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128. Agents of Innovation or Clientelism? Understanding Local-Level Governance in Southeast Asia

Fri, March 17, 3:00 to 5:00pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: 2nd Floor, Kenora

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Over the past two decades, a number of Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, underwent decentralization that provides broader financial and political power to subnational governments. Its proponents once thought that decentralization would have promoted innovation and accountability from local leaders who assumed office under this arrangement. However, key studies (e.g., Sidel 1999, Hadiz 2010) show that decentralization in these countries have a more mixed records. While some local leaders gain popularity for their innovative and entrepreneurial leadership style, others are following the style previously known throughout the region: personalistic, patronage-based leadership strengthened with alliances with oligarchic business interests and criminal gangs that in the long run could have threatened the democratic institution and consolidation process in these countries.

Previous studies on local-level governance in Southeast Asia tend to be single-country studies that while provide invaluable details on how local politics work within a specific locality, often misses out on the opportunity to make a more generalizable theoretical insights and to explore common as well as diverging trends in local political interactions and institutions in different Southeast Asian countries. This panel brings together a group of interdisciplinary (political science, anthropology, and area studies) senior and junior scholars with research focuses on the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, in order to promote comparative study of local-level politics in Southeast Asia, grounded in diverse theoretical and methodological approaches.

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