, 64 (06, 1970), 412 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Another comparable model, of course, is the lord-vassal link of high feudalism, except in this relationship the mutual rights and obligations were of an almost formal, contractual nature. Most patron-client ties we will discuss involve tacit, even diffuse standards of reciprocity. Cf. Coulborn, Ruston, ed., Feudalism in History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

7 In most communities this sense of obligation is a strong moral force, backed by informal community sanctions that help bind the client to the patron. A good account of how such feelings of debt reinforce social bonds in the Philippines is Frank Lynch's description of utang na loob in Four Readings in Philippine Values, Institute of Philippine Culture Papers, No. 2 (Quezon City: Aleneo de Manila Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

8 Blau, Peter M., Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: Wiley, 1964), pp. 21–22 Google Scholar. Blau's discussion of unbalanced exchange and the disparities in power and deference such imbalance fosters is directly relevant to the basis of patron-client relationships.

9 These general alternatives are deduced by Blau (p. 118) and are intended to be exhaustive.

10 Later, we will examine certain conditions under which this may actually occur.

11 There is little doubt that this last resort usually acts as a brake on oppression. The proximate causes for many peasant uprisings in medieval Europe during hard times often involved revocation of small rights granted serfs by their lords—e.g., gleaning rights, use of the commons for pasturage, hunting and fishing privileges, reduction of dues in bad crop years—rights which offered a margin of security. Such revolts, even though they generally failed, served as an object lesson to neighboring patrons. Cf. Engels, Friedrich, The Peasant War in Germany (New York: International Publishers, 1966)Google Scholar; Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York: Harper, 1961)Google Scholar; and Hobsbawm, E. B., Primitive Rebels (New York: Norton, 1959)Google Scholar.

12 Blau, , Exchange and Power in Social Life, pp. 119–120 Google Scholar, makes this point somewhat differently: “The degree of dependence of individuals on a person who supplies valued services is a function of the difference between their value and that of the second best alternative open to them.” The patron may, of course, be dependent himself on having a large number of clients, but his dependence upon any one client is much less than the dependence of any one client upon him. In this sense the total dependence of patron and client are similar, but almost all the client's dependence is focused on one individual, whereas the patron's dependence is thinly spread (like that of an insurance company—Blau, p. 137) across many clients. Cf. Godfrey, and Wilson, Monica, The Analysis of Social Change; Based on Observations in Central Africa (Cambridge: The University Press, 1945), pp. 28, 40 Google Scholar.

13 Blau, p. 269.

14 Blau, p. 127.

15 The classic analysis of the functions of gift-giving (prestation) in creating alliances, demonstrating superiority, and renewing obligations, is Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1954)Google Scholar.

16 See Mintz, Sidney and Wolf, Eric, “An Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6 (Winter, 1948) pp. 425–437 Google Scholar.

17 Landé, Carl, “Networks and Groups in Southeast Asia: Some Observations on the Group Theory of Politics,” Unpublished manuscript (03, 1970), p. 6 Google Scholar.

18 Mayer, Adrian C., “The Significance of Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies,” in Banton, Michael, ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, pp. 97–122 Google Scholar. Mayer would call a short-term, contractual interaction that was limited in scope a simplex tie.

19 In another sense the patron-client dyad is fragile. Since it is a diffuse, noncontractual bond, each partner is continually on guard against the possibility that the other will make excessive demands on him, thus exploiting the friendship. A patron may, for example, prefer to hire an outsider for an important job because he can then contractually insist that the work be of top quality. With a client, it would be a delicate matter to criticize the work. As in friendship, “the diffuseness of the [patron-client] obligation places a corresponding demand for self-restraint on the parties if the relationship is to be maintained.” Gamson, William A., Power and Discontent (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey, 1968), p. 167 Google Scholar.

20 A broker does, in a real sense have a resource: namely, connections. That is, the broker's power—his capacity to help people—is predicated on his ties with third parties.

