ABSTRACT

Section III compares several key differences in the patron-client networks in a number of Asian countries to show how differences in the distribution of power implicit in these networks may explain differences in the types of rights created and allocated by the state and thereby differences in their economic performance. In the South Asian countries of the Indian subcontinent, the patron-client networks reveal the substantial political power of clients from intermediate 'non-capitalist' classes. Attempts to accommodate the demands of these intermediate classes has resulted in interlocked patron-client transactions involving bureaucrats and politicians on the one hand and capitalists and non-capitalist clients on the other. These interlocked exchanges

South-East Asian countries present a number of interesting variants which in different ways resulted in more dynamic economies than in South Asia despite the presence of large intermediate classes and more complex patterns of patron-client exchanges than in South Korea. Malaysia inherited a large class of individuals whose demands could potentially have resulted in patron-client exchanges of the Indian variety. However, in Malaysia the clear ethnic division between intermediate classes who were largely Malay and a capitalist class which was initially largely Chinese paradoxically allowed the construction of a structure of patron-client exchanges which allowed fairly rapid growth. Instead of many decentralised patron-client exchanges between many different patrons and groups of clients, the ethnic redistribution adopted by the New Economic Policy in the 1970s allowed a centralised sharing of rents in Malaysia. This served to prevent structural sclerosis from developing along Indian lines.