ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the analysis which 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. The use of patron-client analysis has been the province of anthropologists, who found it particularly useful in penetrating behind the often misleading formal arrangements in small local communities where interpersonal power relations were salient. The chapter explores different varieties of patron-client bonds and thereby establishes some important dimensions of variation. It examines both the survival of and the transformations in patron-client links in Southeast Asia since colonialism and the impact of major social changes on the content of these ties. Three additional distinguishing features of patron-client links, implied by the definition, merit brief elaboration: their basis in inequality, their face-to-face character, and their diffuse flexibility. By definition, instrumental ties play a major role in the patron-client dyad.