21 U.S. Congressmen spend a good portion of their time trying to seize personal credit for decisions which benefit their constituents whether or not they had anything to do with the decision—as broker or patron. For similar reasons, cabinet ministers in Malaysia and elsewhere have travelled about the country with government checks in hand, making grants to mosques, temples, and charitable groups in a way that will dramatize the largesse as an act of personal patronage. Every government decision that benefits someone represents an opportunity for someone to use that act to enlarge the circle of those personally obligated to him.

22 And it naturally follows that in underdeveloped countries, where the patrimonial view of office is especially strong, a public post could be a client-creating resource.

23 Foster, , “The Dyadic Contract in Tzintzuntzan,” pp. 1280–1294 Google Scholar.

24 For good descriptions of both types of leadership, see Wolf, Eric R. and Hansen, E. C., “Caudillo Politics: A Structural Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 9, 2 (01, 1967), 168–179 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Friedrich, Paul, “The Legitimacy of a Cacique,” in Swartz, Marc J., ed., Local Level Politics: Social and Cultural Perspectives (Chicago: Aldine 1968), pp. 243–269 Google Scholar.

25 The terms “cluster,” “network,” and “first” and “second” orders are adapted from a somewhat similar usage by Barnes, J. A., “Networks and Political Processes,” in Swartz, , ed., pp. 107–130 Google Scholar.

26 Mayer, , “The Significance of Quasi-Groups …” p. 109 Google Scholar.

27 Landé, “Networks and Groups …” (unpublished manuscript), pp. 6–12 Google Scholar.

28 Mayer, p. 110.

29 There is no contradiction, I believe, in holding that a patron-client link originates in a power relationship and also holding that genuine affective ties reinforce that link. Affective ties often help legitimate a relationship that is rooted in inequality. For an argument that, in contrast, begins with the assumption that some cultures engender a psychological need for dependence, see Mannoni, Dominique O., Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization (New York: Praeger, 1964)Google Scholar.

30 F. G. Bailey uses the terms “core” and “support” in much the same fashion: see his “Parapolitical Systems,” in Swartz, , ed., Local-Level Politics, pp. 281–294 Google Scholar.

31 Here I follow the distinctions made in Blau, , Exchange and Power in Social Life, pp. 115–118 Google Scholar. Other power theorists have made the same distinction.

32 Barnes, Both J. A., “Networks and Political Process,” in Swartz, , pp. 107–130 Google Scholar, and Powell, , Peasant Society …, p. 413 Google Scholar, discuss this variable.

33 This variable thus relates not to a dyad but to the following in a cluster or pyramid.

34 My use of the term is adapted from Barnes, p. 117.

35 Wolf, , “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations …,” p. 10 Google Scholar.

36 In this connection, see my Political Ideology in Malaysia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), chapter 6Google Scholar; and for zero-sum conceptions among peasants, see Foster, George M., “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good.” American Anthropologist, 65 (04, 1965), 293–315 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 See, for example, Leach, Edmund R., “The Frontiers of Burma,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3 (10, 1960), 49–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 3 Google Scholar.

39 Corporate villages are included here since they generally stress shared kinship links to a common ancestor. Part of the corporate character of the Javanese village was perhaps further reinforced as a consequence of the collective exactions required by Dutch colonial policy. “Sanctioned reciprocity” is probably a better term for village structures in Java and Tokin than “corporate.”

40 Downs, Richard, “A Kelantanese Village of Malaya,” in Steward, Julian H., ed., Contemporary Change in Traditional Societies, Vol. II: Asian Rural Societies (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1967), p. 147 Google Scholar.

41 Wolf, , “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations …,” p. 5 Google Scholar. For a brilliant account of the same process in England, see Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

42 Gallin, Bernard, “Political Factionalism and Its Impact on Chinese Village School Organization in Taiwan,” in Swartz, , ed., pp. 377–400 Google Scholar.

43 A combination of situations one and two would occur when the tacit rules within a communal group allowed patron-client conflict but forbade the losing or weaker patrons within the communal group from maintaining ties to outside leaders.

44 See, for example, Leach, Edmund R., The Political Systems of Highland Burma (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954)Google Scholar, and Gullick, J. M., Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya, London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology #17 (London: University of London/Athlone Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

45 Again, indirectly ruled areas were often exceptions in that local rulers tended to take on new powers under the colonial regime and thus became more comprehensive patrons than in the past

46 For Malaysia, Swift, M. G., Malay Peasant Society in Jelebu (London: University of London, 1965), pp. 158–60Google Scholar captures this shift in local power. A general treatment of such changes is contained in Nicholas, Ralph W., “Factions: A Comparative Analysis,” in Banton, M., general ed., Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, Association of Applied Social Anthropology Monograph #2 (London: Tavistock Publications, 1965), pp. 21–61 Google Scholar.

47 In his study of politics in an Indonesian town, Clifford Geertz has shown that the more traditional hamlets were more likely to be united under a particular leader than were hamlets which had changed more; The Social History of an Indonesian Town (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965), Chapter 6Google Scholar. This finding is corroborated by Feith's study of the 1955 Indonesian elections; Feith, Herbert, The Indonesian Elections of 1955, Interim Report Series, Modern Indonesia Project (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1961), pp. 28–30 Google Scholar. A comparative study of two Burmese villages also supports this conclusion: cf. Nash, Manning, The Golden Road to Modernity (New York: Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar. In this context, directly ruled lowland areas tended to develop factional competition among different patrons, while less directly ruled areas (especially highland areas) more frequently retained some unity behind a single patron who remained their broker with the outside world.

48 Wilson, G. and Wilson, M., The Analysis of Social Change, pp. 28, 40 Google Scholar.

49 For a description of such mechanisms see Geertz, Clifford, Agricultural Involution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Foster, George M., “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good,” American Anthropologist 67, 2 (04, 1965), pp. 293–315 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swift, Malay Peasant Society …, and Hollnsteiner, Mary B., “Social Control and Filipino Personality,” Symposium on the Filipino Personality (Malcati: Psychological Association of the Philippines, 1965), p. 24 Google Scholar.

50 Blau, , Exchange and Power in Social Life, p. 114 Google Scholar.

51 Geertz shows how local leaders often managed to become agents of the local sugar mills—buying crops, renting land, and recruiting labor and thereby enlarging their power in the community. The Social History …, p. 57.

52 Weingrod, Alex, “Patrons, Patronage, and Political Parties,” pp. 388, 397 Google Scholar.

53 Similar assessments of the effects of indirect rule can be found in M. G. Swift, pp. 148–149; Benda, Harry J. and Bastin, John, A History of Modern Southeast Asia (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 75–122 Google Scholar. The best accounts of the pattern, however, come from India. Cf. Bailey, Politics and Social Change, Chapter 4, and Brass, Paul R., Factional Politics in an Indian State (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965)Google Scholar, Chapter 4.

54 Wurfel, David, “The Philippines,” in Comparative Studies in Political Finance: A Symposium, Journal of Politics, 25 (11, 1963), 757–773 Google Scholar.

55 Feith, The Indonesian Elections of 1955; Geertz, The Social History of an Indonesian Town.

56 Feith, p. 79.

57 Nash, Manning, “Party Building in Upper Burma,” Asian Survey, 3 (04, 1963), pp. 196–202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Nicholas, , “Factions …,” p. 45 Google Scholar.

59 Lemarchand, René, “Political Clientelism and Ethnicity: Competing Solidarities in Nation-Building,” American Political Science Review, 66 (03, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Adrian C. Mayer seems to have this distinction in mind, in his study of an Indian town comparing the “hard” campaign of the Jan Sangh, which relied on durable social ties and tried to prevent defections, and the local Congress Party, which ran a “soft” campaign of short-term links by promising favors and benefits to intermediaries. See Mayer, , “The Significance of Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies,” p. 106 Google Scholar.

61 Many of these data are not in a form that permits easy comparisons. Although budget deficit and foreign exchange figures seem to fit this pattern, statistical confirmation will have to await further research.

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